9 April 2020

Setup BGInfo on Windows

BGinfo is a great utility/tool that I really like and I literally have on every server I deploy. It is totally customize-able and able to display whatever system information that you feel is important to you, right on the desktop background making it easy to see at a glance. It could be used to display anything from the server’s name, IP addresses, hard drive usage, memory usage, OS version, or even the user that you are currently logged in as.


Download BgInfo – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/bginfo

Create a folder, c:\utilities\, and make sure that all users have read and write access to it.

Move the BGInfo utility into the c:\utilities\ folder.
I also like to place any other Sysinternals utilities that I am using into this c:\utilities\ folder.

Run the BGinfo utility and take a few minutes to configure what information you wish to be displayed on your background.
Then save your configuration to the c:\utilities\ folder.

Create a shortcut to either Bginfo.exe (if you are on a 32-bit machine) or Bginfo64.exe (if are on a 64-bit machine).

Edit the target of that shortcut to include the name of your BGinfo configuration file.
In the picture below I’ve named mine “c:\utilities\mybgconfig.bgi”.

A few more handy suggestions to include in your shortcut’s target are:

  • /timer:0 – to avoid the typical UI popup
  • /nolicprompt – to make sure new users are not prompted with the EULA
  • /silent – to silence and errors

Which would result with the target field looking like:

c:\utilities\Bginfo64.exe c:\utilities\mybgconfig.bgi /timer:0 /nolicprompt /silent

Follow my article about finding the startup folder in Windows, and make a copy of your shortcut into that startup folder.
I prefer to copy the shortcut to the “Common Startup” folder, that way it will launch for any user that logs into the machine… But it’s up to you if you want to put it in the “User Startup” or “Common Startup” folder.

Now it’s time to test it out! Try logging out and then logging back in.

9 April 2020

Finding the Startup Folder on Windows

In recent years Microsoft has moved around where they “hide” the startup folder. That’s the folder that gets used to launch applications that start automatically when the user logs in. It’s not necessary hard to find, but it is well hidden.

There’s actually two places that startup folder lives. Each user has their own startup folder that will launch programs specific to that user. And there is also a common startup folder which will launch programs for any and all users that log into that machine.


How to find the users’ individual startup folder

  • Right click on the start menu and select ‘Run’.
  • Type “shell:startup” and click ok.
  • The startup folder will open, and you can drag-and-drag and shortcuts or applications you need into.

If you need to manually dive thru folders to get to the user’s startup folder, go to, but remember to change “<USER>” to the one you’re looking for:

C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

How to find the all users’ common startup folder

  • Right click on the start menu and select ‘Run’.
  • Type “shell:common startup” and click ok.
  • The startup folder will open, and you can drag-and-drag and shortcuts or applications you need into.

If you need to manually dive thru folders to get to the common startup folder, go to:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp