Drat! After returning from vakay, I noticed Revo Uninstaller still popping up after Startup. My November 21 post mentioned disabling some settings. Autoruns (see lead-in graphic) also tells me there’s a scheduled task that must be disabled to prevent its “helper” (and the app) from launching after startup.  Indeed, this persistent Revo requires disabling task for its helper.exe. Go figure!

It Irks Me That Persistent Revo Requires Disabling Task

When software makers offer free versions of their applications, they seem to feel entitled to let that version do various things to Windows PCs — not all of them desirable or well-behaved. I take umbrage with Revo, and other publishers who do likewise. That goes double, especially when they offer no opt-out in their installers, nor warnings for users. It seems they’re resolved that their software is going to make itself run at startup whether you like it or not.

Methinks it’s because such vendors seek added upsell opportunities. Alas, it only proves irksome and bothersome instead. This time, I had to call out the heavy artillery — namely, SysInternals Autoruns, capable of showing and stopping anything and everything that touches startup behavior on a Windows PC.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself saying “Thank you, Mark Russinovich and the rest of the SysInternals team.” It won’t be the last, either. In fact, that litany will no doubt continue until I stop running Windows (unlikely) or you pry it out of my cold, dead hands (inevitable, but hopefully not for some time yet).