Task Manager Autostarting In Win 7

This is irritating - whenever I boot or restart my Win 7 VM (VMware Workstation) Task Manager also starts. I've checked in Autoruns, Task Manager itself and also run SFC with no clues at all as to what may be triggering it. taskmgr.exe does not appear to run as a service so that isn't the source. Any clues?

 

Look in Task Scheduler.

 

Yes, I overlooked that, but it's not there either.

 

The only other place to look at is Group Policy Editor.

 

Nope, not there either. It'll have to be one of those things - happily it's not my work system.

 

Could this occur in conjunction with one of the "non-normal" choices in msconfig->General or Boot tab?

 

I doubt I've ever opened msconfig in this VM but it's another place to check. I'll take a look later.

 

Bingo! It was in msconfig Startup. Other than to remind myself how it works I haven't used Win 7 for about four years and never use msconfig at all so how it got there will remain a mystery. Thank you!

 

Hilarious I was thinking that the VM may have been changed somehow to a non-normal start. Started to mention the startups, but thought, nah, how would Task Manager end up there? Just a guess but maybe someone put a shortcut to TM in the startup folder on the start menu? Those show up in msconfig startups. Glad you found it anyway...