title: What's the order of Windows startup?
body: <p>I'm curious to know the order of Windows startup during a user login. Does anyone know?
  Basically, my application was being invoked by login script that a GPO calls. While 3rd party EXE was being invoked, it was failing to start.</p>
  
  <p>Then, through trial and error, I found that HKCU...\RunOnce keys execute after the login script. Same result, the EXE was being called, but failing to start.</p>
  
  <p>What worked: updated the login script create a shortcut in the user's Startup folder. Now the EXE starts up as expected.</p>
  
  <p>I know that AutoRuns can tell me all the locations where startup items can be placed, does anyone know the execution order as a whole? I was able to find that Run and RunOnce keys get called asynchronously. I can keep testing each startup item that AutoRuns states, but this could take days.</p>
  
  <p>I'm mostly interested in Windows 2003 Server login startup flow, but I would suspect its very similar to other Windows flavors in use today.</p>