programs running on startup without being in startup folder

Question

some program (sort of malware) is running on my windows 7 at startup, but my startup folder is empty (even after removing the hidden and system attrib of all the programs in the folder). But msconfig shows the script that was running.

This means that programs can run on startup without actually being in the startup folder.

Please help me by explaining, how these softwares do this, or any concept of startup that i am missing?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

From here:

Add a new startup application Open your registry and find the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run].

For each program you want to start automatically create a new string value using a descriptive name, and set the value of the string to the program executable.

For example, to automatically start Notepad, add a new entry of "Notepad"="c:\windows\notepad.exe".