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How can we determine what the heck this thing is? Its name is simply “Program” and it has no publisher information. You’ll notice, however, that one Startup program in Task Manager is far more mysterious.
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For example, “AcroTray” may not be immediately recognizable, but when paired with “Adobe Systems Inc.” in the Publisher column, it becomes clear that this is related to Adobe Acrobat. We see that most entries configured for Windows Startup are clearly identifiable, either via the name of the app or service, or via the “Publisher” column. Here’s how to find out exactly what these unknown startup programs are doing.įirst, let’s take a look at the Task Manager for our example PC in the screenshot below. but sometimes you’ll encounter a program that doesn’t offer any clue as to its creator or purpose. Most Windows programs, and their associated services, are easily identifiable - Dropbox, NVIDIA, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc. Like its predecessors, the Windows 10 Task Manager lets you see and control which programs and services are configured to launch when you boot into Windows.
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