Spurious explorer window appears at startup
 

I have a new Thinkpad x60s 1704 laptop. At some point, following the installation of various programs, it started to - at every startup - appear with an instance of Windows Explorer covering half the desktop, showing a directory called

c: \program files\sierra wireless\mc8755

This isn't completely meaningless; in this directory are the drivers for the built-in GPRS/3G adapter which this laptop has. This feature works fine.

But something is opening up this directory in Explorer - why?

There is nothing apparent in any fo the startup folders, nor in the microsoft/run / run once / etc registry locations.

Any ideas on how I can look for what is causing this?

It's just a nuisance; I can obviously close it manually.

Is there an associated programme for the Sierra? Maybe a right click on an appropriate icon will allow a deselect of this event?

There are two parts to the GSM adapter: the driver, and the (Vodafone-badged) control program which has the CONNECT etc button on it.

The folder that opens shows the former. The latter gets run only when I click on its desktop icon.

Not sure if this will work but give it a go!!

Goto Start
Goto Run
type msconfig
Click Ok

Select the tab marked 'Startup'

Have a check there for services that run at startup

It is more than likely that this application does not actually need to run at startup, it just does because it can!


I would also do the same on the services tab. This is all crud that runs in the background and serves little purpose other than to slow your PC down!!

Some of these services are required, a quick google search on the names will normally tell you if it is required or not. Try and keep this figure below 30, less than 20 is brill but not always possible.

TIO

Great advice, Turn It Off, thank you very much. Worked a treat.

I did know about msconfig from the distant past but totally forgot...

I disabled the Sierra whatever from startup and everything still works. I also took the opportunity to disable stuff like Adobe Acrobat Reader - why the hell is this in the startup??

I'm convinced its an effort to slow computers down so you have to keep upgrading!