Microsoft’s Sysinternals have announced an update to their Autoruns tool, the best utility around for identifying all the programs that could be launched when you start your PC.

Just as in previous versions, Autoruns 10.03 provides great detail on everything you need to know: startup programs, services, drivers, IE addons, scheduled tasks, codecs, sidebar gadgets, and much, much more.

The new version also now includes even more shell extension locations, though, so you can see even more ways in which apps have attached themselves to your Explorer installation.

And even more usefully, Autoruns now reports the Safe Mode “AlternateShell” setting when it’s been changed.  Normally this points to cmd.exe and is used by Safe Mode to decide what’s launched when you choose “Safe mode with command prompt at boot time”.  It can also be manipulated by malware to launch a trojan or other malicious program, though, so it’s good to see Autoruns now making this information available.

If you ever need to monitor the installed software on your PC, then, either to improve its performance or hunt for malware, Autoruns remains the best option by far.  Running MSCONFIG on our test PC listed 30 items, for example, but Autoruns 10.03 uncovered an amazing 240 – it’s a must-have for everyone’s troubleshooting toolkit.