Hi, JamesC.
I'm back. All rested and refreshed and ready to come as close to not misinforming you as is within my power to be.
I've come up with a little procedure for you to try, and I've tested this on my system with every single non-service startup process I have on my notebook. The procedure works on all of them, so I feel reasonably confident it will work for you, too.
But first we need to be sure about a couple of things, and we should take at least one precautionary step -- just in case.
First of all I just noticed something higher up in the thread. When you notified me of the list of startup processes, I identified this one
Asusprob c:\Program Files\Asus\Probe|Asusprob.exe
as the "culprit" process. I just now noticed that there is a "|" symbol sitting between the words "Probe" and "Asusprob.exe". Is that actually what MSCONFIG shows for in its STARTUP tab? That symbol is the symbol for pipelining, and I think that it's probably just supposed to be a "\" (backslash) instead. But if it IS actually a pipeline symbol then I'm not sure we should try the procedure I'm going to outline. I'm not saying that it wouldn't still work, but I just have no experience with the use of that feature from within a registry startup call. I don't know if there are special conditions which apply or not.
The precautionary step you need to take is to create a System Restore Point. Go into your Control Panel, switch it to Category View if it isn't already in that format, click on the Performance and Maintenance link, then click on the System Restore link in the upper left-hand corner of the window. You'll be presented with the System Restore dialog. Click on the "Create a restore point" radio button, and click on the Next button at the bottom of the dialog. On the next page type in a descriptive name for the restore point you'll be creating. Then click on the Create bottom of that page. Give the system time to do it's thing, and then OK and close your way out of the dialogs. If things go really wrong (and they almost certainly won't) with the registry edit, you should be able to boot into Safe Mode by hitting the F8 button immediately after the Power On Self Test. You'll then be able to go into the same System Restore applet and choose to restore the system to an earlier point, at which time you'll choose the restore point you just created.
Now for the procedure. Not rocket science by any means, but DO be EXACT. The registry is no place to make typographical errors!!!
Make sure that you are logged in as an admin user. Hold down the Windows key and hit the letter "R". The Run dialog should appear. Just type "regedit" (no quotes) in the field, and hit the Enter key. A window called Registry Editor should appear. You need to drill down to the point indicated in your earlier message. (It's just like a directory structure in Explorer.) Notice that "HKLM" stands for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", so this --
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
will actually be at this location --
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
At that location in the registry you'll look in the right-hand pane of the Registry Editor. Locate the item named "Asusprob" (Asusprobe?). Right-click on it, and choose Modify from the context menu. You should see a little two-field dialog appear. It will contain the fields Value_name and Value_data. You're going to modify the Value_data from this --
"C:\Program Files\Asus\Probe\Asusprob.exe"
(and it DOES include the quotes this time) to this --
runas /savecred /user:AdminUserName "C:\Program Files\Asus\Probe\Asusprob.exe"
You will be replacing the term AdminUserName with the name of an actual full administrative user of the machine. Click the OK button to close the Edit String dialog, the click on the close button of the Registry Editor to close it. On the next reboot, just after logging in (as one of the users with the problematic Asus Probe behavior), you should see a CMD (C:\ icon) window pop up. Depending upon whether or not the credentials for the admin user you chose to use are already cached, that box may prompt you for that admin user's password. After that, first time I think you shouldn't be prompted for the password again. Do go through a reboot / logon for each of the non-admin users so that, if the password has to be entered in each of them, you get past that hurdle for those end users. After you're up on the desktop with the OS fully loaded and the boot time hard drive activity finished, crank up Task Manager and look on the Processes tab for "Asusprob". You should see the admin user listed as the user of the process, even though you're actually logged on to the system under a non-admin user's credentials.
REMEMBER that I'm not so sure about that pipeline symbol. If it really is there, then I'm not certain just what ramifications that might have, if any.
ALSO REMEMBER that computers are literal beasts, as you've probably surmised during this little adventure. That runas line I typed above is, with the sole exception of the "AdminUserName" item, EXACTLY what you need to place in that field. (That's assuming that my surmise about "|" really being a "\" is correct AND that the original command line you gave me has no other typos in it.)
If you have any questions, ask them BEFORE proceeding. I don't wish to help you get into trouble. I did test this method as thoroughly as possible, considering that I don't have access to your system, or even to the executable we're trying to work with.
I'll hope to hear good news.
- Collin
PS: I live in the GMT - 5:00 zone. The daytime difference certainly contributes to the delays experienced in this message thread, doesn't it?