It’s possible Bitcoin ran and bailed out because something was wrong. debug.log should tell something if that was the case. What OS are you using? I wonder if we need Admin privilege and don’t realize it. Stuff that requires Admin can’t start on startup on Vista.
Program shortcuts have multiple tabs of settings with lots of little details. I’ll try the startup folder code and see if I can reproduce the problem. Every other systray icon on my computer is in the startup folder, and it makes it easy for users to manage all their autoruns in one place. The things in the registry key tend to be devious hidden bloatware.
I implemented the code to flush wallet.dat whenever it’s closed so we’ll be able to tell users they only need to backup wallet.dat. You can restore just wallet.dat and it’ll re-download the rest. I’ll have to do another stress test before release.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Well, the code worked and made a shortcut in the startup folder. For some reason it didn’t automatically start when booting, but worked fine when you clicked on it in the menu. Now I tried making a shortcut manually, and this time it works on autostart, don’t know why. I could try again with the older code.
I got it, I see you checked in the startup folder code before changing it to registry. I don’t see any visible problems in the code. I guess it depends what exactly the problem was with it not always working by default. Was there a Vista/UAC security problem?
Satoshi Nakamoto wrote:
What was the problem with the shortcut in the startup folder? If
you could send me the code, I’d like to take another look and see
if I can see what the problem was. The first strcat in the
registry code should be strcpy, otherwise it would fail
intermittently. If the same code was in the shortcut one, maybe
that was the problem.mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
I made a Windows installer for the latest version of Bitcoin,
which includes the autostart and minimize to tray features. The
installer makes a start menu shortcut and a startup registry
entry. I first implemented the autostart with a shortcut to the
startup folder, but I found out that it doesn’t always work by
default and ended up doing it with a registry entry. The registry
entry is removed by the uninstaller and can be also disabled from
the options menu, so I don’t think it’s such a big menace to the
user after all.
Source: Published by Martti Malmi on GitHub in February 2024 as part of his testimony in the COPA v. Wright trial. The full correspondence archive is available at mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/.