This was something that I had been trying off and on to do for quite some time now, and it's a really neat way to help utilize idle time after computer startup and prior to you actually typing in your password.

Here's a simple way to explain what I'm doing:

• This is how Windows handles startup items: It waits until you put in the password (idle this entire time). Upon login, it loads all startup items simultaneously (as permitted by your processor).
• This is how I would like Windows to start: It starts up, showing the login screen. In the background, it loads all startup programs and prepares my desktop (essentially, making my desktop "Locked" more than "Logged off").

(with a single-user computer in mind -- not too sure how this would work for computers with multiple users)

I tried many different ways to do this, from making my startup programs services to scheduling them to run at startup. All-in-all, nothing worked the way I wanted it to. So, I started doing some research, and then I got the clever idea of making my computer automatically login at startup, then immediately lock the computer (using a batch file).

First things first, you have to enable automatic login. For Windows Vista, you can simply go to Start and type "control userpasswords2" without the quotes and hit enter. Press Continue to the elevation prompt, and then uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Then hit Apply, and OK.