Did you already try to put it into your accounts autostart folder ?

Not sure whether this works, as the executable is already loaded ...

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

I understood your problem, I hoped from putting Totalmix executable into the autostart folder, that the (already loaded) program gets perhaps a trigger to open. But ok, if you do not want to try out ... was just an idea.

What about cleaning-up your taskbar icons then ? You can hide the stuff that you really do not require and configure it to show up only on messages. I think this is the 1st step you should do.

Next what I do is, that I sort them manually, you can do this by clicking onto an icon, press and hold left mousekey and then move it to where you want.

The 3 leftmost icons are for me: Totalmix, UFX USB Driver Panel, UFX Firewire Driver Panel

This way you have those icons wonderful visible and always at the same location, I never have to "search" for those.

Hi ramses,  Thanks for all the good suggestions.  However, I wanted a more direct solution like what MC suggested...

Unfortunately, I could not get that to work.  My batch file would only execute the first instance of TotalMixFX.exe.  I tried the following without success:

1. Two lines of the following command: "C:\Windows\System32\TotalMixFX.exe"
2. The same as above except with "TIMEOUT /T 3" between the two lines to force a temporary delay
3. Using "CALL" to run two separate batch files (each of which executes: "C:\Windows\System32\TotalMixFX.exe")
4. a FOR-loop:  "for /l %%x in (1, 1, 2) do C:\Windows\System32\TotalMixFX.exe %%x"

I've run out of ideas.  Would you please give me a hint?

Hi ramses, When you double-clicked your batch file, was TotalMix already running (in the System Tray)?  If so, I get the same behavior here.  What I'm trying to do is to get TotalMix to start maximized with one click without it already loaded into memory at all.  And that's why MC suggested putting two instances of TotalMix in the batch file: the first instance loads it to the System Tray, the second one maximizes it.  I think your batch file did just the latter. 

Correct. TM does not load at system start.  The reason is that I use my computer for things other than music making, so I only load TM when I need it.  This general strategy has resulted in *very* stable and responsive system performance.  I've been running this way for many years, so I don't plan to change anytime soon.  Cheers...

Ok I understand, but see tbh no real benefit in it. I also use my PC for different things like Office, Internet, Gaming, Video editing, Recording. TM never was causing any issues. So I wonder where your motivation comes from to disable TM per default.

The only thing which this special setup does IMHO, is to keep you busy, not more.

Or could you explain a little bit more in detail, what special merit this shall have ?

ramses, I'm a scientist.  A large part of my job is to create experimental designs that allow me to study one particular facet of a system in the absence of potential confounds.  Let's pretend it's 500 years ago and we want to understand the effect of gravity on how objects with different weights fall.  So, we drop a feather and a hammer from the same height to see which hits the ground first.  We observe it's the hammer, so we conclude that heavier objects fall faster.  Wrong!  Obviously we neglected to control for the confound of air resistance.  What we witnessed was an *interaction* between gravity and viscous drag, but we didn't know enough to control for it.

Being mindful of this, and the fact that computers are very complex systems, I reduce potential interactions (between hardware and software) by running only what I need in each session.  The chance of an interaction occurring is exactly zero if the software is not running.  But once it's active in memory, this chance may increase.  And even if it's very small, the probability of a problem occurring is infinitely greater (mathematically speaking).  What's more, the interactions may not be limited to just two things, but can be higher-order, and so combinatorics may come into play.  Although I don't anticipate any problems with TotalMix -- it's obviously a beautiful piece of software -- everything I described above still applies to it.

If this seems needlessly conservative, I'd point out all the people in all the forums with all sorts of problems that often result from the types of interactions I've described.  And although it may seem like I'm wasting time clicking on an extra icon to start TM, I can easily offset these few seconds by the hours and days I've saved in not having to fix problems (not to mention the 'cost' of frustration). And running a lean system has another important advantage: it conserves resources for the software that you're actually using.

Bottom line, I've been using this approach for years and it's worked great, so I have no reason to change.