Changes to Startup Applications not sticking - Skype a-start

[Zeroignite]

Hello. I've started using Mint a few months ago, and have a problem that no amount of googling or asking other linux users I know has so far been able to solve. I'm running Mint 9 (main) on an Acer Aspire One D250 netbook.

I have two problems, one of which is a consequence of the other. Primarily, any change I make to the Startup Applications gui menu doesn't appear to stick. I can uncheck or mark a program as disabled and close the tool, but upon reopening it's as if I never made any changes. Same goes for editing the properties of any item.

Now, I was able to workaround this by directly locating and editing the autostart files located in ~/.config/autostart. This worked for changing a few applications that had files in there, namely devilspie and conky. The changes to the run commands and the "run in X true/false" lines are later reflected in Startup Applications.

That was all fine and good, but with one exception. Skype is still autostarting, even though I set the line to false in the config file. For a while, skype was actually starting twice. After setting the config file to not autostart, it is now only starting once, but Startup Applications is still still showing it as checked and active. As I said above, trying to change the autostart there doesn't work.

I would like stop Skype's running at startup and possibly regain control over the GUI tool. Are there alternate config files that dictate which programs run at startup which someone could point me towards? Any idea why changes to the Startup Applications tool don't stick?

Thank you. --Zeroignite

[inktitan]

Do you have it set automatically save your sessions upon log-out?

[Zeroignite]

No. Looked around, and apparently that is a common problem, especially with xfe distros. In any case, I manually close skype each session.

[inktitan]

Well I am going to test this myself and see what comes of it. Is it slowing your PC down or just being annoying?

[inktitan]

have you tried actually removing the program from the start up list instead of just clicking it off?

[Zeroignite]

Just annoying, and I have tried removing the program from the list.

I appreciate your help!

[inktitan]

I have the same problem now. This might take some time. I understand the frustration now. Skype has no real options so it may turn in to a coding thing. If you start minimized in the system try does it still pop up on the desktop?

[Zeroignite]

Skype starts minimized in system tray. And, agreed, t it has no meaningful internal settings. the skype client for Linux really is pretty poor relative to the windows client; apparently the linux release is like two full versions behind.

What did you do to replicate the situation?

Manually closing it every time I boot isn't a huge deal, since I often hibernate or go to s3 sleep rather than a full shutdown anyway. The problem is frustrating, but I wasn't really expecting a super-speedy resolution since I was unable to find any trivial answers myself. I really do appreciate that you're looking into it as well, inktitan.

[inktitan]

I live to help even if I can't. To create the problem I simply installed Skype, logged into my account (which I never use) and the restarted the computer and viola, Skype pops up.

[inktitan]

So I right clicked on the Skype icon in the system tray and chose quit. I have noticed it no longer starts during start up. I wasn't really paying attention to it at the time as i was just going to uninstall it but when i finally remembered to do that I had noticed it hadn't loaded the last few times i logged in. Unfortunately I don't know exactly what i did. From synaptic i grabbed a few Ethernet tools unrelated to this problem. and i ran an OS scan of the network for another issue, some on-line searching but nothing i can think of that pertains to this. I updated my wine. Maybe it is one of those things that works it self out randomly. By the way I am using Linux kernel 2.6.32-21-generic i686. I am passed tired so I will take a better look tomorrow.