Figure out what runs on startup on your machine
Recently I have been helping alot of people remove spyware, trojan horses, and viruses from their machines. One of the first things I do is login and look at all the things thrown into their registry and startup folder. These two utilities do alot to help you find out what is set to run, and who the publisher of the file is.
msconfig.exe - is free, and is installed on all Windows machines. Use MSConfig.exe from the Start->Run to see what services and registry keys are being set to launch when you login to the computer.
AutoRuns - is free, but you have to download it from the SysInternal folks. Its hosted on www.spychecker.com autoruns
It is important to run this util from the start menu not the command line. It would be useful if it could be found from the command line. See my other articles on spy ware, trojan horses and modifying and searching the registry.