Disabling background processes of Musicmatch Jukebox
Musicmatch Jukebox, the leading music player from Yahoo!, has several snags with regard to file associations and startup. One particular problem is that it starts automatically on Windows startup and this might be inconvenient for many users who do not want to use this player that often. Moreover, Musicmatch Jukebox automatically associates itself with any new music file that is copied on to the hard drive.
Information about these features of Musicmatch is available on the web, where the Musicmatch team from yahoo states that this is due to two processes that are automatically installed with the program – mim.exe and mimboot.exe. Both of these programs do not have any interfaces. mim.exe is incorporated to improve the startup time of the Musicmatch application in general, and mimboot.exe is required to start mim.exe.
Thus, the only way you can change these settings is by tweaking the registry. One advice is to create a system restore point before going about fixing the problem, as then you always have a failsafe backup in case something goes drastically wrong in the registry.
Preventing mim.exe from loading when your system starts up
- Go to Start – > Run, and enter regedit.
- Navigate to the following registry key branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run - Find the value called MimBoot, and remove it from the registry.
Terminating mim.exe permanently
- Go to Start – > Run, and enter regedit.
- Navigate to the following registry key branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MusicMatch\MusicMatch Jukebox\4.0\MainApp - Find the value called ShutDownMim, and change its value to 1.
- Exit the Registry Editor.
Once you have done the above actions, you can restart the computer. This time around, you will find that the problem has been resolved. The background processes mim.exe and mimboot.exe will not load and thus, Musicmatch will not associate itself with music files without your permission anymore.