What are all ways to run code at Windows startup?

Question

I'm the attacker. What are all the options to run code at the Windows startup:

• If I have administrator rights?
• If I have normal user rights?

Can someone put any program (or script) in this method or it needs to have some kind of Windows certification?

Answer 1

There are a lot of ways to execute code at startup on windows, some more novel than others. What you need to search for is Windows persistence. Although you should disregard the techniques involving backdoors (like RDP user creation etc.)

Here's a github repository that explains a lot of common methods.

Link: Windows-Persistence