boot up to full MyHD, with MyIRC  

Try putting MyHD below MyIRC (drag and drop works)

hmm. Up until recently I had MyHD startup that way. Since I added the playlist manager I don't do it anymore since PLM needs to run first. There is a way to run all the stuff in sequence but for the life of me I don't remember. If it bugged me a bit more I would look into it. Pretty sure it is not complicated. For now I just hit the power button on the remote to start myhd. If not one offers a solution I will look into it further and mention it here. I did like when it all started up.

I'm not sure that you can force the execution order in the Startup folder. This may not work either if MyIRC needs a specific head start time and I can't test it right now, but did you try putting them both in a batch file with MyIRC.exe first and executing that from Startup? Such as:

@echo off
REM batch file (MyHD_onestep.bat) to be run from Startup group
START /B "C:\\Program files\\MyHD\\MyIRC.exe"
START "C:\\Program files\\MyHD\\MyHD.exe"
EXIT

I kept trying CALL in my batch files but PLM never had time to finish. I will try START and see if my problem is solved. Hope it helps artworkvideo

Tell rbatch file to wait/pause between executions.

OK, how? (Remember that the goal was NO keypresses required, so PAUSE is off the table)

I think that a fixed-interval pause will require a non Windows utility to be used, but I don't remember for sure if I have ever used such a utility or what it was called. I expect a google or two would turn it up. If it were my problem that would be my next step.

So you've described what didn't happen...what did happen? Any error messages?

Ah! The penny dropped. I forgot (again) that the window title is not optional in a START command. The batch file should read:

@echo off
REM batch file (MyHD_onestep.bat) to be run from Startup group
START "" /B "C:\\Program files\\MyHD\\MyIRC.exe"
START "" "C:\\Program files\\MyHD\\MyHD.exe"
EXIT

I will try this when I am home since I had the same problem (batch worked fine but window remained open). Of course now I need to also run "Cliff" and populate my epg.

If you want to go back to 1.66 and explore this, you can see if it's the timing by inserting a PAUSE command between the two START lines. That won't be a good solution for you, since you don't want to enter any keystrokes, but it will confirm that the problem is lack of a delay between the two.

If it turns out that that is the problem, Google for some delay batch file utilities--I'm sure that there are bunches of them. There's a kluged method shown here, for example.