Stop re-launching apps on startup!

First, what will help is to close all windows and actually quit (Command + Q) the apps before shutdown. Now, if you truly do not want to ever have anything open automatically at boot up, here is what I did over a year ago and it still works:

(Disclaimer: this is system wide - only use it if you don't want anything to open):

Go to your ~/Library (now hidden: find it by holding Option key while clicking on Go in Finder menubar). Once open, scroll down to this folder "Saved Application State". Do a get info (Command + I) and have that window open. Next, throw every entry in that folder into the trash. In the Get Info window, unlock the padlock on the bottom right and enter your password; next, tick the "locked" option under the General Info. Lock the padlock again. Restart computer.

Hello Don

Have you tried going to Library in your home folder? You can get there in Lion by clicking in the Go menu in finder and holding option which will reveal the hidden Library option. The go to caches and delete the folder. Then scroll down to the Saved Application State folder and delete that. Then press Control-Eject key which will bring up shutdown dialog. Uncheck reopen windows when logging back in. Then shutdown. Now just to be safe start up in Safe mode by starting your computer and immediately holding the shift key until you see a small progress bar under the apple logo and spinning gear. When that's done loading and you see your login screen you can reboot and see if it happens. The safe boot step isn't entirely secessary but I always do it as a precautionary measure. I'd like to know if this works because I havent had any trouble so far (thankfully).

Hope this helps,

xeni

So did this work?

Also, see Completely disable Resume. BTW, Apple thinks this is a useful feature on Mac computers, I don't.

One other possibility... Have you updated to the latest version of Mountain Lion? There was a bug at some point that caused the state of that checkbox to be ignored. You may just need to install any available updates. (See Software Update in the Apple menu.)

If you've got 10.8.2 then you're already up-to-date.

Sorry to hear this! The feature is for people that like it and for the people that don't then you can turn it off. Howver in your case, it's a little different.

Have you tried doing what I wrote above? If that doesn't work then you can try repairing premissions in Disk Utility. Instructions here:

1. Restart Mac holding Command-R to boot into recovery partition.

2. Then Select Disk Utility from the tools menu

3. Click your startup drive then select rapair permissions. This might take a while

4. Restart when that's done and then repeat either babowa or my suggestions then see if the problem still occurs.

Hope this helps,

xeni

Unfortunately, Apple will not remove it; when it was first introduced, there was not even an option to disable it - I sent in a bug report and they actually at least later offered an option to disable it. I don't think we will get further. Try baltwo's suggestion - I did that a couple of weeks ago for one particular app which would insist opening. That has now stopped; except for that one, I've not had a problem after locking the SavedApplicationState folder though.

You can also set to close windows when quitting applications in System Preferences/General. As the screen shot shows, I have it selected and only the applications in my log-in items reopen.

Trust me, you don't want to hear the reason why I hate it........ took me 5 hours to undo the damage and get my Mac back....