Smooth Program Startup With Lacuna Launcher
The tiny, free/donationware Lacuna Launcher can kick off multiple programs at once, and will wait between launches for as long as you tell it. There's no installation, but it takes a little manual tweaking to set up.
After downloading and unzipping Lacuna Launcher, you'll have a folder with an 'll' program icon, a text file named 'list' and another README file with instructions and more info. If you double-click the program's icon, it will launch any and all files or programs listed in the "list" text file. To use it, your easiest option is to just modify tht text file.
To have the launcher use a different startup file for a second batch of apps, or to tell it to delay between starting programs (to give each time to fully start before moving on to the other, for instance), start by right-clicking the ll icon and creating a shortcut. Then modify that new shortcut's Target line to list the full path of your list file, the amount of time to wait (in seconds) before launching items, and the amount of time to wait between launching items. For example:
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