Hi MatthewRiley,
Thank you for the post. I am sorry to hear that you are unable to disable start-up items in Windows 8.
I can imagine the inconvenience you have experienced. I will definitely help you with this.
I would suggest you to refer the following links and check if it helps.
Manage apps and services with Task Manager
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/manage-apps-services-task-manager
Beyond the basics
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/task-manager#1TC=t1
If the issue persists, please do not hesitate to let us know. It is our pleasure to be of assistance.
I am having this same issue, I looked at your links but they didn't help. The first just tells you how to open Task Manager in windows 8 and the second is what you can do in Task Manager ....... when it works as expected.
I cannot see any trouble-shooting on there with regard to this issue at all so I am confused as to why you would link them as a reply??
Is there a reason this would be happening? Is it a policy thing that has been set somewhere? I'm not sure about MatthewRiley but we are in a domain and I can't even see a setting to remove this functionality in Group Policy and therefore can't see how I would re-enable it there.
Also, the machine I am having this issue on has been updated to 8.1
I look forward to any kind of reply hopefully with some useful info
Darren