Virtual machine for development
While I dual boot Windows 10 Tech Preview (it's amazing, by the way) and Linux Mint on my laptop, my primary workstations are desktops on Windows 8.1. Thus, my workflow for web development involves a CentOS virtual machine running in Virtual Box. I run a LEMP stack for WordPress and Magento, rbenv to manage several versions of Ruby, nvm to manage several versions of Nodejs, and so forth.
One complaint about my workflow is that I can't run subl . to open the current directory in Sublime Text 3. Rather, I setup a Samba share and connect with files, which works well.
Launch VM on startup
Anyway, since I'm basically SSHd into this VM all day, I wanted it to automatically boot when the computer itself booted up. More importantly, I wanted this to happen in the background to avoid having to visit VirtualBox's GUI each time—at least version 5 finally introduces startup options in a dropdown menu rather than knowing to secretly shift+click for a headless launch, but I want automation.
1. Go to startup folder
Navigate to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (note, choose your own user). Any files or shortcuts here will be run when Windows loads your user account.
2. Create new text file
Create a text file within the Startup directory (step 1 above), then rename the file to Whatever-you-want.bat. Maybe you'll want to make it the name of your VM, but ensure the file type changes to a .bat file.
3. Edit bat file
Open the .bat file in Notepad and put this inside:
"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" startvm "NameOfYourVM" --type "headless"
Note, put the name of your virtual machine in the double quotes.
What happens?
If this is done correctly, a command prompt window will display for a few moments during Windows' initial startup sequence. Then, it will disappear and you can access your virtual machine as normal.