Changing the application shortcut to
'start /low [program.exe]' should work
for you.
This technically can work for things that don't start automatically. If you want it for a startup program, you can do this to the shortcut and put it into the StartUp folder obviously. If I wanted to run:
C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"C:\dev_dir"
I would have to:
1) Set "Start in" to the folder the actual executing file (TortiseProc.exe in this example) is located so: "C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin"
2) Set the target to run CMD w/ "/C" to run the string following "/C" then exit, then use that to run START /PRIORITY [executable] [parameters]. In my case, I used the following:
%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /C start /BELOWNORMAL TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"C:\dev_dir"
%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe Starts the command prompt
/C executes the following code,
start /BELOWNORMAL TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"C:\dev_dir" actually starts the program given that you correctly "Start in" to the directory where the executable is located.
Hopefully that helps somebody.