Programs Invisible On Start Menu - Accessible From Taskbar And Shortcuts
Jan 2, 2013
Like the title says, most of the programs listed in the start menu are gone. They can still be accessed from other places, like the task bar and shortcuts, at least most of them. I would show a picture, but I can't access Paint. The only things that remain are Mahjong, Chess, Solitaire, Purble Place and Magnifier in the main menu and under All Programs: IE, some accessories (not including paint), McAfee, Google Chrome, The startup folder, and WinRAR.
I have no idea ho i did this but all of my startup programs on start menu as well as desktop shotcuts they end in .ink? And all of it has the logo for VLc media player? so basically when i click it it loads on that program but it will not load it as it only does media files. And all the time I have to right click to say open file location then it finally loads the program. So my question is how do I put it all back to normal? I'll post a screenshot so you can better understand what I am talking about.
I am having issues with searching for program shortcuts in Windows 7. When I type in a shortcut name in the search field on the start menu, nothing appears. Files and Control panel applets do appear though but no program shortcuts located under the C:ProgramdataMicrosoftWindowsStart Menu folder. The OS is Windows 7 Enterprise RTM 64 bit. I have confirmed that the user that is having the issue does have read and execute rights to these shortcuts because they appear in the start menu and in the appropriate folder. This is in a corporate environment so the local hard disk has restricted settings on it via group policy.
They include the following: - Hide these specified drives in My Computer Restrict C drive Only - Prevent access to drives from My Computer Restrict C Drive Only.
The tasks I have done. - Confirmed the index options settings and the start menu is listed. - Rebuilt the index and the same issue applies
When I start up my computer, my Steam starts up, then I manually start Chrome. Chrome comes up fine, Steam does too, but when I try to right click on Steam and click friends, all it does is create another steam process running at 100-108 K. Then if I close Chrome and try to reopen it, it will do the same. This happens with EVERY program after I start up. There's a 5 second window where I can open programs without issue, then after that it will only start 108 K copies of them. It takes me around 30 restarts just to get it working properly, if not more.
Yesterday, the task bar and Start button mysteriously disappeared.I've also found that the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" windowdoesn't come up. There are two places to click on in Control Panelthat should bring up this window, but it doesn't. The Control Panelborder changes color as if something is starting to happen, but thennothing happens, possibly indicating that some program starts to runbut then finds something wrong and exits. I didn't see anythinginteresting in the error logs. The desktop icons appear normally.The problem exists only when logging onto my son's account. When Ilog on as administrator, the task bar and Start button appearnormally.The usual tricks don't work: Ctrl+ESC, or bringing up Task Manager andtrying to rerun explorer.exe. I tried sfc to check for corruptedfiles, but none turned up. I ran an AVG scan and it did find one fileit considered a threat, which it removed, but that didn't solve theproblem.
I found a web site that referred to the registrykeyHKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorerwhich has a NoSetTaskbar value that can be used to disable the"Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window. On the administratorlogin, the Explorer subkey is there all right, but doesn't haveNoSetTaskbar. (It does have NoDriveTypeAutoRun.) But when I log ontomy son's account, the Policies key had no subkeys at all. I triedadding an Explorer subkey without adding any values, but this didn'tsolve the problem. I haven't yet tried adding a NoDriveTypeAutoRunvalue, but since this seems to pertain to AutoPlay it didn't seemrelevant to this problem.Any thoughts as to what might be going on or what might fix it?
I know that the full version can be achieved while holding the shift key, but is there way to bypass that and have the regular full sized menu by default?
why is it that the 'pin to start menu' option is not available when rt clk on most shortcuts.it seems to work for some shortcuts (ones on the desktop) and most program files, but if I rt clk a shortcut in WE the option is not there.
I have just formated my old windows 7 home premium and got windows 7 ultimate x32 , i downloaded the game i usually play online (C&C Renegade) when i nearly finish inputing all the information in the installation of the game , it said that something is missing in windows , i believe my windows lost some resources , the game cannot detect the folder that shortcuts gets created in for the startmenu , i believe the folder name is startmenu/programs,although i have that already , but is there anything else required to install shortcuts in windows 7 ultimate ?
This morning I noticed that my Start Menu | All Programs list had some shortcuts that were duplicates. In other words, there were two "Free Games" shortcuts and two "1000 Free Songs" shortcuts. Clearly these were added by some program(s) that I had installed earlier.I right-clicked and deleted the first one only to find that now the second one had no file reference due to my deleting the first. Since both copies are pointing to the same file on the drive, deleting one orphaned its copy and made it impossible to delete it the same way.The result was that I had one shortcut of each that I could not delete off my Start Menu. It would come up with "Cannot find file.." and give you that "Try Again" button. Don't bother, it won't do anything.Perhaps rebooting might have refreshed the Start Menu. I don't know because I did not want to bother since I had apps running and was very busy working with them. After trying a bunch of things, I FOUND A SOLUTION! So I am sharing it here for others who may have the same problem in the future.Go to the orphaned short-cut item in your Start Menu and right-click it. Select "Move to Folder" and then select the Recycle Bin as your folder. It will move the item into the Recycle Bin and off your Start Menu. Then of course you can empty your Recycle Bin as usual.
So about a month ago I restarted my computer and when it came back on all my programs pinned to my task bar and everything that was in my start menu was gone. From there I could not unlock the taskbar and nothing would pin in either the start menu or taskbar. I researched everywhere about it. I tried unlocking the taskbar in properties and registry with no luck. I finally found some posts about how my user profile was corrupt and from there I went on and made a new profile and copied everything and BOOM it all worked fine now. Well today it happened AGAIN! I restarted my computer and everything disappeared. So I think it is still a corrupt profile, but this is the second time it has happened.
I have a client that has laptop with windows 7 Pro. He had a faulty network card, so I have added a new, usb network card. That said, He can not pin anything to taskbar or start menu. I cleared both folders of shortcuts(567 of them) but to no avail. He also has no options under his desktop Context menu for New. He is also using a roaming profile, of which I will disable next time I am there. I have a feeling that might be the issue. I did scour the internet trying all the usual suggestions, but do vaguely remember something about an entry in cache somewhere that if it is too big or corrupt, it could cause this behavior. I am unable to find that post anywhere now.I mention the network card because one post had taskbar issues until he disabled his faulty network card. I have disabled the faulty network card.
I recently removed the Windows 7 Recovery virus, but now a bunch of my start menu shortcuts are just empty folders (no shortcut to Word/Excel for example).
have two desktop shortcuts to the same exe but with different command-line switches. How can I get them both onto the Start menu? When I drag the first to the Start button, it appears fine - but when I drag the second, it replaces the first. So what even I do, only one appears on the menu.
In Vista and older versions, if I right clicked on a program in the taskbar I could then move the mouse up ever so slightly to click "close."
Now there is a weird little "box" that pops up instead of a menu, and I have to move my mouse significantly further to get to "close." Sounds trivial, but if I am shutting down several applications in a row it is much slower this way.
Is there a way to return the right click menu to normal?
Registry Hacks To Customize Windows 7 & Vista Start Menu & TaskBar Useful links: Ultimate Windows Tweaker - Features PC Tools Registry Guide Back Up, Restore, aintain the Windows 7 & Vista Registry While there are several freeware Windows Tweaking Utilities , like the freeware portable Ultimate Windows Tweaker ,available, there are some who just love to tinker with the Registry. This article is for those such. Most ot these tweaks are applicabe to Windows 7 too. Do remember that it is risky touching the registry and as such do back up the registry and / or create a system restore point first.To customize your start menu options, you have to modify the DWORD value data and set it to either 0 or 1. To modify the value data, you rt click on the name and select modify.
Then in the value data box, you set its numeric valueetting the value of respective DWORD to 1, means that it will have the effect as described in the Value NameSetting the value of respective DWORD to 0, means that it will have the OPPOSITE effect as described in the Value Name.If the DWORD ValueNames do not exist, you will have to create them. To create them, rt click in any blank space in RHS Panel > New >Dword value.The following are some of the recognized DWORDValueNames.NoTrayItemsDisplay : Hides the Task Bar notification areaNoToolbarsOnTaskbar : Do not display any custom toolbars in the taskbar QuickLaunchEnabled : Enable QuickLaunch bar display in the TaskBarNoSimpleStartMenu : Disabling it will force the Classic Start Menu NoStartMenuPinnedList : RemovePinned Programs list from the Start Menu NoStartMenuMorePrograms : Remove �All Programs� list from the Start menu NoStartMenuMyGanes : Remove Games from Start Menu NoStartMenuMyMusic : Remove Music from Start Menu NoStartMenuNetworkPlaces : Remove Network from Start Menu NoTaskGrouping : Prevent grouping of Task Bar items HideClock : Hides from the Task Bar notification area NoSMBalloonTip : Remove Balloon Tips on Start Menu items NoAutoTrayNotify : Turn off Task Bar area cleanup notification LockTaskbar : Lock the Taskbar and prevents the User from moving or resizing it NoSearchCommInStartMenu : If enabled Start Menu search will not search for Communications. NoSearchProgramsInStartMenu : If enabled Start Menu search will not search for Programs. NoSearchInternetInStartMenu : If enabled Start Menu search will not search for Internet History NoSearchFilesInStartMenu : If enabled Start Menu search will not search for Files This list is not exhaustive. You can simply study the registry key's DWORD's, illustrated above and see that there would be many more such tweaks or hacks available. The ValueNames are roughly indicative of what they would do.
Take the example of NoRun. Its value is set at 0. If you open Taskbar & Start Menu Properties > Star Menu Tab > Start Menu > Customize. You will see a checkbox to Add Run command to the Start Menu. But if you now go back to regedit, and change the DWORD of NoRun to 1, and now go back to the Start Menu properties box, you will see that the item to Add Run itself will be missing ! So, enabling or disabling such options through Vista Registry, will allow or prohibits users, from executing such actions through the Properties box. Incidentally, there used to be a Registry Restriction Tool from Microsoft, which went on to become a part of the Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit which went on to become Windows SteadyState. You may find SteadyState of interest. If you are interested in such Registry Hacks you may find this Registry Guide for Windows of immense interest. It provides an extensive range of registry tweaks, tricks & hacks for optimizing, enhancing and securing the Windows� operating systems including Vista.
I recently bought a second user machine from a colleague of mine. He re-installed Windows 7 so that everything was fresh and set up a new profile for me but I wasn't happy with the name of the profile that he had set up. Anyway to cut a long story short I created a new profile, copied the old files across and deleted the old profile I wasn't happy with.Everything is working fine and as it should be but I have a now have a couple of annoyances with a number of the programs that I have pinned to the taskbar and the start menu. For example when I pinned Firefox and Thunderbird to the taskbar it has named them as Firefox (2) and Thunderbird (2) as if they are duplicate programs/shortcuts. The same is true with some of the programs that I have pinned to the start menu. For example when I pinned CCleaner to the start menu Windows named it as CCleaner (2) even though it wasn't present in the first place. If I try to rename it to CCleaner (as it should appear) Windows tells me that there is already a program by that name pinned there and it asks me if I would like to rename it CCleaner (3).As far as I can tell it doesn't affect the performance of such programmes, its just really really frustrating. Would it have anything to do with the files that I copied across from my old profile?
Is there a way to permanently lock items on the task bar and start menu? I can for example lock the taskbar, but can still drag icons onto or from it and rearrange them. I want to lock everything permanantly so no one can screw them up. I'm using Home Premium.
If I mount a removeable media such as USB Stick or a TrueCrypt file volume (with rm option) then I cannot pin prgms from these medias/drives to the taskbar nor pin files to the Start menu. Is there really no way to disable this No-Pin-Protection? Under WinXP this worked without problems.
I am connecting to a remote desktop that I have been connecting to for months now but suddenly today the taskbar and start menu from the remote computer disappeared and I can only see my laptop's menu and taskbar. This means I can't get into the Computer or folders of the remote desktop as there is not a shortcut on the desktop. It is also generally annoying.
Unfortuanteyl it seems to me that Windows 7 does not accept if users want to pin folders or files which are on removeable medias (USB-Sticks, DVDs, TrueCrypt volumes,...) to the TaskBar resp. Start menu.
Essentially, upon starting up my computer, from time to time, I have no yet been able to isolate what may cause this issue, I will find that I cannot launch programs from their shortcuts in the Quick Start or Taskbar menu. As of right now I have not tried to launch said programs from the original .exe file in this scenario.I've noticed that when I try to open these programs from the Taskbar, the icon will be surrounded by a square to indicate that it is active, but, after a period of maybe 5 seconds or so, sometimes longer, it will disappear and the program will no longer look active. Opening up the task manager, the programs usually show up in the Processes under the appropriate name. Multiple instances of a program can appear, even when, under normal circumstances, multiple instances aren't allowed (such as with Firefox). The processes will usually show a static amount of memory used, like 108k for any firefox.exe in the process list, and will simply sit there until they are ended, despite the program not actually running. When this happens I generally have to restart the computer and hope it works on the restart.
I`ve got a weird problem that keeps happening. Without any errors or warningall of my Desktop Icons become frozen. I cannot activate any of them. If Ihave any windows open in the Taskbar or programmes running in the System trayI can left/right click on any of them and they all workfine(Programmes/Window Explorer/IE7 etc). I can access the Start menu andis the solution if it happens in Windows Vista but this
