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How to clear used programs from the Start Menu - Windows XP, Vista and 7

 

If you need to clear, make disappear recently used programs from the Windows Start Menu you may want to read this how-to article which was tested on Windows XP and Vista. The entire procedure is simple enough, even for beginners as I am going to show you how to clear recently used programs that appears in your Start Menu from scratch. Sure, there are many reasons for you to hide programs, better said to prevent them appearing in your Start Menu. Probably you're asking yourself: "Why would people want to do that ?" The best reason would be related to their privacy, I mean you don't want anyone else to see that you've used the X program so the reasons are easier to guess I am not going to list here all of these reasons. Also, if you're asking yourself why Windows keeps a list with the most frequently used applications then the answer is again, simple and inocent: for faster access, supposing that you've used a program before and you want to use it again, finding it in your Start Menu it will be faster for you to access that program. That being said, you know why you want to make a couple of programs to dissapear, you know why Windows keeps a list with recently used appplications and we can now start with the instructions. First thing to do, click with your mouse on the "Start" button located on your desktop and then click on the "Run..." button, exactly like in the following picture :

 

 

Now you will see a small window that says: "Type the name of a program, folder, document, or Internet resource, and Windows will open it for you." In that window, if it's something else typed there, clear it and make sure to type the following command "regedit" without quation marks and then press the "OK" button, exactly like in the following picture :

 

 

A new window will appear, it will be larger on your PC but I resized them to save the time needed to load this entire article ( Yes, I was using a dial-up several years ago when I was accessing the Internet ). You should see a larger window but this is not important it's the same thing. As you can see we have this window called "Registry Editor" and what you need to do is to click on the "+" ( plus sign ) from "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT".

 

 

If you clicked the "+" (plus sign) from "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT" you should notice that the menu will start to expand and you need to navigate to "Applications". So the right path will be "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications"

 

 

Under "Applications" there are a lot of programs, some of them that you may not recognize but they are being used by Windows and some of the are the same programs that you can see on your Control Panel. What you need to do is to scroll down with your mouse and navigate to the program that you want to modify. Let's say that I want to modify WinRAR ( an archiving program ), what I need to do is to locate him and then to do a right click with my mouse on it and choose "New -> String Value" and a new file will be created, check the following image :

 

 

By default, you will see a new option called "New Value #1" and all you need to do is to modify this name to "NoStartPage" without entering any value.

 

 

As you can see I typed "NoStartPage" so don't worry if you misspelled a letter or more, with your mouse you can always choose to rename this file or delete it.

 

 

This is all you need to do in order to prevent a recently used program to appear in your "Start Menu". Repeat those steps for each program that you don't want to appear on your "Start Menu" and finally restart your computer and when your computer will boot again the application will be removed from your "Start Menu". If you want at a later time to make a program or more to appear again on your recently used programs from your "Start Menu" all you need to do is to delete the "NoStartPage" entry that you've created like in the following picture :

 

 

Those instructions are available and has been successfully tested on Microsoft Windows XP SP3 ( should work on all XP versions ) and on Windows Vista ( also it should work on all Vista releases ). As a personal advice I would recommend you to use these settings only for programs that you are using, I mean do not modify programs that Windows uses and that are not being displayed on your "Start Menu".

 

Clear used programs from the Start Menu in Windows 7

 

The first settings applies as I said in this article to Windows XP and Vista, however you can't do the same trick in Windows 7. I know I said that I will create an additional information for Windows 7 when a final release will be ready but there are to many people that asks me almost daily so I am going to post here a simple, probably the easiest method to clear used programs from the Start Menu in Windows 7. This method is the only one that I know right now, if you know another method that would be useful for other people, please contact me and I will try to update this article.

 

Step 1: In Windows 7, do a "Right-click" with your mouse on the "Start" button and choose "Properties".

Step 2: A new window will open called "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties".

Step 3: Choose the second tab called "Start Menu" and click on it.

Step 4: Uncheck the little box called "Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu".

 

Step 5: Click on "OK" button, and that's it.

 

If you want to show recently used programs make sure to check back the little box called "Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu".

 

If you think that we need to change, add, delete, modify something do not hesitate to contact us.