How to clear recently opened programs list under start menu in Windows 7

Hello,

How do you clear the recently opened programs (not files) list under that start menu in windows 7 via script or reg hack? I know how to do it manually and needed to deploy this out to many machines. Thank you for the help.

http://www.downloadbestsoft.com/howto/windows/how-to-clear-used-programs-from-the-start-menu--46.html

Scroll down to Clear used programs from the Start Menu in Windows 7

You could probably automate that with an AutoIt script.

I did find this...

http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1037/

It works but doesn't remove pinned entries from the start menu.

Seems that if you enable this entry, logoff, disable it and log back on...it never removes the previous entries that the user had under their start menu. Back to square one...

Found this one...

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/32666-recent-programs-enable-disable.html

Options one and two do work but if you re-enable, the old shortcuts come back!

Ccleaner has an option for clearing "Run (in Start Menu)".



I've always left it unchecked because I like to have my recently run programs.

You could still use AutoIt to run it automatically (you'd just have to install Ccleaner, or use the portable version).

keyboardNinja that option in CCleaner only clear the Run dialog box's MRU list.
Source : http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-rules/windows-tab/windows-explorer-files

Oops. You are right, Romeo. My mistake.

Not sure what I was smoking last night to say that...




J/K...I was just tired and not thinking clearly.

Edited by keyboardNinja, 28 October 2010 - 08:34 AM.

If I understand correctly this might help. Start and type in Start and go to task bar and start menu. Notice Privacy. Remove check mark from stored and display recently opened programs from start menu.

If I understand correctly this might help. Start and type in Start and go to task bar and start menu. Notice Privacy. Remove check mark from stored and display recently opened programs from start menu.

Found this one...

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/32666-recent-programs-enable-disable.html

Options one and two do work but if you re-enable, the old shortcuts come back!

This seems to work : http://www.trishtech.com/win7/clear_recently_used_programs_in_start_menu_in_windows_7.php

But this is not for a batch script. If you save the registry file from Part 2 of above web page, then you can create a batch script something like this :

reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist /f
regedit /s saved.reg
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start %windir%\explorer.exe

Assuming you saved the registry entries from Part 2 as saved.reg. The killing of explorer.exe and reloading it again is so that registry changes are reloaded. You may not need these steps.
But, I think, that the registry entries would differ for different editions of Windows 7 so you cannot use same reg file on all editions.

Edited by Romeo29, 29 October 2010 - 09:50 AM.