Compacting XP Start Menu

Hi Geeks. :wave Let me see if I can explain this intelligibly ...

First, I use XP Home SP3 and I have it set to Windows classic look. Creature of habit.

My start menu seems to be permanently expanded, showing every program on my machine. I suspect that I got over-zealous ticking boxes on one of my file erasers/registry cleaners. Any time in the past that this happened, it went back to the "compact view" after a day or two, but not this time.

I want it to go back to only showing the programs I've most recently accessed when I mouse over "Programs," rather than the entire bunch. I can't do a sys restore because I don't know just when it happened, and I've done a lot of other tweaking since, which I want to keep intact.

Does anybody have a favorite downloadable program, or know an easy tweak, or perhaps talk me step-by-step through a manual registry edit?

Thanks a million!

 

I think you have to use the default XP Start Menu for that, not Classic Start Menu. Then you can set the number of items you want displayed.

 

Thanks much, Earthling. I've used Classic for all these XP years and never had a problem with it "learning" which programs I most often use and only displaying those until my recent overzealous reg tweak, but hey, if it'll get me back to only my most-used programs being displayed, I can live with the XP GUI. Thanks especially for the thumbnail for this visual learner.

I love this site! :wave

 

Actually ... just tried that and it kinda didn't work ... I think I must have completely deleted a registry value/key or something, because it always showed the compact view of programs in classic view, and now it won't in default XP view either ... (

 

You might try enabling Personalized Menus.

 

Thanks! I was unaware of that feature. I don't see a start menu tweak in the thumbnail, but I shall explore it further. Much appreciated.

 

As much as I appreciate all suggestions, nothing so far has worked.

The only thing I've found from MS support that *may* work, in my very amateurish opinion, is this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292504 -- in particular, this reg value:

Policy:Maximum number of recent documents
Description:Specifies the number of shortcuts displayed on the Recent
Documents submenu.
This policy exist under the following location in Group Policy:
User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components
Registry Value:"MaxRecentDocs"

BUT, I really think this refers to default XP view of the start menu, and remember, I use classic view. My programs, until I apparently ticked the wrong box for CCleaner or Wipe or some such to clean up, were handily compacted, only showing those most often used when I moused over "programs" in my classic start menu. I'm thinking the above registry entry is simply the same thing as I can tweak directly in the settings, as Earthling kindly showed me, which I did try.

If anybody would have any ideas at all on any reg tweak program I might run or something to restore what I apparently "cleaned" too well, or ... ? I did try system restore, and it didn't help a bit. Maybe I did the bidding before my most distant restore point. I really don't know WHAT I did.

Thanks a million!

 

TweakUI - good little Microsoft XP tweaker.

The WinGuides are fun to browse through - you might find a tweak or two there.

Next time I'm on an XP machine, I'll dig a little deeper.

 

Thanks much, Caliban. Looks great. I love PCTools. I did try your good previous suggestion of the personalized menus, found that they were already enabled, did tweak them a little all the same, to no avail. I greatly appreciate all your time and effort!

 

No problem - just keep poking, something will turn up. :major