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Force Start Menu to Show All Programs

by Oscar Sodani
June 4, 2003

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

Q: I have Windows XP. My problem is that when I click the start menu, my rarely used programs are 'auto hidden', and I have to hover over the arrow to get them to appear. I want all the programs to appear when I click the start menu.
How can I turn off this annoying 'auto hide' type thing in my start menu? I am using the 'classic' windows view.





A (from cdm):
Right click the Start button, go to Properties, Classic Start - click customize. In the Advanced Start menu options, scroll down and uncheck the "Use Personalized Menus" box. Then apply and close.

A (from whoozhe):
Windows XP really wants you to keep a clean Desktop, so every 60 days, it checks for icons that you haven't used since the last time it checked. With your permission, it will move such icons from the Desktop to a folder (you can move them back, of course). To disable this behavior right click on the desktop, choose Properties then click on the Desktop Tab and choose Customize Desktop. Remove the check next to Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days. Later, if you wish, you can click the Clean Desktop Now button to invoke the wizard manually.


The original posting can be found here.



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