Start menu items disappered!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tucker Dansie
  • Start date Start date
T

Tucker Dansie

I've been looking everyhwere for answers and have now
come to you all. I consider myself to be comuter
literate, but this one has me lost. About a week ago I
went to uninstall Activesynch after I decided I didn't
need it anymore. It really messsed thigns up and took
away every program in my start menu. After trying masny
things to get it back I finally got it back with a system
restore, but here's the thing. I've gotten everything
back except it never shows many of the windows programs
under accessories. The games are all gone, but besides
that, many important things like Calculators, character
map, disk defragmenter, disk doctor, etc. are all
missing. The accessories it shows are only Net meeting
and Media player.

I'm afraid to re-install, because I have some very
important things on there I don't want to wipe out. Every
system restore just takes me back further, but just an
empty accessories folder structure. I have tried
searching for hte programs an manually putting them in,
but I don't know everything I am missing, nor are any of
them showing up in the search. Does anyone know how to
reset the shortcuts without messing everything else up?

thanks
Tucker
(e-mail address removed)
 
If you have a retail CD just upgrade you existing XP with XP. This is known as a repair install. Depending on your problem's cause it may help (it will help if they were deleted).

But first search for Accessories and make sure all the advanced options are set ON. The Accessories menu is built from two Accessories folders. They are normally here

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories

Sometimes somehow (often by dragging the menu entries about) the link to one gets reset to point somewhere useless. A repair install should put things back in the new location but it's easier to reset the link correctly.

To find them r/c the Accessories menu and choose Open and Open All Users - this will go to where windows thinks they are. It should be the same as above.
 
Tucker Dansie said:
I've been looking everyhwere for answers and have now
come to you all. I consider myself to be comuter
literate, but this one has me lost. About a week ago I
went to uninstall Activesynch after I decided I didn't
need it anymore. It really messsed thigns up and took
away every program in my start menu. After trying masny
things to get it back I finally got it back with a system
restore, but here's the thing. I've gotten everything
back except it never shows many of the windows programs
under accessories. The games are all gone, but besides
that, many important things like Calculators, character
map, disk defragmenter, disk doctor, etc. are all
missing. The accessories it shows are only Net meeting
and Media player.

I'm afraid to re-install, because I have some very
important things on there I don't want to wipe out. Every
system restore just takes me back further, but just an
empty accessories folder structure. I have tried
searching for hte programs an manually putting them in,
but I don't know everything I am missing, nor are any of
them showing up in the search. Does anyone know how to
reset the shortcuts without messing everything else up?
Click to expand...

Are you able to see the missing shortcuts in documents and settings\
yourname\ start menu \ programs\ accessories? Be sure to designate
hidden folders and files in control panel \folder options \ view.
 
Note: You will/may need your XP install cd
for this
Click- "start"-"control panel"-"add/remove programs" then
in the left hand side bar click "add/remove windows
components" make sure you have a check mark next to
accessories and/or anything else you want (note: those
items highlighted in grey have a sub menu) and hit next
and follow instructions. This will reinstall/install the
specific windows components you require

Hope this helps

Mortimer
 
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