Start menu items appear twice

[shorepot15]

The following strange behaviour started a couple of months ago and has
even survived reinstalling Windows XP. (This is NOT the reason I
reinstalled I hasten to add!)
I have a very standard Start Menu, set to show Internet Explorer for
the Internet and Outlook Express for the email.
Every so often, when I press the Start button, the Internet and Email
icons show twice, so there are four entries above the line, Internet,
Email, Internet, Email.
And with having large icons and 7 programs shown below I would then
get the bubble saying Not enough room to display all the start menu
items.
After years of using XP I've never seen this before. Has anybody else?
Of course it's easily fixed with Customise Start Menu, uncheck both
items OK and then recheck them. But then a few days later it happens
again. You might say don't bother but a) I want to know what's
happening and b) my family uses the pc and would be stumped by it.
The PC is pretty well checked out for bugs and nasties.
Mike

 

[Guest]

Try right-clicking the duplicate items in the start menu and either "remove
from list" or "unpin" depending on what shows.

 

[ordinarysoft]

Hi Mike,

Do you try replace start menu to this
http://www.vistastartmenu.com

This program much useful then system menu.

 

[shorepot15]

Lillo, thanks but when I do a 'Remove from this list' it removes both
instances instead of just one.
And maybe

Do you try replace start menu to thishttp://www.vistastartmenu.com

is worth looking at, thanks for the idea.
But has anyone else seen this odd behaviour ???
Mike

 

[Guest]

I've been having the same problem. After rebooting, I have single start menu
icons for e-mail and Internet. After awhile, the number of icons inexplicably
increases, usually to four; two e-mail and two Internet. The problem has
recently grown worse as I now occasionally get as many as six or eight such
duplicate icons.

If I go into Properties > Customize, I can eliminate all such icons or all
of a specific type but if I click to activate the icons again, the problem
immediately returns, often worse than before. Frequently, going into
Properties and changing the icon display results in an error message being
sent to Microsoft. I wish I knew how to correct this situation.

 

[shorepot15]

Karen - thanks for that, it's comforting to know that someone else is
getting the same problem.
I've found a few answers in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics - if you do a search for "appearing
twice" but haven't got round to trying anything and may well not
bother with all the registry stuff.
Best wishes anyway
Mike