Items pinned to Start Menu keep duplicating!

[Steven]

My Windows XP Home SP2 seems to have developed an annoying problem.
Apart from the normal 'Internet' and 'E-mail' items on the top of the
Start Menu, I have pinned another 6 items. There is plenty of room to
show these, plus the 6 most recently used programs.

However, in the last week or so the items pinned to the Start Menu have
been duplicating themselves, i.e. instead of showing this:

Internet
E-mail
Pinned program 1
.....
Pinned program 6

they change to show this:

Internet
E-mail
Pinned program 1
.....
Pinned program 6
Internet
E-mail
Pinned program 1
.....
Pinned program 6

so each program is shown twice! I have found that doing nothing more
than right-clicking on the Start button and clicking Properties, then OK
(without changing any settings) resets it to the correct situation of
each program appearing only once.

Of course when it goes dodgy (which is numerous times a day) I get the
message 'Some items cannot be shown. There is not enough room to show
all the items you have added to the Start Menu....' etc. BUT I HAVEN'T
added too many programs, Windows is duplicating them itself for some
stupid reason!

I have searched Google but to no avail. If someone can please tell me
what is going on and how to fix it, I would be really grateful!

Thanks,

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Hi Steven,

Perhaps resetting the Pinned items list in the registry might help. Create a
System Restore point first, and then try this:

Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe
Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage

Backup the key to a REG file.
Delete the three values namely "FavoritesResolve", "FavoritesChanges" and
"Favorites"
Close Regedit.exe
Logoff and then login back.

--
Regards,

Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows XP Shell/User]
Windows® XP Troubleshooting http://www.winhelponline.com


My Windows XP Home SP2 seems to have developed an annoying problem.
Apart from the normal 'Internet' and 'E-mail' items on the top of the
Start Menu, I have pinned another 6 items. There is plenty of room to
show these, plus the 6 most recently used programs.

However, in the last week or so the items pinned to the Start Menu have
been duplicating themselves, i.e. instead of showing this:

Internet
E-mail
Pinned program 1
.....
Pinned program 6

they change to show this:

Internet
E-mail
Pinned program 1
.....
Pinned program 6
Internet
E-mail
Pinned program 1
.....
Pinned program 6

so each program is shown twice! I have found that doing nothing more
than right-clicking on the Start button and clicking Properties, then OK
(without changing any settings) resets it to the correct situation of
each program appearing only once.

Of course when it goes dodgy (which is numerous times a day) I get the
message 'Some items cannot be shown. There is not enough room to show
all the items you have added to the Start Menu....' etc. BUT I HAVEN'T
added too many programs, Windows is duplicating them itself for some
stupid reason!

I have searched Google but to no avail. If someone can please tell me
what is going on and how to fix it, I would be really grateful!

Thanks,

 

[Steven]

Hi Steven,

Perhaps resetting the Pinned items list in the registry might help. Create a
System Restore point first, and then try this:

Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe
Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage

Backup the key to a REG file.
Delete the three values namely "FavoritesResolve", "FavoritesChanges" and
"Favorites"
Close Regedit.exe
Logoff and then login back.

Thanks Ramesh, but unfortunately the registry hack didn't work - the
first time I came to use my Start Menu tonight, the pinned items were
again duplicated.

Someone on another forum suggested the Rebuild Icons option in TweakUI,
so I left them alone and tried that. This restored the pinned items back
to their correct state. The only question now is whether this is a
permanent state or whether they will start duplicating again!

 

[Steven]

Someone on another forum suggested the Rebuild Icons option in TweakUI,
so I left them alone and tried that. This restored the pinned items
back to their correct state. The only question now is whether this is a
permanent state or whether they will start duplicating again!

It wasn't permanent by any means - the items have started duplicating
again :-(

Any other suggestions please?

Thanks,

 

[Guest]

It wasn't permanent by any means - the items have started duplicating
again :-(

Any other suggestions please?

Thanks,

 

[Guest]

Hi

I changed the number of programs in START from default to 6.

That seems to have solved the problem - but only time will show! )

Regards

Poul-Erik

 

[Steven]

I changed the number of programs in START from default to 6.

That seems to have solved the problem - but only time will show! )

Mine was already set to 6 recent applications. I have tried changing it
to different numbers but this has no effect.

So I'm still stuck with the same problem. Anyone know how to fix this
please?!!?