Missing Program List on Start Menu

[gwells]

I had to do a complete reinstall of XP Pro after wiping drives. Now, programs
do not show up on my start menu. In checking the registry, i have two entries
under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/MenuOrder:
One is Start Menu and the other is Start Menu2. Start Menu is empty, and all
of the programs are showing up in Start Menu 2. I tried deleting Start Menu
and hoped to rename Start Menu 2 with Start Menu, but it will not allow a
change to either.

Any ideas??

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I had to do a complete reinstall of XP Pro after wiping drives. Now, programs
do not show up on my start menu.

If you did a complete clean reinstallation of Windows, your programs
will not run, not even if they were kept on another drive. Except for
a very occasional, usually small, program, all programs have many
entries in the registry and other references to them elsewhere within
the \windows folder. When you reinstall Windows, all that is lost, and
the programs also have to be reinstalled.

 

[gwells]

Ken, thanks for the comment. However, I did a completely clean reinstall and
subsequently have installed fresh copies of all programs as well. Therefore,
there was nothing carried from the previous registry as the hard drive was
completely wiped clean.