Vista Start Menu Issues/Pin to Menu

[Guest]

Some of the short cut menu items on the Vista Business start menu are not
working when I use the "Pin to menu" function. For instance if I Pin the
Windows Live Messanger to start menu it does not work, yet the original
shortcut does work. This seems to only be happening to some shortcuts I pin.
And I can't notice a pattern. I have also noticed that when I use "search"
option in the start menu the same shortcuts that do not work when I pin them,
also do now work when I use the search.

Any Ideas?

 

[Jon]

Some of the short cut menu items on the Vista Business start menu are not
working when I use the "Pin to menu" function. For instance if I Pin the
Windows Live Messanger to start menu it does not work, yet the original
shortcut does work. This seems to only be happening to some shortcuts I
pin.
And I can't notice a pattern. I have also noticed that when I use
"search"
option in the start menu the same shortcuts that do not work when I pin
them,
also do now work when I use the search.

Any Ideas?

Think the pattern is this...

If you shift right-click on a shortcut and choose the Pin option, and then
move that shortcut anywhere else it causes the pinned start menu item to
stop working.

Recreating the pinned item will obviously fix it. You can also pin the
shortcut's target item to the menu, rather than the shortcut.

 

[Guest]

I saw the same behavior on MS Office 2007 shortcuts created by the Office
installer. The shortcuts were not moved. Pinning them to the start menu
resulted in the pinned shortcut not working. Accessing the shortcuts via the
search function also did not work. Never got a solution, other than to blow
away the shortcuts and create my own shortcuts directly to the executables.
All was fine after that.

This has been the case on every system here (4 of them) running Vista
Business with Office Pro 2007, OneNote 2007, and Visio Pro 2007 installed.
My guess is that there's something "funny" about some Microsoft installation
procedures that produces these "crippled" shortcuts. May have something to do
with multiple installations of similar products -- as in my multiple
isntallations of Office products.

 

[Guest]

Ya something is very strange. I did also notice this and its a pattern.
Only Microsoft Products do not work in the menu when i use the search option
OR if i pin them to the menu... If I navigate to them, through the start menu
they work fine.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Guest]

One more thing I realized. I have Vistal installed on my laptop and Desktop.
The Desktop is what is having the start menu problems. On my laptop the
apps are all installed in same partion as OS (C drive), but the Desktop all
my apps (Microsoft and non Microsoft) are on a seperate partition. This may
have something to do with it? But that leads me back to wondering, why only
microsoft programs not running from start menu( After Pin to menu, or Search)?

 

[Guest]

I'm not surprised that you had this issue with your other MS applications. It
seems to be a pretty widespread phenomenon. I am not a user of MS Messenger
(live or otherwise, heh) so would not have noticed the issue with that
application.

I don't believe that placing applications on different partitions has any
bearing on this issue because I always place my applications within the same
partition as Windows (on my Windows systems). I have four systems here that
are configured with Vista Business and Office applications but which are,
otherwise, quite different from each other. They all have this odd shortcut
shortcoming -- but only with Microsoft applications, never with any other
applications.

My only suggestion for you is to do what I did -- simply delete the
malfunctioning shortcuts and create your own shortcuts directly to the
applications' executable files themselves. You'll have to alter the default
views in Windows Explorer temporarily in order to do this. I just placed the
new shortcuts in the All Users profile.

Naturally there will be a couple of shortcuts you won't be able to duplicate
this way, the Create New Office File and Open Office File shortcuts were
related to registry entries, which is true of the other malfunctioning
shortcuts. (If you look at their properties you'll see that those special MS
shortcuts do NOT point to executables.) But the new shortcuts you create will
work properly.

 

[Guest]

Well doing what you suggested does work. So thanks in that sense. But it is
pretty said that we have to do this to make them work. I really hope
Microsoft looks into this issue. Very strange how on one machine it works
fine and on another it does not (Both being Windows Vista Business)

 

[Guest]

Yeah. I ran into the issue in November when I first installed Vista RTM and
the MS Office 2007 apps from my TechNet Plus subscripton. I posted about it
then. Since then I've seen occasional posts like yours. I've never seen a
satisfactory explanation as to why it happens, nor have I seen any
information concerning any means of avoiding the problem. I guess it's not a
high priority for MS, because they do seem to know about it.

 

[Dan]

A solution I found to this problem is to create new shortcuts on the
desktop (right click and select new-shortcut) for the items that
aren't working...for instance "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office
\Office12\WINWORD.EXE" for Microsoft Word, and then you can name it
what you would like. I then replaced the previous shortcut to Word in
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. That will
correct the shortcut under "all programs" and also when it is placed
in the recent programs and pinned to the start menu. Now I can click
on any link and it will open the program. This worked for all of the
programs that weren't working. It is a little bit of a pain, but now
that it is done, it works well and I don't have to worry about it.

 

[Doug]

Thanks, Dan, that looks helpful. Presumably it is possible to change the
properties of the shortcut (such as "Run as Administrator") during this
replacement process?

 

[Guest]

Yes, actually I mentioned that solution in my second post in this thread, as
I did in my original thread posted back (I believe) in December. Making
shortcuts to the executables works just fine, but you wind up not having
properly working "special" shortcuts -- like the ones for opening the dialogs
for pre-existing or new Office files.