Windows 7: Recent Places and "All Programs" Are Empty

I had a virus last week. I managed to remove it, but since then I have 2 problems:

1) "Recent Places" in Windows Explorer is empty and stays empty.
2) The folders in "All Programs" in the start menu are empty.

Does anyone know how to fix these issues?

Hi there.... Try Unhide

Download unhide by grinler.
Double click on the program to start the unhide process.
Once done a window will pop and let you know the tool has completed its job.
See if cures your problems

Thanks Cookieman, I tried unhide before, it brought back the shortcuts on my desktop, they were gone too.
It doesn't help the other issues unfortunately...

Hello Dirkla,

The tutorial below can help show you how to restore the default shortcuts in Start Menu -> All Programs, but you'll still have to manually create new shortcuts in the Start Menu for any installed programs from their exe files though.

Start Menu All Programs in Windows 7 - Restore Default Shortcuts


You might see if resetting recent items may be able to help have them show later after opening them a few times.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks for the suggestions Brink, restoring the start up menu worked.
The recent locations are still stuck though...

There's something strange: when I right click and select open "All Programs" in the Start Menu I see 2 folders:

1) A (greyed out) shortcut to "Programma's" (this is Dutch, my Windows version is Dutch originally, but I changed the language to English): I can't access this folder (Access denied).
2) Programs: only 10 program shortcut folders are here, but about 50 show up in the "All Programs" in the Start Menu

Strange, it seems unhide changed something language-related...

Dirkla,

Could you post some screenshots of this to help see what it may be?

So, when I right-click "all programs" in the start menu and select "open", I get this window:



Programma's (the Dutch folder) I can't open.
This is the "Programs" directory:



But as you can see, lot's of other (empty) folders are in the start menu:

Since those empty folders in the Start Menu are for programs, you would need to manually create new shortcuts in the Start Menu from the exe files of those programs to place in the folders. Another option, would to reinstall the programs to have them added back again as well.

Thanks Brink, but where are all the folders that are in the programs start menu? In the 3rd screenshot you see folders for Adobe and such, but they are not in screenshot 1 or 2. It seems Windows is getting them from another location.

I wonder if the "Recent Locations"-problem has the same cause, is Windows storing recent locations in a wrong folder?