unresolved start menu issues.

Hi people, posting here as I have had no luck solving my problem on my own.

The problem is simple. After moving the location of some user shell folders like documents, videos etc, the start menu buttons for them have disappeared.

Now I know this sounds like an easy one that has been dealt with elsewhere in the forum but the details are unusual this time.

I moved the locations to a different HDD on the same PC from the locations tab, like you would. When the right pane start menu buttons vanished I thought 'simple' just go to properties and un-check, recheck the option. Nada. So being an I.T. professional I went straight to the registry and checked the user shell folder locations which showed everything was right and proper, e.g. All locations right and all types set to reg_expand.

At this point I new there was something else going on. So I tried other routes:

using tweak7 to disable and re enable start menu items.
resetting to defaults.
checking policy configs.
various other trys.

I have also got other PC's to mimic the issue by moving the shell folders to another partition. They all have missing start menu buttons now. One thing I noticed was that the Downloads folder is the only one still showing on the start menu on all the PC's, including mine, that tried.

Any one else seen this behavior?? and solved it. I need to resolve this as most of the PC's where I am will be locating user shell folders on separate partitions.


Any help would be great.

Darktactics said:

Hi people, posting here as I have had no luck solving my problem on my own.

The problem is simple. After moving the location of some user shell folders like documents, videos etc, the start menu buttons for them have disappeared.

Now I know this sounds like an easy one that has been dealt with elsewhere in the forum but the details are unusual this time.

I moved the locations to a different HDD on the same PC from the locations tab, like you would. When the right pane start menu buttons vanished I thought 'simple' just go to properties and un-check, recheck the option. Nada. So being an I.T. professional I went straight to the registry and checked the user shell folder locations which showed everything was right and proper, e.g. All locations right and all types set to reg_expand.

At this point I new there was something else going on. So I tried other routes:

using tweak7 to disable and re enable start menu items.
resetting to defaults.
checking policy configs.
various other trys.

I have also got other PC's to mimic the issue by moving the shell folders to another partition. They all have missing start menu buttons now. One thing I noticed was that the Downloads folder is the only one still showing on the start menu on all the PC's, including mine, that tried.

Any one else seen this behavior?? and solved it. I need to resolve this as most of the PC's where I am will be locating user shell folders on separate partitions.


Any help would be great.

Did you move them by drag and drop or Properties>set save location?

Obviously you can restore the defaults, but.......



Ken

hi Zig,

the folders where moved from properties using the location tab.

btw, with vista this exact situation doesn't happen as the PC's were running vista and using alternate shell folder locations fine.

It is just strange that the shell folder 'Downloads' is fine, however in the registry the key name for the downloads folder is a string of random characters and not just downloads. The others are like:

Personal Reg_expand_SZ d:\documents, etc

downloads appears like this:

{43h5thut8u5t98t45hg9898ghu5g986} Reg_expand_SZ d:\downloads

cheers for the reply.

ok so no help on this issue then.

i finally did an upgrade / repair install and the start menu right hand buttons came back however the registry keys didnt change so i guess it is just a random bug.

i can also opt to have the buttons on or off again so all is good.

Darktactics said:

hi Zig,


downloads appears like this:

{43h5thut8u5t98t45hg9898ghu5g986} Reg_expand_SZ d:\downloads

cheers for the reply.

No, that, at least, is perfectly normal!