How to stop Win7 from creating Recent .LNK files?

How do I stop windows from creating .LNK shortcuts to recently opened files?

Is there an easy way, a registry change/hack, or something?

I am talking about recently opened file shortcuts stored in

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent

(and probably a few other places, I can imagine).

Anyone?

That doesn't prevent Windows from creating the .LNK files. That just doesn't show recently used/opened files and programs anymore.

There's no way to prevent Windows from doing this and I can think of no useful reason to want to disable it. Care to share why you want to do this?

FliGi7 said:

That doesn't prevent Windows from creating the .LNK files. That just doesn't show recently used/opened files and programs anymore.

There's no way to prevent Windows from doing this and I can think of no useful reason to want to disable it. Care to share why you want to do this?

Search results, when I look for files and such... especially if I use a non-Windows Explorer software to do that (as then it queries everything that matches the keyword/name, regardless of the extension).

So, for one file I am looking for I get 2-3 results every time (if I actually used that file), with the other 2 entries being .LNK files referring to it...

Trying to clean up things, you know...

kado897 said:

right Click on the taskbar and chose properties. Select the Start Menu tab and uncheck the two boxes.

And yes, that did it... thank you!

All "Recent" folders instantly got cleaned up... wicked!

Oh, apologies then if that does it. I wasn't aware of that. My mind goes directly to forensics mode of the registry when answering a question like this and there's no way to prevent Windows from keeping track of this in the registry. But, I guess you can at least prevent it from happening in folders.

FliGi7 said:

Oh, apologies then if that does it. I wasn't aware of that. My mind goes directly to forensics mode of the registry when answering a question like this and there's no way to prevent Windows from keeping track of this in the registry. But, I guess you can at least prevent it from happening in folders.

Yeah, no worries... I don't mind the registry tracking, as I rarely use it and "don't see it", really... but on the front-end, in folders, that I do see, it bothered me and now it's all taken care of.

Yay!

For a couple of months I was plagued with short cuts to .EXE files getting changed to .LNK files and the Icon for those was always the same program. If I clicked on the .LNK file the program that the Icon belonged to.
I finally found that there was a virus that caused this. I searched for ".LNK virus" and found a solution in the form of a program that would correct the association to the .EXE files. Sorry but I cannot find that program now.

But know that there is a solution. (viruses like this should be a crime punishable by life in prision (without a computer)