How to fix recent PLACES for a user account? Ive given up on my own :(

This issue seems to occur with only 1 user profile. The one I happen to use the most, my main one.

I've tried to resolve this on my own but the hours I put forward to fix this have been in vain...

However in that time I managed to find out a great deal of information and locate that the issue is only occuring on my main user account.

I've edited in Regedit for recent to be changed to Recent Items for all user accounts and I've rebuild the search index to also include the recent items folder. It does take sometime for it to be fully rebuild at 40 000 items but hey I don't think this is matters for my issue to be fixed from.

This however is all in vain for fixing the Recent Places folder.

I tested it out on my other user accounts and there it seems to work.

The test:

I open a file in paint located on an other drive or in downloads and save it as a new file and put it in the same location. The result should be that the downloads folder appears in Recent Places. This does not occur for me with my main profile. HOWEVER If I open, save or save as etc... it does show up in recent items but never in Recent Places regardless what action I take on files.

A question: Why is there a recent items and recent places? Why not just one type of folder to group all shortcuts under? Why have both types? Maybe you guys got one? I got two it seems..

I'm really clueless and a system restore won't work because this issue been bugging me for ages.

I think it all started when I hit "clear recent items" for the recent places folder some long time ago. Since then it didn't add new stuff in recent places.

It probably is something wrong in the registry but what? Or what window service is responsible for running this? So I can double check that is listed in process list.

I've browsed and looked up alot of topics and tuts that didn't help but feel free to relink me whatever you may think is of use to me. =)

About the screenshot:
I also don't get why the recycle bin and recent places are displayed below in the folder list?

I've taken out the drive list as this is not relevant and only shown in the screenshot the issues I'm facing.

Edit

I think I found out the problem. On my main profile it seems to only record all FILES but not the FOLDER locations of the files I've bee active in.

Thus that is why in recent items stuff displays, only files of course not folders and why in recent places nothing displays.

Normally in recent places should come the folder and in recent items the files and folder.

So where should I look to fix this behaviour?

SFC scan now says no corrupt files. all my system files are in order. So it has to be something with the registry.

Hey Max,

"Recent items" displays a list of recently opened folders and files. The items on the list point to their original folders, so these are basically just a list of shortcuts.

Deleting individual files on this list will not delete the original files. It's like deleting a shortcut.

If you delete any file on the Recent items list ** from its original location **, it will still show up on the recent list, but the operating system will indicate that it has been deleted, and can be recovered from the Recycle Bin (as long as it wasn't permanently deleted)

If you move any file on the Recent items list ** from its original location ** to another location, the pointer will also change, but the recent item list will not change. To find out the original location of a file, right click the file (on the recent item list) and select "Properties", or select "Open file location".

"Recent Places" displays a list of recently (or regularly) used folders. They are NOT treated as shortcuts. If you delete the folders in "Recent Places", it'll also delete the source folder.

Hey Brink,

Thanks for clearing that up. However is it normal what I see in the screenshot? The custom and automatic destinations? And also why or how long does it take for stuff to show up in recent places?

It doesn't work for my main user profile somehow.

You might see if turning off Recent Items to clear and reset it, then turn Recent Items back on may help. In addition, check to see if what's in the blue note box at the top of the tutorial below for the yellow Recent Items folder instead of icon may apply to you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2013-recent-items-turn-off.html

None of that worked out sadly. I guess I'll have to accept it.

There's an old thread here where these 2 hidden folders that you see are discussed:

http://www.sevenforums.com/system-security/215813-invisible-files-folders-what-s-windows-hiding.html

Yeah I read that topic. It is interesting but doesn't help me solve my issue.

Matt,

If you like, you could create a new user account to use instead. Once everything checks out, you could delete your old account with broken Recent Places.

Well that is it. It works fine on my other 3 accounts but not one my main account.

I don't know how to port over my main account to a brand new one. Seems to big of a mess and I don't want to start from scratch for a minor issue as this.

Would you in my situation?

I'm a perfectionist, so I would if I used Recent Place/Items. Since I don't, I wouldn't worry about it.