Program Icons Never Appear on "Recently Used" List

[Apesbrain]

When I click on the Start button I notice that none of the programs I've recently launched show up on the Recently Used list. At first I thought it logic-based, e.g. "if that program is pinned to the Taskbar there is no reason to list it here." But even that rule doesn't hold.

At one point I found out on the Forum how to edit the Registry to reset the Start Menu back to its "Out-of-Box" state and I did so. This involved setting the DWORD value of the following key to "3" and rebooting:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\StartMenuInit

Unfortunately, this did not seem to help with this issue. And, the value went right back to "4" after I rebooted.

Is there somewhere in Win7 where it stores what should/should not be allowed to place an icon on the Start Menu Recently Used list? If so, I'd like to clear/reset it.

Thanks.

UPDATE: I discovered the recent program icons are there but they are being appended at the bottom of the list and are not visible on screen. There is no way to scroll to them. Can the Start Menu be configured to show the most recently used program icon at the top?

 

[richc46]

Welcome

Here is the MS list of changes that can be made to the start menu. One shows how to return to default settings, that may help. If not check out the others.

Customize the Start menu

 

[richc46]

I, also, present this excellent tutorial, which may help.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/265-start-menu-customize.html

 

[Zomby88]

Make sure you have store and display recently opened programs in the start menu checked. Right click on the icon and click pin to start menu. Then you can drag it up and put it where you want it on the start menu.