Win7 Taskbar Item Context Menus

[privatemeta]

Hi,

For a lack of a better category I'll be putting this question here:

When setting up my Windows 7 Installation, I had an extended context menu for every taskbar item, like Frequent Items or Pinned Items for the Windows Explorer.
After a couple of weeks of installing it, these contextual options for some of the taskbar items disappeared (most importantly Explorer) while they still exist for the rest. I had this problem independently on two different Windows 7 installations.

Is there a way to get these options back?

 

[Brink]

Hello Privatemeta,

These would be Jump Lists. Double check to make sure that you have both Recent Programs and Recent Items turned on to see if that may help. You may also need to also increase the number of recent items to be displayed as well. It may take a bit of opening these items before they show up in recent items though.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[privatemeta]

I've got Recent Items as well as Recent Programs activated, however I don't see how this should affect the PINNED folders. Also, as they were activated, no matter how many recent items there are, shouldn't there at least a single folder be in this context menu? I cannot see a single one.

 

[Brink]

Pinned folders on the taskbar will not have a Jump Lists since they are actually toolbars, and not in the Start Menu as well.

Only pinned programs, or their shortcuts, will have Jump Lists.

Hope this is what you meant.

 

[privatemeta]

Well, I didn't mean jumplists then. I really DID mean the pinned and frequent items of folders, like shown in the Jumplist Link Option Two. The Windows Explorer, as already (but maybe poorly) explained, once had these items and is now missing exactly those pinned and frequently opened folders. What I wanted to know, as stated, is a way to get that back.

 

[Brink]

Ah, ok. You mean the ones in the jump list. Just to help make sure something else is not happening, could you post a screenshot of this?

As a test, toggle both recent programs and recent items off and on to see if that may help. If not, then create a new administratror account to see if it works properly in it.

 

[privatemeta]

I have attached three screenshots (cropped).

The first two show that it doesn't work on the Windows Explorer, but it does on the Remote Desktop Client. For some time it also worked on Firefox but doesn't anymore

The third part shows it works normally on a new user account.

Turning recent items off didn't help, turning them back on didn't help either.

 

[Brink]

You might consider doing a repair install to hopefully fix this in your original account without losing anything.

If not, then you can copy the contents of your old account's C:\Users\(username) folders (including hidden AppData folder) into the corresponding new account's C:\Users\(username) folders to copy most of your settings into the new account. If everything checks out ok, then you can delete the old user account from within the new account.

 

[privatemeta]

Copying over the user data to the new account will be quite problematic. Even though (normally) I install all my programs for all users for this specific reason, I don't like the possible implications of having ro reinstall a lot of stuff ('That shouldn't have to happened' when something I have breaks never really satisfied me)

I have a question about the repair install: It said it resets services. Does it reset these services for Windows Services only and leave the status and installation of non-Microsoft services intact?

 

[Brink]

A repair install is basically a in-place upgrade to the same OS. Everything you have installed (ex: programs) will still be there afterwards. It shouldn't affect services added by installed programs.