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Accent on Computers to the rescue! 203-625-7575.
September 5, 2008
Start Menu Madness
Dear Larry,
When I click the Start button followed by All Programs, I
see a huge jumbled list, and I’m always forced to scroll down to find my Program
menus. How did my Start menu become so chaotic, and how can I bring order to it?
F. N.
Dear F. N.,
You’re not the only one afflicted with this mélange of mayhem.
Microsoft originally designed the Start Menu so that each program’s assorted
icons could be tucked away into individual menus. For example, you’d click
Start, All Programs, Microsoft Office to find Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Similarly, you’d click Start, All Programs, iTunes to access the iTunes icons.
Then one day, some company decided, “Why should our software’s
icons be hidden away in a submenu for the sake of organization? Let’s stick them
right at the top of the Start Menu so that we can remind users of our wonderful
company name and the programs they love.” Yeah, right.
One company after another followed suit and the result was a
mishmash. Countless companies are to blame for this, but the one that really
gets my goat is Adobe. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the gold standard when it comes
to reading pre-formatted documents. There’s no questioning its value…but why,
Adobe, must you crowd the desktop and start menu with icons to start Acrobat
Reader along with an icon to find your website. No one should ever really need
an icon to start Acrobat Reader—it opens on its own when it’s called for. Who
needs this junk!?
Time to take control of this mess and restore organization to
your computer! Right-click the Start button (whether you’re running Windows XP
or Vista) and click Open. Right-click the Start button again and this time click
Open All Users. Note that your Start Menu is created from a consolidation of the
icons in these two windows.
We’ll start with one of the two windows that opened, then
proceed to the other. You’ll see a yellow “Programs” folder—leave this alone for
now. Any other icons that appear here show up when you click Start. Chances are
none of them need to be here so either highlight and delete them or drag them to
your desktop should you want to deposit them somewhere else later on.
Next, click the Programs folder. Again, you’ll see a list of
yellow folders and more program icons trailing at the end. It’s these program
icons that show up at the top of the All Programs list. I suggest you delete
what you don’t need or want, then drag the rest into appropriate folders.
(Deleting these icons doesn’t remove the program from your computer.)
Ambitious users might want to go one more step and consolidate
the folders (and icons within them) into a list that makes sense for them.
Separate the wheat from the chaff, and the next time you click Start, it will
take you seconds to find the icon you’re looking for, not minutes!
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
