If you are anything like us, you install a lot of software – and uninstall a lot too. Some programs add menu items to your shell context menu (your right-click menu). Many times, in fact most times, when you uninstall a program that has added items to your right-click menu, the items on the context menu remain. This adds useless clutter to your right-click menu and obfuscates 🙂 the right-click menu items you most often need.
So what’s the easiest way to get rid of all those useless right-click menu items, or even menu items which are not useless but simply unnecessary? While you can certainly edit the registry and trim the deadwood from your right-click menu, it’s by far the easiest way – and by far not the safest way either. So what’s the average user to do? Put up with an increasingly cluttered right-click menu? No. Spend nervous minutes editing the registry wonder if you “got the right ones”? No.
There’s a little utility program you can use to easily remove the junk from your right-click menu. It’s called “ShellMenuNew”. Why is it called that? We don’t have a clue, maybe you do. Anyway, here’s what the developer has to say:
“Description
ShellMenuNew is a small utility that displays the list of all menu items in the ‘New’ submenu of Windows Explorer. It allows you to easily disable unwanted menu items, so this ‘New’ submenu will display only the items that you need.
System Requirements
* This utility works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000, and up to Windows 7….”
You don’t have to install this program, just unzip and click on its executable (exe). It will take you maybe 30 seconds to figure it out. It will save you 30 seconds every time you open your Windows right-click menu and you do not have to scroll through all those useless right-click menu items. Be sure to read the additional information on the developer’s page. The program has some features which aren’t immediately obvious.
Read more about and/or download ShellMenuNew by visiting this page. The program is freeware and is a very small download (approx 38kb).
Great tip- too much there.
Here is a question. I have just installed windows 7 and hate the “All programs” menu. Is there a simple way of seeing all programs as in XP.
Cheers
Norris K.
You don’t need to see all programs as you did in XP – all you have to do is type the name of the program in the search form at the bottom of the start menu – it’s much faster than searching through a list.
Not useful to me. I never look at the NEW submenu. I wanna know how to get rid of all the crap in the MAIN right-click menu. But most important is that I would like to have the ‘Make New Folder’ option on the MAIN right-click menu and not buried in the NEW submenu. It’s one of the few things I use a lot and it’s such a pain to have to wait for it. Also, while I’m griping, I want a Open With option ALWAYS in the right-click menu. It’s so annoying when I know what program to open an “unknown” file with, but I have to go through all the Wizard crap because there is no Open With option. (Not even when I hold down Shift – yes, I remember that trick.)
It’s called a “Context Menu” not a submenu. A submenu would be a menu that appears from a main menu – such as your start menu. You can modify the registry to create an OPEN WITH item on your context menu. But unless you used the tip you just said wasn’t useful, all you’d be doing is adding one more item to the right-click context menu – so you’d add more clutter.
If you want to create an “Open with” item on your right-click context menu…. you can do it this way:
(Remember to create a system restore point before any changes)
Open regedit and navigate to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell
Right click on “shell” and select “new” > “key”
type in “Open With” (without quotes) press
Right click on “Open With” and select “new” > “key”
type in “Command” (without the quotes) press
With “Command” highlighted,
On the right pane, right click on “(Default)” and select “Modify…”
In the edit box, type or paste in the following (exactly as it is written)
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,OpenAs_RunDLL %1
Remember – all you’ll be doing is adding yet another item to the context menu
I’m not sure why you are talking about context and sub-menus as if I had used the terms incorrectly. The main menu – or context menu – is not affected by this program. It only affects the New submenu. That is too far to go for anything I want. I want to mess around with the main context menu.
Regardless….
This registry hack doesn’t do anything different than simply double-clicking. All it does is open up the Wizard thingy. That takes so long, because I then have to select the option to choose my own program, then I have to Browse and, of course, it automatically opens up the 64bit Program Files folder, which has basically nothing in it as most programs are still 32 bit and are in the other Program Files folder, so I have to change folders and … well, you see how long this takes. In XP, at least they gave a list of oft-used programs and I could just type in the first letter and it would jump to it and bam, I’m on my way. And, because I am able to click the box to always use this program, I never have to go through that again. I have no idea how your idea of typing the name into the Search box would work for this.