Raymond is trying to help two people get their Windows start menu back
As a subscriber of about 10 years, and a LIFETIME subscriber, I have complete confidence in your advice, and answers. and look forward to learning even more. I have had 2 different people ask if I could fix their computers that had the same problem. On the start menu on the right, everything was gone. Computer, Documents, Pictures, Music, everything. First after installing Avast, Super Antispyware, and Malwarebytes, I cleaned out the viruses and spyware. That didn’t fix the problem. So I was going to do a system restore, but there were no restore points. I’m stumped! Can you help?
Our answer
Hi Raymond – thanks for your long-time support. We appreciate it very much. The missing-start-menu-items happens most often when people are tricked into downloading rogue security software. One of the tricks these rogues use is to hide the start menu items. They’re copied to temporary folder and the start menu folders (there are several) are marked hidden. You can check to see if their c:\ %username% \ app data \ roaming folder is marked “hidden” by right-clicking on it and choosing “Properties”. If it’s marked “hidden” uncheck “hidden” and restart Windows Explorer by using Task Manager. In Task Manager, click the “Processes” tab and find explorer.exe. Now right-click on explorer.exe and choose “End Process” and say OK when the warning appears. When your end the explorer.exe process the taskbar will disappear. Now, in Task Manager, click “File” on the toolbar, and choose “New task”. Type explorer.exe in the “Run” dialog that appears and press “Enter”. Now check to see if the Start Menu is back. If not, read on.
Many times the rogue security software will move all the start menu items to a temp folder. The user’s start menu will appear empty because it is. When the victim of the rogue attack pays for the rogue software, it immediately “fixes” the start menu by moving the files from the temp folder back to the proper start menu folders and the victim of the rogue attack thinks the rogue security program he/she has paid for – is working. It’s not doing anything but taking their money and fixing what it broke in the first place.
The easiest solution for the problem of missing start menu items is a program called “unhide.exe”. We’ve used it before and it comes from an old and trusted web site called “Bleeping Computer”. If you check in the folder we mentioned above and it’s not marked “Hidden”, then you should try running “unhide.exe” on their computers. Be sure to follow the instructions from Bleeping Computer.
Here is the link for you: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html
If this were to happen to my computer and I realized what happened, is it possible to run system restore in safe mode to change settings back to what they were, or is the startup items still missing? No, this didn’t happen to me. I would like to think I am wise enough not to fall for installing rouge software. Be that as it may, I would trade my pinky finger to know what you guys know about computers.
Ahem, excuse me TC & EB, if the menu items ‘turn up’ they are where you want them to be. If the menu items are not where you want them to be, they are missing. To make sure that ‘turn up missing’ was incorrect, I checked on the Internet.
Definitely an oxymoron.
Kind regards,
John in Oz.