Resetting windows - start menu problems

[pibbuR]

I had to reset/reinstall windows, which deletes most programs. That's OK.

What's not OK is that the start menu still show all my previously installed program, but clicking on them will of course not work. So I want to get rid of them. I can of course click on every non working menuitem, and windows will ask me if I want to delete them. But that's really cumbersome. Any way to clean the start menu, removing every "emtpy" menuitem in a batch operation?

The Start Menu folder does not contain those menuitems, so deleting them there won't work.

pibbuR

EDIT: Any way to correct the typo in the thread header?
EDIT: Thanks to the red glyph

 

[Redglyph]

EDIT: Any way to correct the typo in the thread header?

When you edit your message, you can change the title at the top.

Is it Windows 10 or 11?

I'm surprised that Windows keeps old configuration bits when it's reinstalled. It's not a good sign; aren't there other remnants, and isn't it better to reinstall everything again 'properly'? I'm not sure how because it's not something I do often, but I think there was an option to perform an installation from scratch.

 

[Redglyph]

Otherwise, you can find menu items in

• %USERPROFILE%\Start Menu
• %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu
• c:\Users\Default\Start Menu (I don't know the environment variable for that one)

Maybe check if you can uninstall the applications from Windows first. With some luck, it will be able to do that more cleanly. Otherwise, you may still keep a lot of remnants in the registry, for example.

 

[pibbuR]

I found where they were and moved them. They don't show up now, and I can always bring them back. The program list under setting contain only windows things, and the programs I've already installed.

I was given the option to install from scratch, or keep my files. I chose the latter, which maybe wasn't the best choice. We'll see. If problems occur I'll do a complete reinstall, but at the moment I'll just wait and see.