The answer is, emphatically and unequivocally, maybe. The big question we’re asking in this piece is whether a registry cleaner will indeed speed up your PC, making it boot more quickly and run faster. Far too often, program updates and installers leave unneeded pointers in the registry, so the registry becomes bloated with unnecessary entries, slowing down your system. Windows has a high degree of customization.Compounding this problem is the fact that applications are usually too inept to uninstall all of the registry entries they create. You may really need to “undo” changes if you screw up your start screen, so keep file explorer running while you flirt with these folders. Click the dropdown list and you can add a very useful icon to the file explorer window: UNDO.
Keeping file explorer running is handy, because in the top left corner of your file explorer window you will see a few default icons, plus the symbol for a dropdown list. If it worked, go ahead an populate the folder. Try creating one folder and moving one shortcut to it… Minimize file explorer and check your start screen. Usually, a re-boot will sort things out and reflect the changes you make… But there is NO GUARANTEE!īottom line: If you are going to monkey with this, be very selective on your moves and folder creations, etc. Worse, the old folder which I emptied to populate the new folder still shows on the start screen, but it’s now devoid of shorcuts! I’ve run into situations where a newly created and populated folder in programdata…startmenu doesn’t show up AT ALL on the start screen.
Go to the actual folder in programdatamicrosoftwindowsstartmenu and you might well see the underlying program shortcut, plus the uninstall shortcut, and maybe a help-file shortcut… There they are, in the folder, but on your start screen all you see is the program shortcut.Īpparently, Windows 10 decides what shortcuts are going to show in the start screen and what ones are not. That’s all you might see in your “all apps” list on your start screen. If you have a fair number of desktop apps installed, you may encounter quirks like I have: For example, in your “all apps” list, you may see a folder, which when you click on it just gives you the name of the associated underlying program. I’ve tried rearranging things in both folders (the start-menu folder under the programdata tree looks like the old “all users” tree, and the start menu under appdataroaming looks like the old “single user” tree”. I wholeheartedly agree with jdrch’s comment below… Be careful with this. It’s best to leave any entries that don’t show up in the All Apps list alone in case Windows or other applications rely on them. Note, however, that there are certain system files and entries that you can see in File Explorer but not in your All Apps list. You can remove other applications, including folders, from File Explorer to get rid of any unwanted apps that would otherwise clutter up your All Apps list. When we open the Start Menu’s All Apps list again, the entry for Access 2016 will not show. Using the steps above, we can locate the Access 2016 shortcut in the corresponding “Programs” folder and delete it. For example, we want to remove Microsoft Access 2016 from our All Apps list, but we don’t necessarily want to uninstall the application. Depending on whether the app is available to all users or limited to your own user account, you’ll be looking at one of the following directories, respectively: C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms %appdata%MicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsĬhanges made to the contents of these directories will be reflected in the All Apps list. After clicking Open File Location, a new File Explorer window will appear showing you the application shortcut.