Question

Is there a way to clean the most recently started applications from the Windows 7 start menu programmatically?

I’m looking for some registry entries and/or files to delete so the corresponding items in the Winodws 7 start menu are removed.

Answer 1

Now this is the solution for my question:

I Cleaned the values under the Registry Keys

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{CEBFF5CD-ACE2-4F4F-9178-9926F41749EA}\Count
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{F4E57C4B-2036-45F0-A9AB-443BCFE33D9F}\Count

Then I executed the following PInvoke to refresh the cache of the Explorer.exe:

C#:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
[DllImport("shell32.dll")]
static extern void SHChangeNotify(int wEventId, int uFlags, IntPtr dwItem1, IntPtr wItem2);

private const int SHCNE_ASSOCCHANGED = 0x08000000;
private const int SHCNF_IDLIST = 0x0000;

private void ClearCache()
{
 SHChangeNotify(SHCNE_ASSOCCHANGED, SHCNF_IDLIST, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);
}

Regards,
Boris