Easily add Recent Places to your Start Menu

**Kathleen Atkins** · 2012-05-16 12:46

LANGALIST PLUS

Easily add Recent Places to your Start Menu

By Fred Langa

Windows 7 automatically puts "Recent Items" on your Start menu, but omits the equally useful "Recent Places."
Fortunately, adding Recent Places, which lists recently used folders, drives, etc., is amazingly simple and takes just a few seconds to do — once you know how!

The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/langalist-plus/easily-add-recent-places-to-your-start-menu/ (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.

**rbfb** · 2012-05-17 04:21

For some reason my C Drive (a Vertex 3 SSD) is seen by my computer as Drive 1, while my D drive (a regular hard drive) is seen as Drive 0. It gets a little weird when I image my C Drive with my imaging program (Paragon Backup) and I have to be alert to get it right. Is there an easy way to get my C Drive to be seen as Drive 0, and my D Drive as Drive 1, as nature intended? Thanks for any help.

**A1ex** · 2012-05-17 04:23

In my Win7 Ultimate explorer I have only Favorites and Desktop on the left hand side in explorer, no Recent Places.

**Greg Dentner** · 2012-05-17 08:41

Fred,
I upgraded to Win7 two years ago and the "recent items" link has remained empty since install. What is the remedy?

Thanks,
Plinybc

**BruceR** · 2012-05-17 10:14

Originally Posted by A1ex

In my Win7 Ultimate explorer I have only Favorites and Desktop on the left hand side in explorer, no Recent Places.

Recent Places would normally be a shortcut under Favorites; did you expand that heading?

If you previously deleted Recent Places from there, you can restore it by right-clicking on Favorites and selecting "Restore favorite links".

Bruce

**Joe-P** · 2012-05-17 11:38

Or, Check the Recent Items box in:
Figure 4. The Start menu's Properties/Customize dialog.

**BruceR** · 2012-05-17 13:32

Originally Posted by Joe-P

Or, Check the Recent Items box in:
Figure 4. The Start menu's Properties/Customize dialog.

But as Fred pointed out, Recent Items is not the same thing as Recent Places.

Bruce

**buggsy2** · 2012-05-17 13:47

I find that even in Win7 the native search is not reliable. To find files I use Agent Ransack. Very powerful searching that is 100% reliable, but it doesn't do replacing. But it doesn't cost $30: it's free.

**JimJohnson** · 2012-05-19 07:44

I am a big fan of Windows 7, however I am a luddite in one regard - I still prefer a well organized Windows 2000 Start Menu. If you are like me, you can still put "Recent Places" in your Start Menu. Open Explorer, right-click "Recent Places" in the left-hand folder tree and select "Copy"; find a clear spot on your Desktop, right-click and select "Paste Shortcut".
Now while Explorer is still open, go to C:\%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu ... this will open the folder holding the Start Menu shortcuts that only show up in your user account.
Move the recently created "Recent Places" shortcut from your Desktop to any place in the folder structure you want this shortcut to appear.

Microsoft provided XP and Vista users the ability to switch to the Windows 2000 menu, but dropped this feature in Windows 7. To get at the older tree style Start Menu, you either have to use "All Programs" ... or I have installed the utility "Classic Start Menu". I prefer the older free version 1.0.3. If you configure it correctly, if you use your mouse to click on the Task Bar Icon you get the Windows 2000 menu - great for mouse centric actions; and if you click on the Windows key on your keyboard you get the MS provided Windows 7 menu - great for keyboard centric actions. The cursor is already blinking in the Search box.

**rdinning** · 2012-05-20 14:40

Re: Saving Unused space on your hard drive.

I have to ask why bother? When less than $100 will buy a terabyte plus hard drive, who cares if you waste a few megabytes?

That's why the new drives all have gone to what IBM mainframes have used for 20 - 30 years, 4K sectors. In another few years, assuming hard drives continue to grow, they'll be using 32K sectors as IBM started to do a few years ago.

**patdrummond** · 2012-06-02 14:47

I also wanted to add Recent Places to my Start Menu -- but it's empty.

I couldn't find a setting that I might have cleared as I tend to clear out anything that looks like fluff. Anyone know where I can get it to work at all?
FYI I'm using Win7 but with Classic Menu (much faster) - could be the reason instructions don't seem to match what I see.

**patdrummond** · 2012-06-02 15:01

Just had an odd experience in Explorer. I had selected Recent Places and the right pane was blank. When I returned several minutes later a "CustomDestinations" folder had appeared in the right pane. No + or shortcut arrow on it but I double-clicked anyway and ended up at
"C:\Users\Pat\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Re cent\CustomDestinations" which contained 24 binary files that all look like this: 9027fe24326910d2.customDestinations-ms. Not too useful.

**patdrummond** · 2012-06-02 18:10

Originally Posted by rbfb

For some reason my C Drive (a Vertex 3 SSD) is seen by my computer as Drive 1, while my D drive (a regular hard drive) is seen as Drive 0...

I'm not sure if this will solve your problem but I'm had to reset drive letters a number of times and this is the process I use. If it's too cryptic, please feel free to contact me for a full sentence-type description.

How to reset Disk I back to Disk H
=========================
CTRL PANEL > Administration Tools > Computer management
Left pane > Disk Management
(quick start - click START > RUN/SEARCH and type: diskmgmt.msc)

Right click drive I
Change drive letter and paths...
Click Change tab and "assign the following drive letter" to H
(in use..) Yes, Yes...
Reboot and drive letters are fixed.

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