Published on March 9, 2007

When you logon to your user account, the Frequently Used Programs list in the Start menu may get reset with the factory default listing.

Frequently Used Programs list is reset to defaults during every logon in Windows Vista

Symptom

When you logon to your user account, the Frequently Used Programs list in the Start menu may get reset with the factory default listing.

Cause

This happens if the StartMenuInit registry value is not set correctly in the registry. During the first logon to a user account, Windows is supposed to set the StartMenuInit value automatically. If that procedure fails for some reason, then Windows resets the Frequent Used programs list with the factory default programs list automatically at every logon, and pops up the Start menu automatically.

Resolution

To automate the following steps, use the startmenuinit_vista.reg file attached at the bottom of this page. For instructions to accomplish this manually, read below.

Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

In the right-pane, create a new DWORD value named StartMenuInit
Double-click StartMenuInit and set 3 its data
Close Regedit.exe