Programs have disappeared from Windows 7 Start Menu [closed]

I am running (and love) Windows 7 RC1 on my machine.

In the first real weird thing I have seen in Windows 7 -- all of my programs have disappeared from the start menu. So if I click the start button and click all programs it shows an empty white column where it normally would show the program groups or shortcuts to my programs. No programs or shortcuts show up at all.

Any ideas on how to get them back?

Seth

2 Answers

try to delete some shortcut from the c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs to get total programs in that folder are less than 70 because more than 70 shortcut in there that what happen to me which it just display nothing but I already fix mine with this way.

I had the same problem, and in my case it was because I had the icons of the Start Menu set to "hidden" (don't know if in the English Windows it's as "hidden", I use a portuguese version of Windows 7). I right-clicked the "All programs" menu and selected "Open All Users" like squillman did, it opened the folder /programdata/microsoft/windows/start menu. In the "start menu" folder properties (which I accessed by right-clicking the folder, as usual), I unticked the "hidden" option, ande evrything back to normal. Don't know if yours is the same problem, but it worked for me. I probably caused this by setting the entire "windows" folder to be "hidden", so... Good luck!