Customising Start Menu programs using GPO

Question

Theres so much junk in the "All Programs" section of Windows these days. I'm trying to customise it so that it just shows a restricted list of relevant apps to the users. I'm using Server 2003 and Win 7 clients. I'm managed to remove everything using

User Configuration / Policies / Administrative Templates / Start Menu and Taskbar / Remove All Programs List from the start menu

I've then tried to add the shortcust back in using:

Preferences / Windows Settings / Shortcuts / Shortcut (Path: %StartMenuDir%\Application.ink)

However this hasn't worked and the start menu is blank, whats the best way to go about customising the programs in the start menu?

Solution

http://gps.cloudapp.net/ is a live saver sometimes when looking for GPO options.

I used the following search term "start menu\programs"

I think a combination of these might help you out:

Remove common program groups from Start Menu Remove Default Programs link from the Start menu. Remove Documents icon from Start Menu Remove Downloads link from Start Menu Remove Drag-and-drop context menus on the Start Menu Remove Favorites menu from Start Menu

Comments

[joeqwerty]

When you say "junk" is that just your opinion or do you have a mandate to "clean up" the start menu.

[Alex]

Thats mostly my opinion. Stuff like "Windows Live Mail" and "Windows Live Messenger" doesn't need to be there for our purposes.