Disappearing Windows Explorer pinned items

Question

This has happened twice now in three months:

After rebooting, ALL the pinned items from my Windows Explorer taskbar jumplist are gone. Also, recent items from Windows Explorer are much fewer, only one or two if I remember correctly. After the first time I re-pinned the items I wanted, but about a month later it happened again. I re-pinned

All other pinned items in other jumplists (e.g. Word) are fine and have never disappeared. Googling for the problem showed that ccleaner can affect this, but I personally do NOT use any cleaners or related progs on this machine.

I also think that both times it happened it was after a windows update, although I can't recall what kind of update it was.

After each time, Little Registry Editor showed invalid references in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RecentDocs , but I had NOT used it prior to the deletions.

Any ideas on why this happens and how to prevent it?

Solution 1

I have this happen all of the time, but perhaps Windows removes these during routine "Computer Maintenance".

Try disabling "Computer Maintenance" in Control Panel > System and Security > Troubleshoot common computer problems* > Change settings [left pane]. (Set "Computer Maintenance" to Off.)

* - Words may have changed. Could also read "Find and fix problems", etc.

I took these instructions from "Method 2" in Microsoft KB978980, but posted them here since I could see Microsoft removing these instructions if too many people realize "Computer Maintenance" causes problems.

Solution 2

Its a corrupted user profile - I recently had the same issue, and resolved it by following this.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

Comments

[palswim]

-1: That's a cop-out answer from Microsoft.

[Ash M]

and i get the downvote because it worked for me?

[Donald Duck]

This only works when you're an administrator.

[palswim]

No, the downvote comes because that answer has a high degree of similarity to "re-format your computer and reinstall (don't forget to backup!)". That technically fixes the issue, but nobody wants to fix the issue that way.

[palswim]

Also, the link is dead.