How to turn off the “Recent Documents” display in the Windows XP Start menu

eddie — Sun, 21 May 2006 11:08:27 +0000

By default, Windows XP displays a menu entitled “Recent Documents” in the Start menu.

This list of recently accessed files can be viewed by anyone using your computer, which can make for some uncomfortable circumstances when others sit down at your desktop.

Keep your files more private by turning that list off.

There are 2 ways to turn this list off. The first uses menu options, the second uses the registry editor.

Here is how you turn off the Recent Documents display in Windows:

Right-click Start, and then click Properties
Click Customize
Click the Advanced tab
Under Recent documents, uncheck “List my most recently opened documents”
Click OK, and then click OK again.

Voila- the list is now gone!

You can accomplish the same by editing the registry using the Registry Editor.

Here is how you turn off the Recent Documents display in Windows, using the registry editor:

Open the registry editor
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
Set the value of “Start_ShowRecentDocs” to one of the following values:
Value of 0 – List my most recently opened documents is disabled
Value of 2 – List my most recently opened documents is enabled

Eddie On Everything » xp annoyances

How to turn off the “Recent Documents” display in the Windows XP Start menu

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