Why is my asp.net menu not showing properly?

Recent programs not showing up in Start Menu and recent items not showing up either?

• For the last week or two nothing is showing up on the start menu http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5082/startmenuk.jpg Here's a picture of my start menu as you see there is just a big white space were the recent programs should be. Also nothing new gets added to my recent items list. There are still some things in the recent items from two weeks ago but nothing new has been added. A few days ago I cleared the recent items to see what would happen and after I did that no recent items showed up at all. After I did that I did a system restore for a few days ago, which was the earliest I could restore it to, and that brought back the recent items that I had before but still nothing else gets added and the recent programs didn't get restored, I think it would have if I could of restored it back earlier but I couldn't. Also the task bar freezes frequently. I fix that by opening Task Manager and ending process on explorer.exe then re-adding explorer in file new task (run), which is the only way I can see to unfreeze the task bar. Any help as to how I can get the recent programs to show up again? I'm thinking the recent stuff not showing up might have something to do with the task bar freezing a lot not sure. Any help would be appreciated.

• Answer:

  This sounds like one of the undocumented features that result from using one of the free registry cleaning utilities. Here is a link to Microsoft that describes how to edit the registry to enable the lists. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292504 Check the event viewer for reoccurring errors related to explorer. Use the event ID to search for solutions and always check for a microsoft solution first. It's sad, but there is a lot of bad information out there so be careful. It's always a good idea to set a restore point before making any major changes.