Icons "disappearing" from Start Menu
 

Just a few moments ago, I opened up my start menu and noticed it looked a little "shorter" than usual. Upon closer inspection I realized that several of my icons had disappeared from it. The exact number is hard to say, because I don't know exactly what was in there, but I can say that my Photoshop, Illustrator, Imageready and Steam icons were among the losses.

So uh, what gives?

Did you have them "pinned" to the menu, like where Windows puts the Internet Explorer and Outlook Express icons by default? Or are you using the Classic menu style and they were seperated by a little bar above the "Programs" submenu?

In case of the former, simply find a shortcut under "All Programs" to the program you want to pin, right-click it, and hit Pin to Start Menu.

In case of the latter, create a copy of a shortcut to the program (or make one freshly on the desktop), and place it in C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSER\Start Menu.

If neither of those help, could you elaborate on your menu setup?

No they were in the programs menu sorry I wasn't very clear to begin with.

Notepad was also amongst the casualties.

Something similar happened to me after someone else used my work computer. This might be it:

Right click on the taskbar, click on properties, and go to the start menu tab. Make sure that the box that says "Use Personalized Menus" is turned off.

BlueMikey is correct. Also, there is a separate item for those that use Internet Explorer in regards to the favorites menu. To fix this, go to:

Tools -> Internet Options -> Advance -> Uncheck "Enable Personalized Favorites Menu".

Also, Microsoft Office ALSO has a similiar thing.

Tools -> Customize -> Check "Always Show Full Menus". It doesn't matter what Office program you use, it'll affect them all. You can also have them appear on a delay if you want. Uncheck "Always Show Full Menus" and make sure "Show menus after a short delay" is checked.

That's not it. The icons were literally deleted from the menu, but not by me (perhaps by ghosts.)