out of hand menus

January 22, 2009 3:25 PM

In Windows XP I'm finding that many of the context menus (when I right-click on different files) have gotten out of hand. How do I customize and clean up these context menus?
posted by parallax7d to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Those are shell extensions, and generally you need to disable them with options applications responsible for adding the new commands, or remove those applications altogether.

Some quick google landed me at ShellExView which purports to list the applications providing these extensions. I have not personally used this program.
posted by Bokononist at 3:37 PM on January 22, 2009

If you're familiar with regedit, perhaps you can edit the Windows Registry.
posted by jaimev at 4:26 PM on January 22, 2009

Although you can do it with dedicated programs (and many multi-tweak kinda programs seem to have this feature as well), you can also disable the 'Enqueue in Winamp' context menu in the Winamp options and disable the 'Add to Zip' in the Winzip options and et cetera.
posted by box at 4:53 PM on January 22, 2009

Ugly as sin, but MMM works nicely and the basic version is free. I like that it's sport of non-destructive, you can simply move all that rarely used stuff to a "rarely used" subfolder.
posted by Ookseer at 4:55 PM on January 22, 2009

TweakUI will do it, I think.
Quick google says to look in My Computer->templates inside TweakUI.
posted by juv3nal at 5:21 PM on January 22, 2009

What you want is FastExplorer.
posted by kindall at 7:13 PM on January 22, 2009

The best thing to do is unistall whatever programs that are adding all these shell extensions that you dont need. Its always best to clean up the clutter first. Then edit the registry to remove whatevers left over.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:28 PM on January 22, 2009

Yeah, I love MMM too, Ookseer.

In a similar clean-up vein, this handy (and free) little utility will organise all your program files in your Start Menu.
posted by essexjan at 4:49 PM on January 23, 2009