Enable Or Disable All Programs List In Windows 7, Vista Start Menu [How To]

You may wish to enable or disable Start Menu List from showing when Start button is pressed in Windows 7 or Vista. This is especially useful when you have a shared PC and you don’t want to show all installed program list to the guest user when start button is clicked. Note that you can still launch all the programs by typing the program name in the Search Programs and Files search box.

How to Disable or Hide the All Programs List from Start Menu?

This can be done using Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc).
1. Login to your PC in Administrator mode.
2. Click Start Button and enter “Group” in the search box. Or you can use gpedit.msc command in the Run Box.

3. In the displayed list of items, choose “Edit group policy” tool.
4. In the Local Group Policy Editor window, navigate to User Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Start Menu and Taskbar in the left pane. Now scroll through the settings list in the right pane to find “Remove All Programs list from Start menu” option.

 [Click on the image to enlarge]

5. Right-click –> Edit or double click on the option.
6. In the Remove All Programs list from Start menu window, turn on the radio button “Enabled”.

7. Click Apply—> and then OK.
You are done. Now Windows 7 or Vista will not show “All Programs” list in the Start menu.

How to Enable or Show the All Programs List in Start Menu?

To enable or show the Programs list follow the same steps from Step 1 to 5. In Step 6 turn the radio button to “Not Configured” option and Click Apply —> OK.
Note that this settings will apply to all the users of your PC.