This tip has come around as recently someone had to use my work PC to check a task that was running on my PC , however when I got back in the office they were asking about what some of my documents where about, basically snooping. Although the files were not opened I did not like the fact people were looking.
One simple way to switch this off is:
- Right Click your start menu,
- Click Properties,
- If you have Start Menu ticked as opposed to Classic Start Menu, Click Customize
- Click the Advanced Tab
- Untick "List my most recently opened documents"
- Then Click Clear list, this will clear your current list of files.
I am always interested in feedback so feel free to add any comments, or you can mail me here, also if you would like to submit a quick tip with full credit and links back to your site then also feel free to contact me.
You can switch the menu off via a quick registry change. NOTE If you are not comfortable making changes in the registry then you should not try this. Also I recommend always make a copy of your registry before you make any changes.
First off load the Registry Editor
Start -> Run -> regedit
Then you need to navigate to :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
Once you have the key, right click on the right hand window and Select New -> DWORD Value and you need to call it NoRecentDocsMenu.
Once you have the value, double click on the file and enter 1.
Now you will see that the Recent Documents menu is no more. You can reverse this by changing the 1 to a 0