Remove unwanted entries from the context menus

Tool: Regedit

One of my biggest pet hates is programs which insist on becoming a part of my context menus. A context menu is the little menu which pops up when you right click on objects, files, folders or icons. For example, right click on a desktop icon and if you have Norton Antivirus installed it will have 'Scan with Norton Antivirus' as a choice. I'm sure there are a lot of virused icons out there, thanks for the option guys.

The first step to getting rid of these entries involves opening the programs in question and looking through their options to see if you can unselect any 'integration' or 'context menu' options they have. If that fails, and the program absolutely insists on being an intimate part of your Windows, you can edit the registry as follows:

1. Before we make any changes in the registry, and even though you should have a full System Restore and/or Registry backup already, back up the registry keys which will be affected in this tweak:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectory]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDrive]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTFolder]

2. Do this by opening Regedit, find the relevant sub-folder, right-click on it and select Export. Make sure the "Selected Branch" option is selected under Export Range, then enter a descriptive name and save it somewhere safe. Do that for each one of the four sub-folders above. If anything goes wrong, instead of firing up System Restore or restoring the entire registry you can double-click on these files and everything is quickly fixed.

3. Now, go to the following sub-folders and delete references to programs you know have set up offending context menu entries. For example, in my system under [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlers] I found the key Symantec.Norton.Antivirus.IEContextMenu which I deleted. The first volley in the war against the invasion of my menus by Symantec. Here are all the places you should look in:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*OpenWithList]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellexContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshellexContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTFoldershell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTFoldershellexContextMenuHandlers]

4. As you're removing all the unwanted program entries, you should see the effects immediately - no reboot required. Remove an entry from the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshellexContextMenuHandlers] subfolder for example and open Explorer, then right click on your hard drive name and you should see the corresponding program you removed in the registry is gone from the context menu too. When you're done, you should see the default context menus devoid of the added rubbish.

If any of the programs whose context menu entries you've removed start displaying strange behaviour, restore the registry entries you backed up previously, or just reinstall the program. As long as you only delete program entries and none of the default Windows entries, all the normal context menu items will still remain.
and this is one of my fav tweaks CopyTo/MoveTo registry tweak to add to the right click button

To add Copy to... and Move to... context menu options start > run > regedit and then create the following registry keys ( i just renamed the winzip key which i dont need in the right click menue and changed it to "copy to" and then added the value) HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellexContextMenuHandlersCopy To
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellexContextMenuHandlersMove To
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlersCopy To
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlersMove To For the Copy To's set the default value to {C2FBB630-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13} and for the Move To's set the default value to {C2FBB631-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13} Now when you right click on a file or folder, above the send to option are two new options: Copy to Folder and Move to Folder
You can copy or move files or directories to other folders with this. How to change your autosearch defaut site (the search page used when you write anything in the address bar)
run regedit and go to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchUrl] find the string value "provider" and change the value to
"provider"="gogl"
If you write "yaho" instead the autosearch defaut page is changed to yahoo, "alta" to altavista, ...
nice one isn't it !.....Enjoy !