How-To Geek

A month ago I bought a new Gateway GM5472 Media Center PC. This is also the first time I've used Vista so I'm still a newbie at learning everything. Every time I restart my computer, it is not saving my recently used programs. When I use a program it does appear in the start menu as normal, but is gone after a restart. Upon restart all I have are four programs that appear.
Welcome Center , Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player & Windows DVD maker.

I've selected the Store & display list of recently installed programs, so I don't understand what I might have done. I also have room for about 12 programs so I'm not out of screen space. I've done some tweaking with the Tweak VI program but I haven't changed anything with the start menu. Is there a registry hack to fix this?

Gateway GM5472 - Media Center PC

AMD Athlon 5000+ Dual Core

Nvidia GeForce 6150SE

4GB Memory

I have Spybot but that only gets used every couple of weeks. I use Eusing Free Registry cleaner every few weeks as well.
I've checked through TweakVI and haven't checked the removal of frequent items lists.
Is there something in vista I might have done by accident? Or is there a program that can check if I am cleaning out the MRU lists when I shutodwn?

I'd rather not pin programs by right clicking. I guess I'm a bit stubborn to the way my computer runs. If worst comes to worst I'll reboot the computer from the beginning. I've only had this computer a month so it shouldn't be that hard to start back up again.