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Remove Winamp Context Menu Items from Vista

I get very tired of every application adding items to my Windows Explorer right-click menu and making it difficult to remove them. Winamp has an easy preferences panel to let you configure which items show up, but sadly it doesn't seem to work in Windows Vista.

The problem is caused because the Winamp installer runs in administrator mode, which has access to add global menu items, but running Winamp as a regular user prevents you from modifying the items that are added by the installer.

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Find Winamp in the start menu, and then right-click the entry and choose Run as administrator. This is the most important step!

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Open the Winamp preferences from the system tray icon or otherwise, and then browse down to General Preferences \ Jump To File \ Shell Options.

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Here's where it gets interesting… if nothing is selected in this dialog, you should select all of the items and then de-select the ones you don't want. This will "reset" the context menu items.

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Now when you right-click on a folder you won't see the items anymore. Just remember, the only way to add or remove the items is by launching the application in Administrator mode. (At least until they fix this problem).

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 09/18/07 and tagged with: Windows Vista, Vista Tips & Tweaks

Comments (3)

  1. Jon

    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! Now I thought this shell option was slowing down the right-click process, but it turns out that it's still slow, even without the shell option. Even though it didn't fix my biggest problem, it got rid of the annoying option! And if it did speed things up, that would have been fantastic, and this article would have done the trick! So, if my idea was correct (it wasn't), you would have fixed my whole problem! I'm not quite sure if I expressed my feelings in the right words to get my point across, but Kudos!!!!!

  2. The Whiz

    Thanks, you nailed it on the head, three cheers for uncluttered context menus!

  3. seba

    My problem is the opposit, I want to add it to my context menu, if I do it like you said.(reverzed way) it's doesn't add it to my context meny, it resets the settings right away if I click away…

    can you help me?


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