Clear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP
Has it ever bothered you that there isn’t an obvious way to remove the previous items in the Run box in Windows? It’s often very useful, of course… but if you are just a little bit paranoid you might want to clean out that list on occasion.
Of course there are many cleaner applications that will do this for you, but we’ll explain how to do it manually.
Clear Recent Run Dialog Entries Through Regedit
Open up regedit.exe through the start menu run box, and then navigate down to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU
You’ll see all your recent commands on the right, and you can delete any of the keys that contain your commands. You’ll have to logoff and then back on, but the list should be clean.
Note that this will also work for Windows Vista’s Run dialog, although most people have switched to using the search box instead.
Completely Clear Recent Run Dialog Entries The Easier Way
Reader Ayush pointed out a much more easy solution that this registry hack-happy geek overlooked.
Right-click on the taskbar and choose Properties, then choose Start Menu.
Select the “Classic Start menu” option, and choose the Customize button. (Don’t worry, we’ll cancel out of the dialogs so you can keep the XP menu style)
Now just click the Clear button to remove all of the recent documents and applications from the start menu.
Once you’ve done that, hit Cancel and then Cancel again to make sure you don’t switch to the Classic Start menu.
Note that this method will clear out everything… so if you just want to remove a single entry you need to use the registry hack method.
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You can also clear it from Customize Classic Start Menu dialog-
Start Menu Properties > Classic Start Menu – Customize.. > Clear > Cancel > Cancel (to close the dialogs)
Ayush,
Good catch… adding that to the article.
It’s great to have readers like you around =)
It would be great if I can save my history as a file for backup automatically.
I want to read & write files in Linux from xp.I have downloaded some softwares but it shows me “Access Denied”. So is there any method or softwares for the above purpose like opening a window where i can run linux commands????
Regards
Trimay
sometimes when I’m trying to delete files from the media player i get a pop up error window that reads “Microsoft visual ++++error” what do I do.
Run Menu clean out instructions are very much appreciated. I’ll also add the same steps also work fine in Windows 98 2nd edition. I learned this one about 5 yrs ago from the Jeff Levi radio show. I printed it and thught it was put away in my puter reference storage box. It was not there. So lucky and very pleased to find it here.
Sincerely (mean it) literally) Thankyou
Kern L. Davis
Also works in Win 98 SE just fine. Learned it 5 yrs. ago from the Jeff Levie puter radio show. Lost it and the lucky found it here.
Sincerely Appreciate
Kern L. Davis
THANK YOU for this info!!!
If a clear the run box using regedit, the current items in the dropdown list will be deleted. Also new items will never be saved. How can I enable the run box to save the newly typed commands?
However the regedit was the one which worked for me(ie., clear the list in the Run Menu).
The GUI method only cleared the recent documents list. (windows XP SP2)
Thanks.
(NOVICE here ok)…From Start of my XP, go to RUN, and I’ve cleared both Temp and Temp% on occassion. There was a 3rd clear option on the RUN but I forgot what it is. It was something like “perfech, prefech, purtech”…Does anyone know what it is please? Help!
can u create a Shortcut (batch file/scripts file), to clear run command via double click
In respect to Ayush, doesn’t ‘Start Menu Properties > Start Menu– Customize.. > Advanced > Clear List’ do the same thing? If not, how is it different?