Restore or Fix Missing Accessories Shortcuts in Start MenuI usually ask my clients to run disk defragmenter at least once a month to reduce the amount of fragmentation in file systems in order to keep disk access speed from degrading. I told them they could easily run Disk Defragmenter from
Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. One of them got back to me saying that there’s no Accessories folder at the Start Menu!
The Accessories group shortcut in Start Menu is the easiest way for any computer user to access Windows built-in utilities such as Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter, Backup, Scheduled Tasks, Synchronize and etc. Those tools are only shortcut mostly pointing to executable files in Windows System32 directory. Since it is only a shortcut, I am not surprised that it can be accidentally deleted or removed from Start Menu.
There are 2 ways I know that can easily restore back the Accessories group to Start Menu.
First logical way is to copy the whole Accessories folder from another computer and paste it to the computer that is missing of the Accessories folder. It’d normally work because the shortcut points to environment variable path such as
%SystemRoot%\system32 instead of C:\Windows\system32. So even if the Windows is installed in
D:\ drive, it’d still work.
Second method is using a small and simple tool created by Ramesh Srinivasan to restore accessories group.
This utility restores the missing shortcuts to the Start Menu Accessories group. The Accessories group includes sub-folders namely Accessibility, Communications, System Tools, Entertainment. You can select the sub-folders that you want to restore and can also select whether to restore it to All Users or Current User Profile. This tool is only 60KB in size and works only in Windows XP.
[ Download AccRestore ]Also try and use Grinler's
Unhide.exe to make your files visible again, download the following program to your desktop:
Unhide.exeOnce the program has been downloaded, double-click on the Unhide.exe icon on your desktop and allow the program to run. This program will remove the +H, or hidden, attribute from all the files on your hard drives. If there are any files that were purposely hidden by you, you will need to hide them again after this tool is run.
