Vista - "Recent docs" folder always empty

I upgraded from Windows XP to Vista Home Premium. In XP I had five user
accounts setup; admin & four standard users. After the upgrade to Vista all
accounts ported well except for one thing. Any documents I open by double
clicking on the file are reflected in the "Recent Items" area as long as I'm
in the Admin. acct. However, in the other four user accts. the "Recent
Items" area is never updated and is always empty no matter how many files are
opened by double clicking. Anyone have an idea why this is and how to
resolve?

compTMan wrote:Are those users set up to store that list? To check, right click the
start button, or an empty area of the task bar, open the "Start Menu"
tab, and make sure the "Store and display a list of recently opened
files" is ticked. If not, click the box to put a tick in it and click OK.

If it is already ticked, you could try unticking it and clicking OK,
then going back and ticking it again. That has been known to solve a few
problems! It might help (I'm not sure) to reboot before re-ticking the
box just to be sure the unticked setting has taken effect.

Thanks Mark, I did not know it was an option you could disable. However, I
confirmed that the option was already selected and I followed your suggestion
to clear it and select it again with restarts between. It did not help. The
recent executed programs area was cleared when I disabled that feature and
started building list again when I re-enabled it but the "Recent Items" list
never changed, it is still "empty" even though I opened a few files.



"Mark Bourne" wrote:

Hi CompTMan,

You might try this tutorial. It is for Recent Programs, but it may help with the Recent Documents as well.

Recent Programs Not Being Remembered

Shawn

Great info Brink. I assume this is the forum for the 64-bit version of Vista.

I followed the tutorial and found that I already have the number "3" in that
Registry item (as I would expect since my "Recent Programs" section was
already working). Now if I could only find the same reg. item for the
"Recent Items/documents."

BTW, I'm running the 32-bit version of Vista.

Ted



"brink" wrote:

While browsing the suggested forum I found others that are having the same
problem. I have noticed that my Admin. user account "Recent Items" area does
update properly. Only my standard user accts. don't update the Recent Items
area. After reviewing the post in the other forum, I've found that by going
to the folder C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent my
Admin. user ID has a "Recent Items" file while my other user ID's don't have
this file. So that's the issue. The question is how do we correct it? I could
copy the file from Admin. and paste it in one of the user ID's to see if that
helps but I think there should also be some Registry changes required to get
it to be used properly.

"compTMan" wrote:

Ok CompTMan,

This is usually the same for the 32 bit Vista as well unless otherwise noted in the turorials.

I did some playing on this, and it seems they are the same item. When I tried to copy the "Recent" folder into the Standard account, I was asked if I wanted to replace the "Recent Items" file with it.

If I have both Recent items unchecked (Under Privacy) in the Start Menu (Customize), then I cannot open "Recent Items" in the Standard account.

Recent Items List

If I have them checked, then "Recent Items" opens in a window with the recently opened items listed in it. You can only see the recent Documents in the "Recent Items" button in the Start Menu though. It seems to be working for me. You might look in this folder after you open a few text files as a test. You can also type "shell:recent" (no quotes) in the white line (Start Search) area in the Start Menu to open this location.

Shawn

compTMan wrote:Much of it is also relevant to 32-bit Vista. That site also archives
these newsgroups, so you can find old posts which Microsoft has deleted
from these newsgroups by putting "site:www.vistax64.com words to search
for" (without the quotes) into Google.
It looks like that article explains how to manually change what the
tick-boxes on the dialogue do for you. I can't be certain though.

Hi Mark,

Yes, most of it is the same for the 32 bit Vista as well.

The regedit article for this resets the Start menu for the Recent Programs so that it will not default to a blank state everytime you logon to that account in Vista. Sometimes unticking the Recent ticks in the Start menu and restarting the computer then ticking them back helps, but not always.

Hope this helps explain it better,
Shawn

OK, this seems to explain one curious thing I saw. When logged on as the
Admin. if I select the "Recent Items" file in the folder (by following the
path), at the bottom of the window the properties of the Recent Items file
are shown. There it says the file is shared with my other standard user ID.
I saw this earlier and thought this maybe a problem, but based on your
comments that is as it should be (one file used by all).

While logged on as Admin. if I open a file I can see it reflected in the
Recent Items file. However, while logged on as a standard user if I open a
file it is not listed in the Recent Items file. Further testing finds that
if I attempt to open the file from the standard user ID using your
"shell:recent" command, I'm told I don't have permission to view this file.
It then ask me to enter the Admin. password. When I enter the correct
password I'm "denied access" and total to use the "security tab" to gain
access.

Ted



"brink" wrote: