[dlmager]

Windows Vista Home Premium
On the start menu only Windows programs will launch. For any other programs, including Microsoft Office 2007, the 'All Programs' must be clicked and then the program must be selected from the program list.

[geekp0wer]

Your issue is most likely a poorly coded 3rd party app. Specifically a bad context menu handler. A context menu handler is a shell extension handler that adds commands to an existing context menu. Download shexview from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html and disable 3rd party apps one by one until you find the offending application.

Cheers!

[daveyboy222]

What I ended up doing was removing the shortcuts on the start menu, locating the executable (for example WINWORD.EXE), right-clicking on it and seleting "Pin to Start Menu", then renaming the new entry on the start menu to something more meaningful.

Hope this works for you.

[dlmager]

I followed your instructions for the WORD program & it worked!
I'll do the same for my other programs. Thank you so much!

[PaulGideon]

Originally Posted by geekp0wer

Your issue is most likely a poorly coded 3rd party app. Specifically a bad context menu handler. A context menu handler is a shell extension handler that adds commands to an existing context menu. Download shexview from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html and disable 3rd party apps one by one until you find the offending application.

Cheers!

I have the same problem, and I'll admit when I read geekp0wer's post, I was pretty skeptical. I couldn't find any better suggestions, though, so I downloaded ShellExView as he/she recommended, sorted the listed extensions by Type, and looked at the entries with a Type of Context Menu. Most were Microsoft; I picked one that wasn't, WebExRightMenu Class, right-clicked and chose Disable Selected Items. Then I tried launching PowerPoint 2007 off the Start Menu again, and Presto! It launched! Enable WebExRightMenu again and the problem reappears.

So, geekp0wer, BIG thanks, and I'm sorry I ever doubted you!

- Paul

[rklein]

I used ShellExView and narrowed down the problem to DriveHQ FileManager (version 3.8). Upgraded to version 4.0 and probelm persisted. When disabled using ShellExView all seems to be working well. Thanks for the help.

[daveyboy222]

Interesting program and it provided a better fix than I had earlier suggested, however this situation is the sort of thing that frustrates people with Windows, even if the problem isn't with Windows itself. I used the ShellExView and found Systran6.SystranShellContextMenu was the context menu handler that was causing this start menu launching problem on my PC. When I disabled it, the problem disappeared. My concern is that future patches to this program (SYSTRAN) may re-enable it and I'll have to keep disabling it. Programs that don't use SYSTRAN don't behave wrong in the start menu. Thank you.