Powershell script to clean the most recently used programs on the Start Menu in Vista and Windows 7

Question

Am looking for a powershell script that cleans (removes) all the items from the most-recently used programs from the Vista/Windows 7 Start menu.

NOTE: Cleaning the items does not mean disabling the MRU behavior - I still want it keep the MRU behavior on; just clean the immediate list of any entries.

Answer 1

I'd guess you just need to clean the folder %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent (this is for Windows Vista)

As for a script to do that, you could use a regular old command shell (.cmd)

del /F %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Mircosoft\Windows\Recent\*.lnk

Answer 2

I can't add a comment to the existing answer, but there is an environment variable for the AppData path that you should probably use instead, so:

del /F %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent*.lnk