Button on Start Menu Not Working (Vista Home Premium)

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I know I’ve done something that created this problem but I’ve no idea what I did nor how to fix it. On my start menu in the dark gray list on the right side, the “Pictures” button doesn’t work. When I right clicked and looked at its properties, everything is blank which is obviously why it doesn’t work. There’s no path to a folder anymore. The problem is that I can’t find any way to put the proper path back – the properties box doesn’t seem to be editable. Anyone know how to fix this? If I’ve posted this correctly, there should be a screen shot here.

Rod Corkum

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Your screen shot shows a folder size and size on disk of 0 bytes. This suggests that all is in order but that this particular folder is empty.

Do you have another folder that might contain pictures? ‘My Pictures’ was the default XP folder, so if you upgraded you may still have that.

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peterq,

As far as I can tell, the reason it says 0 bytes is that it isn’t finding a folder at all. The properties is completely empty – it isn’t looking anywhere. The correct path to the folder that contains my pictures is C:UsersRod CorkumPictures and is 1.19 GB in size. I didn’t upgrade from XP, this was a new HP Compaq computer in February that came with Vista Home Premium. Interestingly enough, there is some other program that keeps adding a second folder called Pictures with the path C:UsersRod CorkumSaved GamesPictures and all that is there is a shortcut with the target “C:UsersPublicPicturesSample Pictures” pointing to the sample pictures file that came with Vista. I suspect this has something to do with ACDSee. I recently got a Pentax digital camera and this was the software that came with it. I don’t remember having any problems before that. I tried uninstalling the ACDSee, deleting that Saved Games folder, rebooting, etc. but the pictures button didn’t fix itself. With ACDSee installed, the Saved Games folder keeps coming back even after deleting it. I can ignore it since my pictures are not there. (Why anyone would want to put a pictures folder in a folder called Saved Games is beyond my understanding!)

My pictures were always in the C:UsersRod CorkumPictures location and I think (although not quite sure) that ACDSee may have hijacked the folder because shortly after it was installed I found my pictures in that Saved Games/Pictures folder (and the start menu button pointed there at that time) not in the original location. I moved the pictures back to where they were and deleted the Saved Games folder and I think after that the pictures button stopped working. If there was some way to edit the path on the button, this would be easy to fix.

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First click on Start, then Computer, then note that there are two folders in the tree, one called Your Name and another called Public. Look in both. Public is data that can be shared on your network and your destination may have inadvertently been there.

Create a new folder, anywhere you like: on the desktop, in Your Name folder, or elsewhere, and give it a funny name so you can find it again. (Right click, New, Folder.) Now right click on the folder and you will see that it reports the zeroes, which tell you that it exists but that it is empty. Add some data and the numbers will no longer be zero when you refresh the view, and if you open the folder you will see the data that you added.

I believe that Saved Games is part of Vista, and I ran into the same behaviour that you did. I have the Business Edition, and I suspect that if I want games I have to upgrade, but in the meantime there is reference to them. You may recall the games (Hearts etc.) that could be played online under XP, for example, and it may refer to something like that. It’s too late for me to look it up tonight, but I think we all have Saved Games as part of Vista. How it ends up as a destination for pictures, I don’t know either, but you are not alone in that experience.

Revision: All right, I just confirmed it. Saved Games is a Vista folder that is the default storage location for game programs that can save a game in progress. I don’t know about the games as such, but things like chess or solitaire involve graphics that would have the same file extensions as photos.

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Rod,

1) That shortcut (when working) does NOT point to the location you have in the screenshot. It should point to “C:UsersRod CorkumPictures”

2) In the Start Menu “Properties” (right-click on the Taskbar/Properties/Start Menu (tab)” then “Customize” (button), click on one of the other two options and see if that does anything. Perhaps enabling “Don’t display this item”, rebooting, and then enabling “Show as a link” or “Show as a menu” might create it again.

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Jeff

The path to the pictures folder on the right side of my screen shot is C:UsersRod CorkumPictures. I right clicked the folder and checked the properties and this is the path it shows there. Vista’s Windows Explorer appears to make it look like it’s C:DesktopRod Corkum but it’s really C:UsersRod Corkum (odd way they’ve designed the tree.)

Anyway I tried your suggestion to “Don’t display this item” for Pictures in the Customize Start Menu dialog box. I guess I don’t have the problem anymore but not the solution I was looking for. When I rebooted, the Pictures button was naturally no longer showing on the start menu. So I went back into the Customize to turn it back on again to “Show as a menu” but lo and behold, Pictures is no longer listed in the Customize Start Menu list so now I can’t turn it back on. Must have had something to do with the fact that the button wasn’t pointing anywhere that caused it to disappear from the Customize Start Menu list.

Oh well, I guess I’ll go back to the old standby – put a shortcut on the desktop!

Rod

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Try this. Open a cmd windows (Winkey+R). Then run “sfc /scannow” without the quotation marks. See this Start menu icons – Vista x64 Forums thread. Even though it is for X64 it should still be the same for 32 bit Vista.

Joe

--Joe

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My impression from your posts is that you have lost or deleted your photos. Finding your missing data takes precedence over what Vista is up to, and I would avoid all deletions and writing to the drive until you have searched for them.

If you know a few of the filenames, full or partial, search for any or all and find out what folder Vista reports they are in. Search on standard photo file extensions, notably *.jpg. If they have been deleted they may still be on the drive. Move or copy them to an easy location to be on the safe side, and then and only then worry about what went wrong.

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Guys,

Latest update … I came back to the computer tonight after a few days and when I booted up to my surprise, the pictures button was back in the Customize Start Menu dialog box so I turned display back on and it’s now back on the start menu, and it is working again (but going to the wrong place.) It is pointing again to  C:UsersRod CorkumSaved GamesPictures folder. See picture here.

peterq – My pictures are not lost. They’re exactly where I want them and have been all along, in the C:UsersRod CorkumPictures folder. It’s just that the Pictures button won’t go there. Now that it’s working again it wants to go to the pictures folder in the Saved Games folder. What’s more, other pictures programs (Microsoft Paint, PhotoDraw 2000, etc) when attempting to save a picture wants to put it in that Saved Games/Picture folder too by default.

Joe, after seeing the above, I tried your sfc /scannow and it appeared to flash a DOS type window too fast to see anything and that was it. Nothing looked different afterwards.

Thanks guys for the suggestions. I think maybe I should just move my pictures to that Saved Games/Pictures folder and leave well enough alone since the Pictures button is now working again and everything wants to go there (illogical as it seems), and other programs want to save there by default.

While I like Vista overall, it does act rather weird at times. For home I can live with it’s idiosyncrasies but I’d never recommend upgrading our XP’s at work to Vista!

Rod

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Rod wrote:
Joe, after seeing the above, I tried your sfc /scannow and it appeared to flash a DOS type window too fast to see anything and that was it. Nothing looked different afterwards.

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From what you wrote above, I’m going to guess that you ran “sfc /scannow” in the “Run” box or “Start Search” field on the Start Menu? That would give you what you experienced. You have to run that command line as Joe wrote in a “Command Window”. To do that, just in case you aren’t familiar with it, you type: cmd in the “Start Search” field and press “Enter”. In the new Command window, run the sfc /scannow command line with your Vista DVD in the drive.

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This is just a guess, but try going into explorer and dragging the folder C:UsersRod CorkumSaved GamesPictures to the location C:UsersRod Corkum and see if this causes Windows to move the internal pointers.

StuartR

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Rod,

I may have missed something in this thread, but have you tried using the “Location” tab in Pictures Properties?

Cheers,

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Paul,

As Homer Simpson would put it … Doh!

I can’t believe I missed that Location tab. It was so simple. Pictures button is now pointing exactly where I want it to go. Thanks. Problem solved!

Rod

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I don’t regret the changes (Ofice & Vista), but I found the transition smoother with Office than with Vista. You can run Office under XP, which means that there is no pressure to learn both at once, and with the exception of Outlook, you can run both a prior and 2007 version of any or all Office applications under a given setup. Vista may take a lot of ironing out.

The Saved Games folder is a part of Vista. I have run into it several times since my previous post, and you might consider yourself lucky that Vista restored it for you when it contained your photographs. The Whys and Wherefores may forever remain a mystery, but for the sake of your photographs please don’t delete it again.

There was an earlier thread HERE that displayed the frustration associated with thumbnails in Vista. When I first used Vista I had no trouble at all, but when I tried it some time after the post I had and still have the same problem as described in the thread. If you have proper thumbnails for your photos then consider yourself lucky, and if anyone has the definitive solution that particular problem I’d like to hear about it.

This will depend on your backup regimen and program(s), but while I advised you to quit writing and deleting, that should have included browsing and email, even for the present subject, until after you had performed a full backup, and the backup should have been after booting to your backup program from CD or USB. That way, the hard drive would have been a slave and written the data that was on it without changing data in the process. Once backed up, you could have restored to that original at any time once you had found out where to look for the problem, assuming you couldn’t fix it from the state at the time.

PG: edited to correct the bad link.

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I have corrected the garbled URL in my previous post, so it now makes sense. I must also admit to having become confused myself about the problem discussed in that thread, and it works perfectly well after all, and I must get back to learning it and using it myself.

The program referred to is Windows Photo Gallery, it is a part of Vista, and that may be the reason the default location for your photos is in the Saved Games folder.

If you haven’t tried it yet, I suggest that you go directly to Windows Photo Gallery from the start menu. If you spend it a bit of time with that you may be pleasantly surprised.

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