How Do I Add a Program to My Start Menu?

The “Programs” or “All Programs” list on your Start menu is a
convenient place to find most of the software that takes the trouble to
place itself there on installation. Fortunately, it’s very easy to add
(and remove) things from your start menu.

And it starts (so to speak) by realizing that the Start Menu is really
just a folder on your hard disk.

OK, maybe two folders.

The Start Menu is really just a special way of looking at the
contents of these two folders, merged together:

Or, in Windows Vista:

If you actually take a look at those two folders in Windows Explorer
you’ll find that they contain two things: shortcuts, and
sub-folders.

• Shortcuts are the menu items that show up
  in the start menu and in its sub-menus. When you see an item to click
  on in the Start menu, what you’re really clicking on is the shortcut to
  start the indicated program or open the indicated document.
• Sub-folders are the sub-menus that you see
  in your Start Menu. So “Programs” would be a sub-folder within the
  Start menu folder, meaning that it’s displayed as a sub-menu of the
  Start menu. Similarly, “Accessories” is typically a folder within
  “Programs”, meaning that “Accessories” is displayed as a sub-menu
  within “Programs”.

  And, of course, sub-folders can contain shortcuts and more
  sub-folders.

OK, now you’re probably asking yourself “why is it merging the
contents of two different folders together when it displays the Start
Menu?”

Because Windows is a multi-user operating system.

The two folders that it merges represent Start Menu items for:

• All Users – Start menu items that are placed in
  this folder tree are displayed on the Start Menus of every user account
  that logs into the machine.
• [your user name] (replaced by your actual username
  in Windows) – Start menu items that are placed in this folder tree are
  displayed on the Start Menu only when this specific user is logged in.
  Other users do not see these start menu items.

If you’ve ever had an installation program ask you whether you
wanted the program installed for all users or just the current user,
among other things that’s telling it into which Start Menu tree it
should place the shortcuts for the software it’s installing.

Finally, we can add our own Start Menu items. We do so by creating a
shortcut in the folder that corresponds to the Start Menu sub-menu we
want the item to appear in.

Let’s say that I want to create a menu item to run the System File
Checker. I want it to be available to all users, and I want it to
appear in the “Programs” menu.

I start by opening “C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Start Menu\Programs” in Windows Explorer.

You can see that I already have many programs listed there, as my
Programs menu is quite full.

Right click anywhere therein, and then click on
New, and then Shortcut:

Here I’ve typed in the location of the program that I want to appear
on the menu. Then clicking Next we get:

Enter a name for the shortcut; this will appear as the text on the
menu item. Click Finish and we’re done.

Well, not really.

In this case, the program I’m creating a shortcut to requires a
command-line argument. We need to go back and add that.

Back in the Windows Explorer view of the Programs menu you’ll find
the new item you just created. (Often at the bottom, but occasionally
in position according to the displayed sorting order.)

Right click on that shortcut and click on
Properties. We’ll type in the additional parameter at
the end of the Target of the shortcut:

Here I’ve added ” /scannow” (note that there’s a space between
“sfc.exe” and “/scannow”). Click on OK and we’re done. Really.

Click on your Start Menu, Programs sub-menu and you should find
“System File Checker” – or whatever shortcut you created – ready for
use: