Start Menu Annoyances

hi guys, i pinned several shortcuts to my start menu in windows xp pro sp2. I moved the program that they were linked to, however i cant delete the shorcuts now. The shortcuts now display the unknown filetype icon. If i click them it says "the item you have selected is unavaiable, It might have been moved renamed or deleted do you wish to remove it from the list?" I select yes but it doesnt delete it. If I try to manually remove them nothing happens. Its infuriating! Anyone got any ideas?

When you modify the 'pinned' area of the Start menu, three values under the following key in the registry...

HKEY_LOCAL_USER | Software | Microsoft | Windows | CurrentVersion | Explorer | StartPage

... are modified (or at least two of the three are, being the first and third Binary values). The value names and types are:

Favorites... REG_BINARY
FavoritesChanges... REG_DWORD
FavoritesResolve... REG_BINARY

When you double click on either the Favorites or FavoritesResolve Binary values, in the Edit Binary Value dialog that opens you'll be able to see bits of text in the Value data field that refer to your pinned items. Back up the entire key (highlight the StartPage key, and select File --> Export), then delete the three above listed values (you may be able to keep the FavoritesChanges DWORD, since the Value data of either 1 or 0 only toggles the option to ON or OFF). You'll need to reboot for the changes to take effect, in order that Windows can rebuild the values.

thanks for that..... quick and well described fix that actually works! theres hope for net forums yet thanks!