How to stop any particular program to appear in frequently used programs list?

Today tip will help you to manage the list of most often accessed programs in windows XP and 2003. You can stop any specific computer programs which are appearing on most frequent list of start menu. For example if you want, your windows media player is never showing on the most frequent programs list when you play any movie, so  you can hide this entry from others using these settings. Your family members and co-workers can find out your programs browsing activities with clicking on documents list menu. However this tip is very useful for you, if you are sharing your computer with others or you do not want that other persons know about your last visited documents history. To clear the history of any specific program automatically, edit the computer registry keys. 

Follow the given steps for configuration to stop any particular program to appear in frequently used programs list: 

To edit the computer registry, first you should log onto your computer with administrative rights.

Click Start button and type regedit in Run option then press Enter for next. 

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\Program name.exe 

Here are the executable file names for others commonly used programs:

For MS Word        = windword.exe

For MS Excel       = excel.exe

For Explorer         = iexplorer.exe

For Notepad         = notepad.exe

For Media Player  = wmplayer.exe

In this case, we are trying to control windows media player is never showing on the most frequent used program list when we play any movie.

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\wmplayer.exe

Now in right side panel, click right to create a new String value with the name NoStartPage and close registry editor.

But next time, if you want to disable this functionality then simply delete the NoStartPage string item.

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.