Deleting Menu Folders

[CrazyCanuck,Eh?]

During an unattended setup, i want to delete folders from the Programs menu. Not just the shortcuts but the whole folder to prevent unwanted bloat of folders I do not need such as Winzip, 7-zip and any others. This includes from all the profiles. What would i put in my cleanup.cmd to do this for each user profile?

[NOTS3W]

Those folders can be found in "%UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs" or in "%AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs". From a batch file like cleanup.cmd, just delete them (rmdir or rd) with the switches /S and /Q to delete each unwanted folder and any sub-folders it may contain, and do so without prompting for confirmation.

If you're not sure which profile a folder is in, you could delete it from both but you'll be unnecessarily deleting a number of folders that don't exist:

RD /S /Q "%UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\folder_to_delete"
RD /S /Q "%AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\folder_to_delete"
RD /S /Q "%UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\next_folder_to_delete"
RD /S /Q "%AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\next_folder_to_delete"
RD /S /Q "%UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\another_folder_to_delete"
RD /S /Q "%AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\another_folder_to_delete"

%UserProfile% is equivalent to C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)

%AllUsersProfile% is the same as C:\Documents and Settings\All Users

You can also do this to create (mkdir or md) new folders if you want to consolidate things. I create a Media Players folder on my Programs menu then put shortcuts to all of my media players there. I also make a Ripping Tools folder for things like DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, DVD Flick, etc.

Ray

[NOTS3W]

BTW, deleting those folders will only delete the shortcuts they contain. The programs will still be installed on your system.

[Peteski]

you can take out the guess work of whether its all users or local user by viewing its location via folder properties.