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For some reason my search in Windows 7 start menu has stopped displaying results from the Programs menu. Any program that was installed that put shortcuts under Start Menu >> Programs used to show up in the results at the top, however now none do and instead only files with similar names appear.

I forced Windows 7 to rebuild the file index for my entire drive, but that didn't fix the problem.

How can I fix this?

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First, right-click on the start menu orb, go to Properties, Start Menu tab, and click the Customize button. Scroll down and make sure that "Search programs and Control Panel" is checked. You can also ensure that the one just above that, "Search other files and libraries", is set to "Search with public folders".

This can still be a problem of Programs not being indexed. See the following articles :
Improve Windows searches using the index: frequently asked questions
Microsoft's Open the Search and Indexing troubleshooter

See also if this hotfix applies to your problem : The "Search programs and files" box does not display search results correctly in Windows 7. If it does, you will see a "Hotfix download available" section at the top.
For more info see Fix Windows 7 Start Menu Search Problem.

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I checked into all of these but nothing helped. I notice that a few programs show up but not all of them. Also control panel items show up. – Robert Dailey Nov 9 '11 at 16:56
This is not normal. Two comments : (1) Does this happen when you boot in Safe mode ? (2) If you have an installation DVD for Windows 7 that matches your installed service pack, you might try sfc /scannow. – harrymc Nov 9 '11 at 19:08
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