Editing the Registry to Fix the Context Menu

[iainelder]

This is what I see when I right-click an MP3 file:



I want to remove the following items: 'Add to Sync List', 'Add to Burn List', 'Add to Now Playing List', 'Add to Playlist...', and 'Play with Media Player'. There is no way to do this in the 'File Types' tab of XP's 'Folder Options', as these menu items are not shown.

On this forum, I was recommended to try a program called 'Context Editor'. Unfortunately, it was no help.

I'm not very confident about registry editing, but I had a dig through the registry to see what I could find.

The problem is that what is in the registry at '\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mp3file\' doesn't correspond to what I see in the right-click menu above. The key '.\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\' is empty. Even foobar2000's options aren't there.

I searched for 'foobar2000' and discovered that it has created new file types for its own commands instead of adding them to the existing file types. For example, foobar2000's commands for MP3s are under 'My Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\foobar2000.MP3'.

I saerched for the string 'Now Playing List' and no results were returned. I suspect that these are more deeply buried and concealed in the registry than most commands.

I searched for more 'mp3' keys and found many. 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp3' is empty. Two promising ones are 'My Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D2923B86-15F1-46FF-A19A-DE825F919576}\SupportedExtension\.mp3' and 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Media Type\Extensions\.mp3'. These keys contain extensions and alphanumerics for many media types; I suppose the alphanumerics tell Windows what do do with context menus of the extensions.

I'm no registry expert, and won't touch these keys without knowing what I'm doing.

Is anyone here experienced enough at registry hacking to tell me which keys I have to change in order to fix this?

Thank you for any help.

[iainelder]

Sorry, it's okay. After a new plan of attack, I fixed it myself.

This forum thread explains exactly what has to be done to delete the context menu entries.

Thanks anyway.