Delete Links from the Recent Projects List on the Start Page of Visual Studio 2003, 2005 and 2008

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Introduction

This article describes how to delete links from the Recent Projects list in the Start page of Visual Studio 2003/2005/2008, by accessing registry keys and doing some operations like delete and changing them.

Background

Some time ago, I wanted to eliminate some links from the Recent Projects list and I did not know how to do that. Searching the Web, I found articles describing how to delete them, but they all described a manual process: Open Regedit from Run..., etc.... So, I decided to write a small application to automate this task.

The Code

The PopulateListView Method

You could use this application or source code in your own application.

The first method is used to populate a ListView in a Form.

private void PopulateListView(string versaoVS)
       {
           RegistryKey regKey = Registry.CurrentUser;
           regKey = regKey.OpenSubKey
               ("Software\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\" + versaoVS + "\\ProjectMRUList");
           lstvRecentProjects.Items.Clear();

           if (regKey == null) return;

           foreach (string keyname in regKey.GetValueNames())
           {
               try
               {
                   ListViewItem item = new ListViewItem();
                   item.Checked = false;
                   string kname = keyname;
                   string value = (String)regKey.GetValue(kname);
                   RegistryValueKind valuekind = regKey.GetValueKind(kname);

                   lstvRecentProjects.SmallImageList = imgList;

                   item.Text = ReturnTexto(value);
                   item.Tag = valuekind;
                   item.SubItems.Add(value);
                   item.ImageIndex = ReturnImageIndex(item.Text);

                   lstvRecentProjects.Items.Add(item);
                   lstvRecentProjects.Refresh();
               }
               catch (Exception ex)
               {
                   MessageBox.Show("Exception: " + ex.Message +
                       "\r\nPlease report this Exception, " +
                       "mail to carlosaraiva@gmail.com!", "Exception",
                       MessageBoxButtons.OK,
                       MessageBoxIcon.Error);
               }
           }
       }

The DeleteRegKey Method

You could use this application or source code in your own application. The second method is used to delete a registry key after selecting a project or solution in the ListView and clicking the Delete button.

private void DeleteRegKey()
       {
           string versaoVS = null;
           if (rdbVS2003.Checked)
               versaoVS = "7.1";

           if (rdbVS2005.Checked)
               versaoVS = "8.0";

           if (rdbVS2008.Checked)
               versaoVS = "9.0";

           try
           {
               RegistryKey regKey = Registry.CurrentUser;
               regKey = regKey.OpenSubKey("Software\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\" +
                        versaoVS + "\\ProjectMRUList", true);
               bool delete = false;
               string name = "File";

               if (regKey == null) return;

               foreach (ListViewItem item in lstvRecentProjects.Items)
               {
                   if (item.Checked)
                   {
                       delete = true;
                       lstvRecentProjects.Items.Remove(item);
                       foreach (string keyname in regKey.GetValueNames())
                       {
                           regKey.DeleteValue(keyname);
                       }
                   }
               }
               if (delete)
               {
                   lstvRecentProjects.Refresh();
                   foreach (ListViewItem item in lstvRecentProjects.Items)
                   {
                       int key = item.Index + 1;
                       string keyname = name + key.ToString();
                       regKey.SetValue(keyname, item.SubItems[1].Text,
                             (RegistryValueKind)item.Tag);
                   }
               }
           }
           catch (Exception ex)
           {
               MessageBox.Show("Exception: " + ex.Message +
                       "\r\nPlease report this Exception, " +
                       "mail to carlosaraiva@gmail.com!", "Exception",
                       MessageBoxButtons.OK,
                       MessageBoxIcon.Error);
           }
       }

History

• 25^th May, 2007: Initial post
• 24^th April, 2008: Article updated