The Desktop Cleanup Wizard helps free your desktop from shortcuts that you do not use. It runs every 60 days to check if you have unused shortcuts on your Desktop.Â
You can choose to enable the Desktop Cleanup Wizard if you’d like to remove the shortcuts without any harm to the installed program. Or, if you find the Wizard annoying, you can also choose to disable the program.
Before making any changes to your registry, you should create a back-up. Should any issue arise, you will be able to restore your registry to the original settings.
The steps are pretty straightforward.
- Go to Start. Next, go to Run and enter regedit.
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER is found at the left side of the box. Expand this folder.
- Go to Software. Expand Software to get to the Microsoft folder.
- Expand Microsoft. Go to the Windows folder. You should also expand this folder.
- Now look for CurrentVersion. Expand this and go to the Explorer folder.
- You will find Desktop under the Explorer folder. Expand Desktop.
- This will take you to CleanupWiz.
- Check the right hand side of the box. If you see NoRun, go directly to step nine. If you do not, follow the steps below:
– Right click on the right hand side of the box. Select New and then select DWORD.
– Rename the new DWORD value NoRun. You can also right click on the new DWORD value and select Rename to change the value name. - Double click on NoRun. A new box will pop up. Enter 0 to enable the Desktop Cleanup Wizard to run. If you don’t want the Desktop Cleanup Wizard to run, enter 1.
- Exit registry and reboot.