How to Remove An Item from RUN Dialog Box History / MRU List in Windows?

All of us use Start menu RUN dialog box to enter frequent commands in Windows. It stores the entered commands in its history and suggests them whenever we enter them next time.

RUN_Dialog_Box_History.jpg

Although its a good feature but sometimes we might want to remove a particular item from the history list because of some obvious reasons.

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Here is a simple and safe method to remove any desired item from RUN history / MRU (Most Recently Used) list:

1. Type regedit in RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU

In right-side pane, you’ll see various String values with the name a, b, c, etc and their value will be set to the command which you entered in RUN dialog box:

RunMRU_List_in_Registry.jpg

3. You just need to delete the String value which contains the command which you want to remove from RUN history list. e.g. if you want to remove “msconfig” command from RUN history, then delete the “b” String value.

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4. That’s it. Now the deleted command will no longer appear in RUN MRU list.

Published in: Troubleshooting Guides, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. Ok guys, I am sure that you hate clearing out the commands stored in the registry. So, the best way to disable this from hapenning is if you block run from ever doing this. How? Simple, change the permissions on the runmru folder. All you need to do is right-click the runmru folder. Click on “permissions”. Go to “Advanced”. Then double-click on the top-most tab of the users and system. Disable inherited permissions. Ensure that there are no tabs in the box that are allowed to access the runmru folder. Then whenever you run anything (1) Run will not have a history of it and (2) it won’t be there, ready for you to hit enter again and open whatever you last openned! Hope I was of use!

  2. Ok guys, I am back again, one last thing. Note that my previous commment ^^ Is difficult to reverse unless you have developer experience with windows. In other words, don’t try this unless you are sure that you want this (almost irreversible) effect.

  3. This process works for clearing the initial window of its entries. However, if I type in a drive letter (just one character), it shows a list of the most recently accessed files on that drive. How can this be prevented ?

  4. what a lovely explanation it is… Just now i have cleared my recent history for which i was struggling last three days…

    Thanks askvg for this lovely HELP

  5. Askvg is one of the sweetest websites on the internet. Always offer a solution for an annoying problem which countless and stupid Microsoft forums never have an answer for.

  6. When you enter \ character in the RUN dropdown i can see the history.

    However In regedit there is no entry for these records which i am seeing in the run history.

  7. Hi
    I tried all the above options but still, I’m getting websites links. Can you suggest me how to delete this links.

  8. RunMRU folder just has 2 entries: (Default) and MRUList. MRUList just has the alphabet in it for some reason. So there is nothing to delete as above.

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