Clear history of recently opened items on exit in Windows 7/ Vista

The Start Menu has a Recent Items list that displays the last 16 files you opened. For those wanting privacy, this list can prove to be an inconvenience. However, you can edit your settings through the group policy editor. This feature can come in handy for those with one account to log in to their computer but don’t want to leave any tracks on what they were last were doing.

 

1) Access your group policy editor: Open Start command promt , and type gpedit.msc

 2) Navigate to User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Start Menu and Taskbar

3) Edit the settings for “Clear history of recently opened documents on exit.” Right click this setting and choose properties.

4) Enable this feature.

After enabling this rule, your recent items list will clear itself each time you shut down your PC, so you don’t have to worry about clearing it manually every time you log off.