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