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I've had steam installed for a long time now and have had no problems.

Recently it keeps forgetting my recently played games and only displays a single game (Age of Empires Online) there, where normally it would show several.

I'm talking about the list of games at the top of the menu when you click the notification icon, and the jump list you get when pinning steam to the start menu.

I've played many other games more recently than AoEO. I always shut down steam correctly and haven't noticed anything else at all unusual.

What could be causing this?

Is there some kind of Microsoft conspiracy at play here?

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Same thing happens to me, but the problem goes away and surfaces seemingly at random, as far as I can tell. – Aubergine Nov 6 '12 at 20:08
Same here, it appears to fix its self, then the same thing happens again. – George Duckett Nov 6 '12 at 20:17

2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

This sounds like the file storing that information got corrupted.

  • First, open the following folder in Windows Explorer:
    %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\CustomDestinations
  • Start Steam, wait for it to load, then close it again.
  • Now check the folder you've opened before. There should be one file that's been modified right now. In my case, the file name is 493e32cec2810e2e.customDestinations-ms, but you might have a different one.
  • Move it to your Recycle Bin or another folder. This way you're able to restore it, in case something breaks.
  • Restart Steam.
  • If everything worked, your jump list should be back and building once again.
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I don't have a %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent folder. If I put %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows into the run menu I get a folder with recent items but not recent. I also searched for a CustomDestinations folder anywhere within C:\Users\UserName\AppData but found nothing. I'm on windows 7. – George Duckett Nov 7 '12 at 19:24
The sub folder is hidden and shouldn't be visible in default folder view, however you should be able to open it. Maybe the missing path is part of the issue though. Open the "Recent Items" folder you've found, then click into your address bar - this should change the visible path - then add "\CustomDestinations" to the back and see what happens. – Mario Nov 7 '12 at 19:52
Hmm, I pasted in the link and it did find it, so guess it's hidden like you say. I found 2 files edited within one minute and moved them out of the folder. Then opened steam and my list is back (without me playing a game yet). Time will tell if this has sorted it! – George Duckett Nov 7 '12 at 20:40
up vote 0 down vote

This may not fix your problem, since you say it's always displaying at least one Recent item, but I ran into an issue where the Steam jump list never displayed any Recent items at all, and discovered that the option to store and display recent items had been turned off globally.

To check this option, right click the task bar and select Properties. On the Start Menu tab, make sure the "Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar" option is checked.

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It is checked, but thanks for catching another potential issue. – George Duckett Nov 7 '12 at 21:27
"This was already checked for me but I increased the amount to 20 and bam it worked :)" by annonnimous – Michel Mar 29 at 15:53

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