All Programs in start menu gone

When I go to start; all programs, there is now nothing there. It is blank. No more accessories, Word, anything. Where did they all go. I am on a dell 4000 laptop running XP Pro. They are gone from all user accts including the main administrator log on. They were there 3 days ago.

Mixerbobc

 

If you have System Restore enabled, revert to a time before this happened.

If not, see this.

 

Thanks. This was my son's college computer and system restore was not on. I had gone to your link before and every was ok in the registry. Thanks for your help The All Programs button is there but when I select it, none of the programs apprear.

 

Are the Start Menu\Programs folders for the current user and All Users possibly hidden?

show hidden files and folders

 

Thanks Pete

All the registry entries look correct. I ran the regsvr and now I see the 5 or 6 pgms I have installed - new IE 7, etc. About 6 pgms. But none of the others are there. Like "Accessories" system tools, defrag, stuff like that. Before I got the computer my son copied his pics and music to his new computer. Could he have MOVED some folder that contained this info? All of the pgms that I cannot see are listed in the add/remove pgms area.

 

Thanks Pete.

I tried the first option. When I run the pgm I get a runtime error 429 "active x component can't create object. "

Tried second option. Inserted XP disk as instructed. Clicked finished. Still none those appeared in the all pgms window. It looked like the first option was an automated version of the second option. I will try option 2 again.

Tried the third option. When I do that and look in the start folder, it is empty. When I look in the sys tools folder, only IE is there, even after doing opt 2. The only thing in the entertainment folder is Win media player.