Is there a way to customize the right click menus in Vista?

QUESTION:
I like my Vista computer but I’m wondering, is there a way to customize the right click menus. When I right click a file, there are a bunch of options there that I never, ever use but I have to wade through all that to get to the one I want. Can I remove some of them?

ANSWER:
Many applications install their own items in the right context menu when you install them. After a while, if you install lots of these apps, your context menu can get pretty cluttered up, and some of these menu items may be unused and unwanted. Even if you uninstall the programs, the items may stay in the context menu.

You can remove items from the context menu by editing the registry. The items are contained in the following key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ * \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers

Delete the keys for the items you don’t want. Be sure to back up the registry before editing it.

If you’re not comfortable with editing the registry, there are free third party tools you can use to remove and add context menu items. One is FileMenu Tools, which you can download at

http://www.lopesoft.com/en/

*Thanks again to Deb Shinder for her help with this one!