From Windows XP to Windows 7, the Start menu showed the programs it thinks you’ve run most frequently, by employing a conceptually simple but complicated-in-practice algorithm. You can right-click an item on the menu and select Remove from this list. What exactly does this option do? Does it reset the points back to zero, or does it ban the program from the Start menu for all eternity, or something in between? It resets the points back to zero and marks the program as has never been run by the user. This causes it to vanish from the frequently-used list, but if you start running it, it will start earning points again, and if you keep running it enough, it will claw its way back onto your frequently-used list.

If you want to ban a program, you can mark it as No­Start­Page.