title: How can one manipulate the Start menu's "Recently Used Programs" list programmatically?
body: <p>I'm looking for a way to make programs appear (frequently) used, so that they would appear in the Start menu's "Recently Used Programs" (after a zero touch install).</p>
  
  <p>I'm trying to figure out how Windows stores information related to program usage frequency.</p>
  
  <p>The only (maybe) related things I can see being changed when I run a program from the Start Menu, are some (seemingly undocumented) BagMRU registry keys which have no meaning to me.</p>
  
  <p>I did found <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/nov04/hey1111.mspx" rel="noreferrer">a way</a> to get programs pinned, but that's not what I'm looking for here.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update: please see the comments for explanation why I would like to do this...</strong></p>
  
  <p><strong>Update2</strong>: I'm making progress... Now I know where they keys are stored and I know that the keys are <strong>ROT13</strong> "encrypted". And the second 4 bytes of the values are the counter..    <a href="http://blog.didierstevens.com/2006/07/24/rot13-is-used-in-windows-you%E2%80%99re-joking/" rel="noreferrer">http://blog.didierstevens.com/2006/07/24/rot13-is-used-in-windows-you’re-joking/</a></p>
  
  <p>This <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13" rel="noreferrer"><strong>ROT13</strong>(<em>wikipedia</em>)</a> encryption thing is funny. Well, of course there is a reason. They don't want you to be able to find it by simple search.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://blog.didierstevens.com/2009/01/18/quickpost-windows-7-beta-rot13-replaced-with-vigenere-great-joke/" rel="noreferrer">Lol, and in windows 7 they are using Vigenère crypto!</a> much better :D</p>