programs in program files x86 not in start menu

Last week I bought a new computer and it was working great - windows 7 pro.

a few days ago I installed a few apps - netbeans and mozilla firefox. They were both working fine until this morning. I can't find the icons for these programson my desktop or my start menue.

I did a restore but that didnt help. I finally found these programs in my program files (x86) folder. It seems like I somehow set windows to not look in the Programs files (x86) folder when showing program contents.

What did I break and how do i get these programs back? I would prefer to launch them from the desktop/start menue rather than navigating through the programs x86 folder.

Please be kind. I am new to w7.

Did you try reinstalling the apps?

I did try to reinstall netbeans but i ran into a glitch.
I thought i might have problems if i tried to reinstall without deinstalling first, so i first went to the contol panel to remove netbeans. it wasnt listed, so i just tried to reinstall it, but the installer told me that netbeans was already installed, and wouldn't let me go further.

I havent tried mozilla ffox yet (getting that to work is lower priority).

Any othher suggestions? I would have thought there is just a setting someplace about what directories to include in the start menue.

Hum... If they aren't in the CP either, you have a registry problem.
But if the system restore didn't work either, I can only think of a reinstall. Sorry.

Though, I'm not 100% sure, so best to wait for any other suggestion...

This is not a real answer to your problem and I apologize but I had a similar thing happen to me with a program I had installed in XP operating system.
Almost same symptoms as you described, program did not show up in the program lists nor in the add/remove section of control panel.
Still had an icon on the desktop but it would not load anything, when I tried re-installing the program it told me I had to remove the previous version first.
In the end I went into start>run> regedit and from there did a search for any references to the program and manually deleted them.
Then I was able to re-install the program successfully.

Killing a fly with a boulder? I'd start simplest first.

If the program is installed, with windows explorer, find the executable in the program files (x86) directory and right click on it. Select create shortcut ... on desktop.

Now dbl-click the icon and see if the program runs properly.

IF NOT, then the uninstall will be needed (and Mychael's brute force method of deleting the program files (x86)\netbeans folder and then deleting all entries in the registry will still probably be easier than fire cat's complete reinstall of your OS and all your programs - just back up the registry before you start "cleaning" it because if you screw up the registry and don't have the backup to restore then you will be using Fire cat's method.).

IF IT DOES WORK, then you can also copy the shortcut to the start menu by dragging it from the desktop and letting go once you see a red line where you want it dropped in the start menu.