I was recently reading through the forums at the excellent Windows 7 forum site sevenforums.com and one of the posts mentioned an amazing, open-source app called Classic Shell which “fixes” several changes in Windows 7. From the project’s main page:
Classic Shell is a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but not anymore. It brings back the classic start menu that Windows 7 doesn’t support, adds a toolbar for Windows Explorer in Vista and Windows 7 like the one in Windows XP and adds couple more smaller features.
The new Start Menu in Windows 7 really got to the point that it was annoying to me. I like to have a customized Start Menu with exactly the options I want. I normally create my own folders for various categories of applications and then copy shortcuts for the applications into them, leaving the original menu intact. I guess this is a carryover from my heavy use of Linux, which usually groups applications in menus based on category. This really makes much more sense if you think about it. Here is how I do it.
First, I make sure than there are no pinned icons in the Start Menu. Then, I create the following folders and subfolders under:
AppData->Roaming->Microsoft->Windows-Start Menu
01 Peripherals Camcorder Camera Printer-Scanner Webcam 02 Office 03 Web 04 Audio 05 Graphics 06 Viewers 07 Games 09 Utilities 10 System & Security
After this, I move all the icons which are in the Start Menu white area above the All Programs submenu into these various folders based upon category. This clears up the Start Menu. Then install Classic Shell and you should see the new Start Menu and the custom folders above will be at the very top which is very convenient. You can also put shortcuts directly under AppData->Roaming->Microsoft->Windows-Start Menu (I do this for a couple of frequently-used apps) and they will appear directly under the folders you created.
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