If there’s one complaint you can expect to hear when a new version of Windows rolls out, it’s “What did they do to the Start Menu?” If you just want the start menu in Windows 10 to look and function the way the Windows 7 Start Menu did, we’re here to help.
Why Do I Want To Do This?
Maybe you love the Windows 10 Start Menu, which is essentially an extension and revision of the Windows 8 Start Menu. Perhaps the tile-based Metro UI system doesn’t irritate you and you don’t have a problem with the removal of the traditional Start Menu styling. If so this tutorial certainly isn’t for you and it’s great that the new layout doesn’t bother you or fill you fits of nostalgia for the GUIs of yesteryear.
Not everyone (and we’ll include ourselves in that group), however, is such a fan of the new Start Menu system. Some people learned how to wrestle with the Start Menu back in Windows 8 and they’ll take that experience with them to Windows 10. Most people skipped Windows 8 altogether though and the massive rollout of Windows 10 is going to send them slamming headlong into a totally new Start Menu paradigm that doesn’t suit their workstyle or sensibilities about what a Start Menu should be in the first place. If you’re among those new Windows 10 users that want nothing to do with the new menu, we’re here to help sort things out.
Now, before we proceed, we do want to make it clear that just because we’re not huge fans of what Microsoft has done with the Windows 10 Start Menu (and the Windows 8 menu before that) doesn’t mean we’re outright negative toward Windows 10 in general. We’ve installed Windows 10 on everything from desktop PCs to our aging ultrabook laptop and have been rather impressed with the improvements found therein (that old ultrabook hasn’t run so snappy since, well, ever).
What Do I Need?
Thankfully we won’t be doing any mucking about in the registry, there’s no hand-editing of any variables or values, and you won’t have to make any sacrifices to ensure the process works smoothly.
The only thing we need, besides your Windows 10 installation, is a very handy little program known as Classic Shell. The Classic Shell program includes both an overhaul to the Start Menu system that allows you to switch out the Windows 8/Windows 10 system for the classic single column Start Menu that harkens all the way back to Windows XP, a two-column arrangement, and the Windows 7 style.
In addition to adjusting the Start Menu, the focus of our tutorial today, the Classic Shell system includes not only the Classic Start Menu but Classic Explorer (a package of tweaks and adjustments for the Windows Explorer experience). So far we haven’t felt much compulsion to dig into changing the way Windows 10 handles Windows Explorer but the tweaks are there if you’d like to dig into them.
You can download Classic Shell at the project homepage here. As of the publication of this article we recommend using the beta release as it will have the most current adjustments for Windows 10. Once Windows 10 has been officially released for awhile the changes will be less frequent and the beta adjustments in the program will be folded into the stable release.
Update: Classic Shell is no longer being developed, but volunteers are now maintaining the program under the name Open Shell. You’ll probably want to try that instead.
Before we jump into the actual process though, we’d like to take a minute to encourage you to donate a few buck to the Classic Shell project if you find the Classic Shell useful. The program has been chugging along for years (since 2009), it’s free, and it’s maintained and curated by a single guy. It’s a lot easier to keep maintaining and updating a long running project when enough of your users care enough to help keep the lights turned on.
Watch Video Tutorial in Hindi
Download Classic Shell
Installing and Configuring Classic Shell
Download the installation executable from the project homepage, linked in the previous section, and run it. While you can opt to not install individual elements (like the Classic Explorer components) they aren’t activated until you turn them on so there is little harm in installing the entire package in one swoop.
Once the installation is complete, you begin the Start Menu configuration process by, intuitively, clicking on the Start Button on the toolbar. The following menu will pop up.
Here you can opt to adopt the Classic, Classic with two columns, or Windows 7 style menu. As the goal of this tutorial is to recreate the Windows 7 style, we’ll leave it as the default. We’ll return to this menu in a moment, but for now simply confirm you have Windows 7 selected and click OK.
Now let’s open up the Start Menu by clicking on the Start Button again.
We kept the screenshot above to the exact same scale as the Windows 10 Start Menu screenshot in the introduction of article. Not only is the Start Menu nice and compact but the Classic Shell team has thoughtfully included a Metro-themed skin (that sets as the default at that). We get exactly the same layout and comfortable familiarity of the Windows 7 menu but in a nice theme that meshes with the other UI tweaks in Windows 10.
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Very nice
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