Just stop making Open-Shell's life difficult so they can just write it for you.

Then you can buy them up (like Sysinternals) or even just incorporate their code if you want.

My start menu isn't going to become that Windows 11 junk, ever.

While we're at it, get rid of the myriad dependencies it has for indexing and searching everything on your disk and online in case you type it into the search box... pointless waste of resources.

We all know they'll wreck it and then extinguish it.

Open-Shell (or Classic Shell) has been a godsend for me since Windows 7. Along with Ram Michaels 7-Taskbar Tweaker.

'make Start menu great again'

Too late Windows 11 already 'grates' and has done from day one !!!

Windows 11 needs to be hit, repeatably, with a large UI stick ... to remove the 'Fischer-Price' interface and focus on usability.

This means get rid of the 15 levels of indirection to hide menus and settings ....Control-shift left mouse click while scrolling right and squinting with your right eye *only* is not intuitive or logical !!!

Instead of throwing in an 'AI' interface (don't get me started on this one !!!), how about fixing once and for all the UI to be consistent 'everywhere' and stop the unhelpful hiding of menus/settings etc

BTW: Does putting in an 'AI' interface not highlight that the UI is so bad that you need an 'Intelligent [cough spit] Search engine' to find what you are looking for as it so non-intuitive.

And breath again .... calmly ... in and out .... in and out ....

:)

@AC

"Windows 11 needs to be hit, repeatably, with a large UI stick ... to remove the 'Fischer-Price' interface and focus on usability."

I havnt seen it and so far avoided win 11, but your comment reminded me of the XP teletubbies design and how nice it was to have an option for 'classic' mode. Maybe windows needs an option for 'normal' and their 'new and amazing' interfaces in every version.

Maybe windows needs an option for 'normal' and their 'new and amazing' interfaces in every version.

And for that I would even welcome telemetry (limited to this part) so the Windows Manglement can be beaten into submission with the figures about what the majority really wants and uses.

Maybe windows needs an option for 'normal' '' 'useful' and their 'new and amazing' 'brain-dead millennial-infested UI surrogate' interfaces in every version.

There, FTFY.

Although one could effectively argue that there has never been a 'useful' version of Micros~1's interfaces (plural), but I digress...

"Windows boss Mikhail Parakhin has admitted that the Start menu needs a bit of work"

Do what you like with it, but give us the Win 7 one back and also Win 2000 mode as an option.

Linux is an OS where we can choose a desktop that fits our purpose, Windows used to give choices. Now its their way of the highway.

Now its their way of the highway.

And more and more users take the highway to Linux. One of these days the wall will turn the ship.

My usage has generally been to press the start/super let in the keyboard and type the first few characters of what I'm looking to run.

Of course I also ran insiders builds for years. A couple years ago I saw an ad in the results. Since then my personal desktop has been booted on my Linux drive. I've booted into Windows twice since, once for Windows updates and then to run a firmware update for my hardware.

While but perfect, the old programs structure was better than the approaches since windows 8. I think the windows 7 start menu was probably the best they've done.

My usage has generally been to press the start/super let in the keyboard and type the first few characters of what I'm looking to run.

I recently installed NT4, the start menu not doing this confused the hell out of me for a while. :)

Agreed. I do, generally, type the first few letters of what I want in the start menu. If you have a lot of applications installed (as I do, sometimes), it can help even if your start menu is well organised. Mine would be, but MS insist on adding extra crap on the first screen.

Generally, I like Windows 11 (controversial, I know), but this annoys me. It's my computer. I built the damn thing. I have Windows 11 through a free entitlement from work, so while I didn't pay for it, it has been paid for, yet I have to put up with adverts in the start menu, and the increasing requirment to have a Microsoft account to use it. There are some things I do on my PC that don't play nicely if I'm signed in with a Microsoft account, so while I do make full use of my Microsoft account, I cannot use it to log in to the machine, but I still get regular reminders that I should be signing in with that account. I've chosen not to with good reason, It's not just I forgot to set it up.

Before you suggest Linux is an option. While I love using Linux, it isn't an option. I need some software that doesn't work well..

I think the windows 7 start menu was probably the best they've done.

Well, that explains it, then; why they trashed it and are so unwilling to bring it back.

Micros~1 is to best of class, as fish is to bicycle.

For those who are using the Start Menu and typing a few characters in, can I recommend the "PowerToys Run" module from the Microsoft PowerToys.

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/run

(If anyone used to use Launchy then this is a more-or-less direct replacement/upgrade).

... have Win 10 on them. First thing I installed after the OS was Stardock's Start10 and WindowBlinds.

Since I skipped Win 8 I just wanted the familiar Win 7 UI - nothing wrong with it that needed "improving".

Haven't come across Open-Shell until I saw the comments but from the screenshots I'd probably use it if I didn't have a Stardock licence.

If you invest the time and effort into learning to use the search function, it really does pay significant dividends. It sucked back in the Win95-7 days, so you could be forgiven for assuming it still was the same worthless function, but it actually started being useful around Win 8. The power toys version is even better and I need to train myself to start using that more. Let the computer do the work of keeping track of where things are, you just need to be able to remember a few letters of the name of whatever app you want to run. Think of it like a password manager, but for apps.

It isn't an either/or proposition.

I like an uncluttered UI (ie Stardock) without Microsoft's latest whizzy ideas - doesn't mean I dont use the Search function to open stuff up quickly when it's quicker. Often for admin tools.

Also, Microsoft missed a trick that Stardock Fences remedies - if you're working on a project that involves ed docs, speadsheets, presentations etc, it's great to be able to group them all together in a frame on the desktop.

Note, I'm not shilling for Stardock - I just love what they bring to the Win UI.

and when they change CONtrol Panel to SETtings

or WINdows update to MICrosoft update to UPDate & Security

ADD Remove Programs to APPs.

and that is just the first three that spring to mind!

Remembering the first few letters is okay i guess, up to the point MS decides to arbitrarily name it something different!

For that reason i have never used Search and prefer to know where the thing is i wish to use, then bitching about it now being behind yet another layer of BS but still the same graphically as it was in Win2000 eg network adapter settings

I gave up on the windows search when i seached for a file in a folder using the exact file name as a search term and was told it couldn't find anyhting (i think back with Win7); Windows helpfully suggested to search the WWW for my file ....

Recently i had to work with a locked down virtual desktop with Windows11 and searched for putty which i was assured was available. The search in the start menu didn't show the local executable but a number of links in to the WWW. A co-worker showed me where putty.exe was on the machine, it was working fine.

It is possible that this putty folder was simply copied from some other machine instead of running a proper msi installer but i still consider the search functionality unreliable und not useful if it doesn't find what's on the local machine.

You shouldn't need to 'invest time and effort into learning to use the search function'. It should just fucking work!

If the Enlightenment folks would like to port to windows......................

Say,,,,,, $35 lifetime subscription fee for your windows 10/11 Enlightenment interface...............

Except Mikhail Parakhin is the reason Windows is such a ad-festooned forced-junk-install mess these days. I wouldn't hold my breath.

So, going back to the Win 7 design?

I made my start menu great again a while ago - all it took was 3 words typed into a terminal:

winget install startallback

In all honesty, the reason I'm avoiding switching to Win11 is that you can't vertically-align the taskbar. Not the Start menu, the taskbar. Almost all screens are wider than they are high. If you're going to run out of screen real estate, it'll happen from top-to-bottom, not side-to-side. There's always plenty of space on the side. So putting 24 or 32 or 48 pixels of taskbar on the bottom or top edge makes no sense. I thought maybe switching from 1080p to 1440p might make me think again, but no. You always run out of vertical pixels. You never run out of horizontal pixels.

I'm petty. I know.

On top of all known start menu and taskbar complains: The UI is sluggish! Every mouse click takes longer for a response. The poor kernel guys can optimize what they want if the GUI guys produce such sluggish nonsense. You can test it by yourself: Right-click a folder in the explorer, then use the registry trick to get the "old" menu directly and try again. Explorer search is the same: I type and hit return, only to notice that my return has been ignored AGAIN and I have to hit it AGAIN. And this is not a slow machine here, and that behaviour is consistent whether the system is idle or under load.