Start Menu - making All Programs a menu?

Just moved to Windows 7.

We're told over and over that the new start menu is better in every conceivable way, but the truth is, for a keyboard oriented power user like me, it truly sucks. At least, the default setup, and all the customizations I've attempted, truly suck swamp water.

In XP, I configured all my programs to be accessible in 3 keypresses. Eg. by putting Notepad under Start > Tools > Notepad, I could bring it up in a split second by pressing Windows Key, T, N - likewise for the ~20 other programs I have. I've had this for 8 years and it's ingrained in my style, but more importantly, it is genuinely highly efficient.

I've tried my darndest in W7 to recreate this. However several things are in the way:

1) After the windows key, the Search box has the focus. So no matter what you type in, it isn't shortcutting through the programs menu, it's typing in a search query.

2) I can't seem to create my own top level menus under the start menu (like "tools", "office" etc).

3) The All Programs link doesn't open up a menu with sub menus etc - just lists them in a single list. Maybe typical users prefer this (fair enough) but it's brain damagingly irritating for a power user, as you lose all sense of hierarchy and location.

Can anyone suggest how I could recreate my old XP behavior in W7?

-old-fashioned Brendan


P.S. Honestly I'm astonished that Microsoft have *forced* such a major change on their users. I think the new start menu has some great elements for a typical home users, but they shouldn't have limited the options for hard core users in the process.

It sorta annoyed me at first, but I had too many programs installed and too few shortcuts memorized so I had to adapt to the change. I tried the Windows Classic theme on another win7 machine but apparently the "improved" start menu got backported to classic as well, meh.

Call my obsessive, but I want my use of W7 to be as fine tuned and efficient as XP.

Like I said - I can open Notepad in a split second clicking Windows Key, T, N - and it's efficient for me to open pretty much any other program I use.

How can I replicate this efficiency in W7?


Thanks Brink - I'll check out Classic Shell and let you know how it goes.

Brink - the Classic Shell was exactly what I was after, and works a treat. Thanks for the link.

I am now happy with Windows 7 :)

i dot get it what are you trying to do? I sent up keyboard shortcuts for everything i barely use the start menu.

evo1087 said:

i dot get it what are you trying to do? I sent up keyboard shortcuts for everything i barely use the start menu.

I have 33 programs accessible by quick, descriptive keyboard shortcuts. Windows + key + key is the quickest way to be able to access them all.

How do you access yours?

Thanks brink! However, I've been hanging on to the classic interface for way too long anyway. I mean, I never used the XP interface and that was like an entire decade (ouch). So when 7 came along I told myself to stop screwing around and just rolled with it.

I totally understand what blowfly feels for the shortcuts, but I've managed to just let it go. My reasoning is since I'm not getting younger and I can't remember all my shortcuts anyway since I constantly install and uninstall stuff, win7's search ends up being more helpful. E.g. for opening Chrome I used to press winkey + P + G + enter. Now I go winkey then type Chrome. Yeah, it's more keys, but I type stupid fast anyway plus this way I don't have to remember arcane key combos, I just type in the program name.

I actually used this more for my IE bookmarks; I'd prefix them so instead of "forum X" it would read "A - forum X". So I could get at it by hitting alt + A (to open up favourites) then hitting A again to get to that one. Get enough bookmarks accumulated over the years and I had stuff like alt + A + A + 5 to get to one place, then alt + A + G + G to another. Didn't have to touch my mouse ever