The only thing we need, besides your Windows 10 installation, is a very handy little program known as Classic Shell. 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. 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). 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.
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. Not everyone (and we’ll include ourselves in that group), however, is such a fan of the new Start Menu system. 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. 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. Maybe you love the Windows 10 Start Menu, which is essentially an extension and revision of the Windows 8 Start Menu.