Windows 10: Please help me return my start menu and ability to search in file explorer! Classic Shell...

I am on windows 11 and I Installed a program called classic shell that is made to replace the current taskbar because I wanted to hide the clock from the taskbar, and this is not currently possible in windows 11. This program was alright, but I can't use windows clipboard with it so I decided I do not want it anymore so I uninstalled it. Then I found my start menu not working, it just does not open even if I press directly on the windows button in the taskbar or pressing the windows key. It is goneSo I was forced to install classic shell again and this time I accidentally added their classic

:)

 

[Tip]Classic Shell - Get back classic features of the Windows UI(Classic Start Menu)

You can get Classic Shell Here. It is open source and free.*Rockout :rockout:

When installing, do note that you can install the Classic Explorer and Classic Start Menu features seperately, so if you don't have use for one or the other don't install it if you want to save a little hard drive space. Though the total install only takes about 4MB with both features installed.





Now there are so many tweaks that Classic Shell offers there is no way I will be able to go over each one. But I do suggest if you are missing a UI feature from an older version of Windows that was removed from Win7, try Classic Shell, because I haven't seen a feature yet that wasn't in there. But I'm just going to go over a few features that I use and like for now.

First of all, the Classic Start Menu. It is pretty self explainitory. Right when you finish installing Classic Shell, the Classic Start menu will be active by default. Now you can set different keys to open either the Classic Start Menu or the Standard Start Menu. Personally, I usually have it set to that clicking on the start button opens the Classic Start Menu, while pushing the Windows key on my keyboard opens the Standard Start Menu.





Also, with the Classic Start menu Shutting down goes back to the classic Windows XP style.





You can access all of your settings for both Classic Explorer and Classic Start Menu by going to the program folder in the start menu.





Some of the features I use for Classic Explorer are the Up Arrow(which is enabled by default) along with disabling breadcrumbs. If you aren't sure what breadcrumbs are, look at the screenshot, breadcrumbs are the new way the address bar works in Win7, I think it was a way to eliminate the up arrow. Anyway, now that I have an up arrow again they are pretty worthless. So I disable them so that the actual path is dislayed in the address bar.





One last thing I like to do is disable the Alternate File/Folder conflict dialog boxes. I actually prefer the new style that came with Win7. By default these options are enabled, which brings up the classic style dialog box whenever you are trying to copy over a file/folder that already exists.





There are hundreds of little UI tweaks available in Classic Shell. So I would suggest you try it. If you don't like it, uninstalling it removes all the tweaks and returns everything to normal. And you can pretty much turn off every tweak you don't want, I know some people that use it just for the Up arrow in Explorer.

*Toast :toast:

 

Open-Shell (Formerly Classic-Start)

You can do the same with Classic Shell via a shortcut pinned to the main Classic Shell Start Menu.
Just create a shortcut to the W10 native menu and drag it onto the Start icon. Then place in the program list.

*Smile

 

Searching from Start Menu won't find files on separate hard drive

I should have just been using classic shell all along. Thank you for your suggestion. My main problem with 3rd party programs was that I couldn't search directly from the taskbar. Classic shell allows me to do that, and the search results are way faster and easier to access. Cortana was a huge step back.