Start Menu - Tips & Tricks April 03, 2001 I've come across a number of people who are running Win95 or better and just don't seem to get what the Start Menu is all about. On Win 3.1 I can remember having a several "folders' on my desktop and each one had several programs in it. But starting with Win95 the Start Menu replaced this cumbersome and messy system of accessing programs. It was supposed to be a place where you could organize access to all your programs and leave your desktop relatively icon free. Sort of like a real world desktop - is it organized or not. Many people (including myself) would say a persons desktop can be a pretty good reflection on whether a person is organized or not (others would disagree - but they're the one's with the messy desktops and of course they aren't going to admit to being disorganized). [lol] If you are into wallpaper on your desktop then for sure you don't want a bunch of lousy icons cluttering up the desktop and ruining the pretty pictures. When I.E. 5 brought us the quick launch toolbar is was intended as a means of supplementing the Start Menu by allowing us to put our most frequently launched programs on a toolbar for quick and easy program startups; once again, as a means of avoiding all those darn icons all over your desktop. The remainder of this article(s) on the Start Menu consists of tips on how to effectively organize the various components of your Start Menu. I have picked these tips up at various times over the years at such sites as Bob Cerilli's ,Axcels Max Speed ,Eshelman's We are going to be making some registry changes; so you better back it up as a first step. ______________________________ First off lets get rid of that "Click Here To Begin" caption that appear on the taskbar when you first start Windows. Start the Registry Editor .Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/ CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer .Create a binary value and call it NoStartBanner .Double-click on it and give it a value of 01 00 00 00 .You will need to repeat the same steps for HKEY_USERS/.Default/Software/Microsoft/Windows/ CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer ______________________________ And now let's Speed up the Start Menu. In the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\ desktop, Left click on desktop and if you do not see an item called MenuShowDelay then right click on the word "desktop", select add a string value and name it MenuShowDelay, use a miliseconds value less then the default of 400, I use 117,- remember smaller numbers are faster. ______________________________ Next, for ease of access, we can Create a Cascading Control Panel menu directly below the Start Button Click the Start Button once with your right mouse button. You will see a right-button context menu; click Explore with your left mouse button. An Explorer file management window will open. A directory tree should appear in the left pane, with the right pane displaying the contents of the Start Menu folder. Right-click any empty space within the right pane. A context menu should appear. Click New and then Folder. The Explorer will create a highlighted icon called New Folder. Type in the following string, all on one line, replacing the words New Folder with this new line. You must type the period, the curly braces, all four hyphens, and the hexadecimal numbers exactly as shown. After the closing curly brace, press Enter. Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} ____________________________ While we are at it let's Create a similar item for Desktop menu by following the same instructions as above but use coding below. (This gives you easy acess to your desktop without having to click your way through a lot of open program windows.) Desktop.{00021400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} ______________________________ You can also create items for the following by following the instructions above for Control panel. History: History.{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-BFF4-444553540000} Recycle Bin: Recycle Bin.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} Printers Folder: Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} These folders may be renamed without affecting the numbers, since they can't be seen (and therefore can't be changed). You can also change the name in front of the period (.) at the time you create them. Then you can just drag and drop shortcuts into your newly created folders. ------------------------------ Left Click Access to Explorer Start Menu Folder You can save yourself a few seconds by opening Windows Explorer for a working session on organizing the Start Menu via dragging & dropping, you can just right click on the START button and choose EXPLORE ______________________________ Keep all your computer "maintainance" programs in a handy location by Creating a Maintenace folder. I use this folder for shortcuts such as defrag disk, scan disk, virus scan, reg. clean, Langa Clean9x, I.E. cache clean, Windows temp clean, Ad-aware clean and several other programs I run on a regular basis to "maintain" my computer. To create this folder follow the tips above for creating, say the printers folder, only name it Maintainence. Now open Windows Explorer and create shortcuts for all the programs you want in the Maintainence folder and drag and drop them to the folder in Windows/StartMenu/Maintainance. ______________________________ If you don't like the Start Menu Scrolling approach of Win98 you can revert to cascading menus. By default, Windows 98 will show startmenu folders in a single column, with scrolling arrows at top and bottom. To force it to use multiple columns again - default in 95 - you need to edit the registry. Open regedit.exe and find the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ Current Version\explorer\Advanced. On the right-most pane, create a new dword value and name it "StartMenuScrollPrograms" (no quotes). Rightclick it, choose modify and enter "00 00 00 00" (no quotes). ______________________________ Start Menu Tip Lockergnomie Dan Milner stumbled upon a sticky trick. "When you hold down the SHIFT key while left-clicking on an icon in the Start Menu, the group will remain open so that you can select other icons without having to navigate back through the Start Menu again." This tip may only be applicable to IE4/5 users out there, but it's worth trying! Save yourself some mousing miles. ______________________________ Activating Full Window Drag ( Without Plus! ) Start Regedit Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER/ControlPanel/Desktop/ DragFullWindows On "DragFullWindows" properties change 0 to 1 ______________________________ The most time consuming thing for you to do is is establish a list of categories that make sense to you, set them up as folders under Programs and then drag and drop all your individual programs into their respective categories. I would suggest you set up a separate folder called Help Uninstall and put all the shortcuts for the help and uninstall links into respective Help and Uninstall sub-folders. If any readers have more useful tips and tricks relating to the Start Menu they would like to share; just post them under the comments section and I will add them to the list contained in this article. Hope you find these useful.