I like the start button in Windows 7, specially the search feature and the ability to pin frequently used programs to both the start menu and the task bar (just right click the icon and choose “pin” or “unpin”). In Windows XP, I had all my programs on the start menu sorted into directories, so that it was easy to find any of them. I agree that the search feature makes this sort of redundant, but I am one of those people who can’t bear to see stuff just thrown into the “All Programs” menu without any attempt to organize it.

Windows 7 Start Menu

So I rearranged the programs in the All Programs list on the Start Menu to look more like XP. The image on the left shows the Start Menu, and the image on the right shows what happens when you click or hover over “All Programs”. As you can see, the programs have been arranged into directories, like “Communications”, “Utilities”, etc. This makes it much easier for me to find programs, and to keep track exactly what I have on this machine.

Here’s how to do it. Like Windows XP, Windows 7 also keeps program short cut locations in two places, depending on whether the program was installed just for the current user or for all users. However, the two locations are different in Windows 7.

Programs installed for All Users now go to:

 C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.

Programs installed for your user account only go to:

 C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.

Since most programs are installed by default for all users, the easier way is to go to the first location and make directories there. I typically make the directories “Office” (for MS Office, and related stuff such as font managers, scanning and OCR, etc.), “Viewers and Players” (for anything used purely for viewing a file, such as video and DVD players, audio and mp3 players, file viewers such as PDF, XPS, Lit viewers, etc.), “Communication” (for all web browsers, IRC, instant messengers, fax or terminal apps, etc.), and “Utilities” (for a bunch of miscellaneous stuff). Each directory can be nested, for example “Utilities” has nested subdirectories containing programs related to file/disk compression, disk operations (such as defrag, mounting virtual volumes, etc.), system (such as CPU-Z, Sisoft Sandra, Memtest and Prime95, etc.), hardware (such as mouse or keyboard settings, CoreTemp, Speedfan, etc.), and security (such as virus scanner and firewall, packet sniffer, Spybot, etc.).

Not only does it make easier to find programs, because you know exactly where to go instead of scanning a long list, it also makes it very easy to tell which programs you have installed. I know there are other ways of doing this, such as using the search feature, or checking Control Panel for installed programs. But I like stuff organized. And after a while, I tend to have so many programs installed that there’s no way I’d remember their names to search, nor at times even recognize their function if I happened to see the name in Control Panel. But if I have the Start Menu organized, then if I see a listing such as Start Menu > Programs > Video > VirtualDub, then I instantly recognize that VirtualDub was that program I downloaded off the web six months ago to edit videos.