Microsoft has removed the classic start menu style from Windows 7. Even though the new Start Menu is very good and works perfectly but we still love the classic start menu. After all, old habits die-hard and also we are so used to using the classic menu. So the hunt begin to find out how to get back the classic start menu in Windows 7.
Luckily, we found two utilities to get back the classic menu in Windows 7. The first one is CSMenu and the second one is Classic Windows Start Menu or CWSM. Both the utilities does the work perfectly.
CSMenu is a little application which acts like the classic start menu. You can see CSMenu in action from the screenshot below:
CSMenu comes as a standard windows installer and the installation process is simple.
[ Download CSMenu ]
Note: During installation make sure to select “Custom Installation” option and uncheck the options to install the Ask Toolbar check boxes.
CWSM is a little different from CSMenu. It is much more customizable, looks pretty and is much more customizable. See CWSM in action below:
As you can see above it supports Aero unlike CSMenu. You can change the text, background image, the logo present in the left-side, icons, etc. You can modify logoffback.bmp, ribbon.bmp, shutdownback.bmp that came within the .zip file to change the Log off dialog box, left-side logo and Shutdown dialog box background. Further, to make CWSM look more glassy, change the strings.xml file that came with it and set:
<MENU BACKGROUND PRESENT>Yes</> to <MENU BACKGROUND PRESENT>No</>.
Once you have customized CWSM, restart it to see the changes. To exit from CWSM, right-click on Start Orb and click on the Yes button in confirmation dialog box. Run cwsm.exe again. CWSM may also work in older Windows versions.
[ Download CWSM ]
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