Taskbar Classic Start Menu for Windows

A lot of changes came with Windows 7, including changes to the Start menu. Taskbar Classic Start Menu lets you go back in time to the days of Windows 2000 and Me, by way of a system notification icon. The menu gives you the best of both Windows worlds, but we found one glitch that prevents us from recommending it.

When installed, Taskbar Classic Start Menu appears as an icon in your system tray. Right-clicking it introduces a Start menu that indeed looks and acts just like Windows 2000 and Me menus. You'll find the Run, Settings, Programs, Favorites, and Recent functions right where you left them before the transition to the newer versions. The Settings menu is where you go to change the appearance to various Windows XP, 2000, 95, and NT themes. But right off the bat, we were annoyed by the sound effects whenever we made a selection in the new Start menu, which we thought was an easy fix by visiting the Settings menu and disabling the Enable sounds feature, as well as the No sound option. It seemed to work for a few minutes, and then out of nowhere, the sound effects came back. So we went back into the Settings menu and disabled the sound again, which seemed to do the trick...for a minute or two, and then the sound effects came back again. Though the program itself is fairly self-explanatory, we couldn't locate a Help feature of any kind to help us troubleshoot our issues.

If you don't mind keeping your sound turned off to deal with the sound effects issue, Taskbar Classic Start Menu might be worth a shot. Otherwise, we say, skip it.

Taskbar Classic Start Menu installs a desktop icon without your permission, but it uninstalls cleanly.