Using it now and is definitely the most complete, effective and bug-free implementation for Windows 8 that I've tried so far including Start8, viStart, and a program that just allows you to put a shortcut to the Start Screen in your taskbar.
Basically it's the newest greatest thing since sliced bread. I'd probably use it even under Windows 7 now that I'm aware of it. Of course, I very quickly thought of some other nice features, which I don't *believe* would be too hard to implement. I might, gently, send these suggestions to the program's author. There's a couple things from the Vista/7 Start Menu that it doesn't have yet, but it's not important. Most noticeably are an option to display the "other" user folders that the Start Menu doesn't display by default, i.e. all others besides the main (user name), Documents, Pictures and Music. I know it's relatively redundant with the main (user name) folder, but I preferred to have direct access to each of them from there. For good or for bad...the program has the familiar old context option (from XP and before) to Sort by Name in the Start Menu, including the recently used programs listing on the left side of the what would be the default Windows 7/Vista/XP (I think it had it, remind me) Start Menu look. Just as XP did, any new items added after you sorted, will not be sorted until you sort it manually again. However, the program also has a Auto Arrange checkbox below Sort by Name, which does the same except also does so for everything added after. The good or bad part is that so far, it appears that each and every cascading sub-folder of the Start Menu is individually configurable but by default all the folders do NOT have Auto Arrange turned on, and turning it on a parent/root Start Menu folder doesn't cascade the option down to the sub-menus. Not too serious, and given the program's advantages, I'll put up with it. I'll find out tomorrow if loading the program's configuration that I export into a new installation also reloads every single folder's configuration for Auto Arrange, although I don't know if that would only work if the folder only already existed at the time you load the settings, but I'll test that too. What would be really cool is if the program also automatically moves the shortcuts I always move manually to my preferred hierarchy of shortcuts and folders, although that's a stretch. FYI looking through the program's exported XML configuration file, I don't see anything having to do with Auto Arrange.
I don't know if there is an official Windows 8 - Classic Shell thread but I think this start menu replacement is the closest thing to the actual start menu. When I first installed it on Windows 8 it worked like a charm. But now i tried it again and now the search box doesn't work properly anymore. I tried resetting the settings to default but that didnt help either. I think when I tried it for the first time when i typed "cmd" it showed cmd.exe just like in windows 7 startmenu (well in the little box that is) but now it just won't show files anymore, just the links in the startmenu and the control panel (like 'what happens if i close the lid'). Has anyone the same problem? Does searching for things like 'services.msc' and 'cmd.exe' work for you? Thanks
Nice solution. Though I gotta say, I am totally over the whole start menu thing. I never thought I'd get used to it, but I don't really miss it.
The transparency effect isn't working with windows 8 RTM , I think it's something to do with Aero theme being removed from RTM and this quote from classic shell "When Aero is disabled, "alpha" and "glass" are converted to "region" maybe somebody can fix this so it's transparent again ?
This is actually pretty good because I still have access to the Metro Start screen and I have also have access to the Windows 7 Style start menu which is good.