Start Menu

Start Menu

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Th e central location for your application shortcuts and many Windows features.

To Open

Desktop Start

Press the Windows logo key, if you've got one

Ctrl-Esc

The Start menu was one of Microsoft's answers to the growing size and complexity of the Windows operating system when it was introduced in Windows 95. Since then, other features have been introduced to compensate for the Start menu's inadequacies, such as the QuickLaunch toolbar and the new Windows XP-style Start menu. (See the discussion of "Style" at the beginning of this chapter.)

Here is a quick rundown of the items you'll find in the Start menu. Note that some of these items may be hidden as a result of settings described in Chapter 5. (Also see Figure 3-27.)

Figure 3-29. Start menu items can be rearranged by dragging and dropping

Programs (or All Programs)

While the Desktop is commonly used to hold icons for the most frequently used programs, the Programs menu (or All Programs menu, with the new Windows XP-style Start menu) is designed to hold icons for every program installed on your computer. See "Shortcuts", earlier in this chapter, for details.

Programs (or All Programs) Startup

To have a program run automatically when Windows starts, place a shortcut to the program in this special folder. If you have more than one user set up on your computer, you'll want to control whether the program starts up automatically for just you or for all users, so instead of dropping it right in your Start menu, open Explorer and navigate to either \Documents and Settings\{username}\Start Menu\Programs\Startup or \Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup .

Documents

The Documents menu is a list of automatically generated links to the last dozen or so documents that were opened. Click the links to open the documents in their default applications.

The shortcuts in this menu are stored in the \Documents and Settings\{username}\Recent folder. To clear this menu, delete the shortcuts in the Recent folder, or go to Control Panel Taskbar and Start Menu Start Menu tab Customize, and click Clear (or Clear List, if you're using the Windows XP-style Start menu).

For security reasons, you may wish to disable this menu; see Appendix D for information on TweakUI, which has a feature to clear this list every time Windows is shut down, or even to hide the Documents menu entirely.

Favorites

This is a mirror of the current user's Favorites folder (\Documents and Settings\{username}\Favorites ) and the All Users' Favorites folder ( \Documents and Settings\All Users\Favorites ). Although this is the same menu you'll see in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer, the shortcuts in this menu will launch whatever browser is currently registered as the default.

Internet, Email (Windows XP-style Start menu only)

These two items are user-customizable links to your favorite web browser and email program, respectively. By default, they're set to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, but can be replaced with any programs properly registered as web browsers and email clients . See Chapter 5 for details on choosing your own programs here.

Shut Down

See "Shut Down", earlier in this chapter.

Log Off

See "Log Off", earlier in this chapter.

Run

See "Run", earlier in this chapter.

Search

See "Windows Explorer" in Chapter 4.

Settings (classic Start menu only) or Control Panel (Windows XP-style Start menu only)

See "Control Panel" in Chapter 4.

Notes

• If you want to place a new shortcut in your Start menu, remove an existing shortcut from your Start menu, or rearrange your Start menu shortcuts, you can drag-drop shortcuts in your Start menu almost as easily as you can in Explorer or on your Desktop. When you start dragging, an insertion line will appear where you can drop the shortcut; if the mouse pointer changes to a circle with a line through it, you're over a portion of the Start menu that can't be customized. To drag new shortcuts into the Start menu, start dragging and hover the mouse cursor over the Start button for a second or two; it will open automatically, allowing you to complete your drag. Finally, you can right-click any shortcut in your Start menu, allowing you to delete it, change its properties, or even rename it in place. I frequently use this feature to make certain application shortcuts more accessible by placing items on the Desktop that otherwise would be buried many menus deep.

• When you first install Windows XP, the shortcuts in your Start menu will be sorted alphabetically . Any subsequent items added to your Start menu will appear at the end of the menu, and will not be sorted automatically. To sort any single menu, right-click on one of its entries and select Sort by Name . To sort all folders in your Start menu, go to Control Panel Taskbar and Start Menu Start Menu tab Classic Start menu Customize, and click Sort. (Note that this feature is only available in the Customize dialog for the Classic Start menu, so if you're using the new Windows XP-style menu, you'll need to temporarily switch to the classic menu to sort all the folders at once. (See Chapter 8 for another solution.)

• You can also add programs and folders to the top level of the Start menu by dragging and dropping their icons onto the Start button, or by waiting until the Start menu is open and then dropping items onto the space above the built-in entries (see Figure 3-28).

  Figure 3-30. Drag and drop items in your Start menu to re-order or reorganize them in place

  
  

  This will place a shortcut directly into the \Documents and Settings\{username}\Start Menu folder, as opposed to \Documents and Settings\{username}\Programs . You should do this only for programs that you use fairly often. Good programs to add there might be the Explorer and the Command Prompt (DOS). Adding folders at this level is a great way of organizing all of your programs into categories. Once you have created new folders, you can move the program shortcuts from the Start Menu Programs folders into your own folders and leave all the other shortcuts (uninstalls, readmes, etc.) behind.

• By default, dragging any files or other objects directly into the Start menu will create shortcuts to those items, which is inconsistent with the way Windows handles drag-drop elsewhere (see Chapter 2). If you're dragging an existing shortcut or a folder full of shortcuts into the Start menu, hold the Shift key to force Windows to move (or the Ctrl key to copy) the items, rather than create shortcuts to them.

• Start Programs can get fairly cluttered, since most programs add shortcuts to this menu as part of their installation process. Don't be afraid to rearrange and consolidate your shortcuts here; most of them are probably never used anyway.

• If you want programs in the Startup folder to run in a particular order, instead of putting in shortcuts to each program, create a single batch file (see Chapter 6) or a WSH Script (see Chapter 9) that launches the applications in the desired order.

• To bypass the programs in the Startup folder, hold down the Shift key while the system is booting. Keep holding it down until the Desktop has completely loaded.

• In addition to the Startup folder, there are other ways programs can be configured to run at Startup. Services (see Chapter 4) lists many background programs that are run, even if no user has logged on; the Startup folder, since it's a per-user setting, launches programs only after the user has logged in. Other locations include the Registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run .

• If you're migrating from Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, you may have become accustomed to the way menus are split into multiple columns when there are too many shortcuts. In Windows 98/Me, Windows 2000, and now Windows XP, the default is scrolling menus, which tends to be awkward . This setting can be changed by going to the Start menu, and then to Control Panel Taskbar and Start Menu Start Menu tab Customize and turning off the Scroll Programs option. (It's in the Advanced tab if you're using the Windows XP-style Start menu.)

• Shortcuts that appear in Start Programs and Start Favorites are saved for the currently logged-on user, as noted several times throughout this section. If you have more than one user configured on your machine and you want any of these items to appear for all of those users (as everyone may wish to use the installed word processor, for example), open Explorer and navigate to the \Documents and Settings folder. There's a folder for each configured user, as well as an All Users folder, and a Default User folder (a template for subsequently added users). You may wish to delegate shortcuts to these various folders, depending on their use. Note that if a shortcut is listed in a user's personal Start Menu folder as well as the All Users Start Menu folder, it will appear twice in that user's Start menu. The same goes for the Desktop and Send To folders (both discussed earlier in this chapter).