Are you one of those people that obsessively edits your start menu to keep it clean, tidy, and organized? Back in Windows XP, all you had to do was right-click on the start button to get to the folder, but Windows 7 changed it.

Now when you right-click on the Start Orb in Windows 7, you just get the generic “Open Windows Explorer”, which takes you to the Libraries view. Not what we wanted!

The Stupid Geek Trick

Yep, this one is so easy it hurts.

Just right-click on the “All Programs” button on the start menu, and choose Open to head to your personal user-specific start menu folder, or “Open All Users” to open up the system-wide Start Menu folder.

Let’s Get Geeky With It

We couldn’t leave you with something as simple as that, so we’ll get a little more geeky and tell you how you can access the start menu other ways too.

For instance, you can type in the following to get to your user-specific Start Menu folder—or you can put it into a shortcut if you wanted to, or even use it from the command prompt.

%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

Want to get to the All Users start menu? Just use this instead:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

And thus ends the really simple tale of right-clicking and getting to a folder. I’ve lost 378 geek points by writing this article.