How-To Geek
Stupid Geek Tricks: How to Open the Start Menu Folder in Windows 7
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.
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Comments (11)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 11/16/09
Apparently the “All programs” items disappearing still persists in 7100 when you have too many apps installed. so the advice or tip above is really really important. thank you very much man.
ps. why am i still using RC? BECAUSE DELL SUCKS!!!!
When I do this (right-click all programs, click open), the resulting folder most certainly does not show everything in my start menu. Thoughts?
@ Travis – The reason you aren’t seeing everything is because there are actually TWO start menu folders. Clicking Open, as is shown above, only shows the folders and programs installed to the current user account. By using the Open All Users button, still found by right-clicking All Programs, you can see any Folders and Applications installed for all users (which is usually the bulk of the items).
How about copying the Windows Update shortcut to the Start menu itself? I use to be able to do this with the betas and RC but since RTM I can’t drop/cut/copy/paste/anything to get Windows Update pinned to the start menu :-(
When I right click on the orb, the “Open All Users” is not there as an option.
Instead of C:\ProgramData use %programdata% as the folder might have been moved, esp. likely with SSDs, and no symbolic link left on the C: drive (not so hot, but it does happen).
Lol!!
Really Very Stupid Trick!! xD
Just what I needed. Thanks.
once again thanks! cuz yes, i am one of those “obsessive types” that likes to keep my start menu tidy. i was completely frustrated when i couldn’t find the directory after discovering we could no longer d&d on the start menu. of course i came straight here to find the answer!!!
Man, some of the work-arounds you have to do for this are really stupid.
Working with computers forever, I have pretty much every adobe CS5 program, some of them went into an Adobe start menu folder, some of them went in the programs root folder for the start menu.
It would not let me drag and drop them into the adobe folder, and since I hadn’t done something like this since at least Windows 2000, I went to the start menu folder and tried to open it and it denied me access.
Which is another thing I don’t get, I’m the only user who is the administrator which is listed as having ALL permissions yet there are a ton of folders I have to hack into to be able to open because it won’t let me because “only the administrator” can do it, which I am, and the only user of. Like deleting the Avira Notifier on the free version of avira, I even set the permissions so ANYONE could do anything with it and still couldn’t delete it. I had to use a program like Active@killdisk to delete it (which I didn’t), and I basically just had to turn off all permissions for the System group so that it will STOP popping up every five minutes to sell me the upgrade.
If you are using Classic Menu to make Windows 7 look like WinXP, you need to right-click the windows start orb to get the choice menu. Still a neat trick, though. Love these columns.