USE THE BEST WINDOWS7 TOOLS IN WINDOWS 10
Windows 10 makes many improvements over previous versions, but there are some tools it lacks. Nik Rawlinson explains how to get your favourite Windows 7 tools back
Get your old Start menu back
Dump the flashy tiles in Windows 10’s Start menu in favour of an uncluttered version that’s similar to Windows 7’s. Go to www.snipca.com/33563 and download the EXE file under Assets for the most recent version of the free Open-shell menu (v4.4.142 at the time of writing). Unzip the file and install it.
Installation sets up a two-column Start menu, but if you really pine for the Windows 7 version, you can further tweak it. Right-click the Start button and select Settings, then select the Start Menu Style tab and select the Windows 7 style (see screenshot below).
Alternatively, you can really turn back the clock and go for the single-column Classic menu found in Windows XP. At the bottom of this window, you can also change the Start button image either to one of the pre-set options, or an image of your choice.
Click the Skin tab for more control over the Start menu’s appearance, including turning on the glassy Aero style that proved so popular with Windows 7. In addition, you can tweak detailed settings, like the shape of the corners, and by clicking the Customize Start Menu tab you can change the Start menu’s contents and running order. Single-click components to turn them on and off, or double-click for additional options, like displaying as a link or menu.
Open-shell doesn’t remove the Windows 10 Start menu – it just hides it. If you want to temporarily revert back, click Start, followed by ‘Start Menu (Windows)’ at the top. When you next click the Start menu, it will go back to Open-shell.
Make File Explorer less confusing
While Microsoft decided to bloat the Start menu in Windows 10, it did the opposite with File Explorer (or Windows Explorer, as it’s called in Windows 7). The streamlined Windows 10 version has lost the useful status bar at the bottom and hides various tools within an ever-changing ribbon toolbar at the top.
If you’re left wondering where all the various tools are, you can switch back to the design from Windows 7 using the free Oldnewexplorer tool (download it free from www.snipca.com/33574). The download is compressed as a RAR file, rather than the more common ZIP format, so you’ll need a tool such as 7-Zip ( www.7-zip.org) to open it. When you’ve installed 7-Zip, right-click the Oldnewexplorer.rar file you downloaded, hover over 7-Zip in the menu, select Extract Here and choose which folder to save the files in. From this folder, double-click Oldnewexplorerconfig.exe and click Install.
You can now use the tickboxes to activate the features you want. For example, to get rid of Windows 10’s ribbon menu, select ‘Use command bar instead of Ribbon’ (see screenshot above). Use the dropdown menus at the bottom of the panel to adjust the appearance of both your Explorer Windows and the status bar within them.
Play DVDS for free
With Windows 7 Home Premium or Ultimate, you can watch DVD movies on your PC without having to buy additional software (assuming your computer has a DVD drive, of course). Not so with Windows 10. Instead, Microsoft wants to charge you £12.49 for its DVD player (available from the Microsoft Store: www. snipca.com/33575). To avoid this charge, download VLC ( www.videolan.org) instead. The design isn’t that polished, but it’ll play DVD movies without a problem - and it’s free. It can also stream movies stored on network attached storage ( NAS) devices and other computers on your local network.
Recover lost Windows games
The games in Windows 7 (such as Minecraft and Solitaire) are brilliantly simple, addictive and help keep your brain whirring. In Windows 10, however, Microsoft has ditched these in favour of nonsense such as Candy Crush.
Solitaire isn’t installed by default, but it is available as part of the Microsoft Solitaire Collection (free from www. snipca.com/33576). It’s accompanied by four other card games, including Free Cell and Spider Solitaire, and the graphics are better than they were in their original incarnation. However, you’ll have to put up with ads between your games – sometimes these are just banner ads, but at other times they occupy the whole screen and can’t be skipped.
Winaero has compiled a collection of old Windows games, including chess, backgammon, Minesweeper and mahjong. Download the archive (free from www.snipca.com/33577), run the installer, and choose which you’d like to add (by default, they’re all selected – see screenshot above left). Be sure to untick the option to install Winaero’s tune-up software at the end of the installation. You’ll find your chosen games in a Games sub-folder within the Start menu. If you’ve switched to the Windows 7-style menu using Open-shell, click ‘Start Menu (Windows)’ first, then scroll down through the Windows 10 Start menu until you find the Games folder.
Create and edit movies
The Movie Maker video editor in Windows 7 is easy to use and lets you quickly combine multiple video clips and photos into a single movie. It was part of the Windows Live Essentials suite, which Microsoft dropped for Windows 10.
If you find its modern-day equivalents too complicated, there is a way to get Movie Maker back in Windows 10. Like all discontinued software, it’s no longer getting security updates, but since it’s not an online tool, such as a browser or email program, it doesn’t present a big security risk. First, download and run the Windows Live 2012 installation file from the Internet Archive ( www.snipca. com/33608 – click the Windows Executable link on the right).
Select ‘Choose the programs…’ when prompted, then untick everything except ‘Photo Gallery and Movie Maker’ (see screenshot above). Don’t worry if you get an error message at the end of the process (as we did during testing). You should still be able to run Movie Maker by searching for it in the Start menu.
If you’d rather not run unsupported software, Windows 10 actually has a decent movie editor, though for some reason Microsoft has hidden it within the Photos app.
To launch it, click Start, type photos, then select the Photos app from the search results. Now click Video Projects at the top, then ‘New video project’.