Classic-Start VS Windows10Debloater

FYI, Classic Shell is discontinued, long live the https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

Finally, to get a decent start menu and context menu back Explorer patcher and Shell work wonders. There is also Open shell if you want that classic Windows 7-10 look, but personally I think it looks dated in comparison. The Win11 start menu looks fine, it's just missing core functionality.

Open-Shell-Menu is a collection of utilities that can return some of your favorite features to newer versions of Windows. Revel in the glory of classic-style features like a Start menu for Win 7, 8 & 10; tool and status bars for Windows Explorer; title and status bars for Internet Explorer. Hel_OWeen says, "I honestly have a hard time to navigate any Windows version > W2K without it."

if you don't like the new taskbar, start menu, or the new right click menu, you'll want to grab ExplorerPatcher, Open-Shell, and WinAero Tweaker which will effectively make 11 look and feel like 10 again. sometimes i genuinely forget that i'm using 11

Reddit is full of facts about them. I offer you one: how to fix classic shell: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

ExplorerPatcher combined with Open-Shell

Stuff has been uninstalled from Settings and Control Panel and CTT's Utility (to enable some settings I would've enabled through Terminal commands already) and Sycnex's Debloater (to uninstall some apps) have been used. It's nothing major as I only uninstalled apps I could download from the store if necessary and made sure not to delete any major system components except Edge maybe. I have read through every menu and setting any of these utilities has brought up thoroughly to ensure I didn't do so. I believe I did my research before enabling/disabling a setting.

I've used this script for every new install of Windows and it makes the experience quite a bit better: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater .

17k stars on GitHub so lots of people agree.

if you wanna go even further in getting the most out of your laptop you can use this debloating tool to get rid of the extra stuff Microsoft puts into windows that youll never use.