old-new-win32api VS Open-Shell-Menu

Do you have any recommendations?

I assume this is the one you’re talking about https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

I was curious, went to the end (page 699!) and it’s pretty interesting. But obviously it’s hard to find the important ones.

Not quite. DOS was just the bootloader for Windows 9x.

While Windows 95's kernel didn't have the full feature set of NT, it still was more sophisticated than DOS.

Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=24063

Some registry keys also have The Old New Thing posts by Raymond Chen [1] /s

[1] https://github.com/mity/old-new-win32api#registry

Lucky you, Raymond Chen did an overview in his blog series "Inside STL". You can view it here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

Yes, Raymond Chen describes such fixes in [several blog posts](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/) and in his book The Old New Thing. Check the old posts, back at the beginning. There are posts about to which lengths they went to ensure buggy applications still worked after an update or a fix.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterman/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

A couple of blogs as an example: - Raymond Chen - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ - Pavel Yosifovich - https://scorpiosoftware.net/ - Adam Sawicki - https://asawicki.info/index - Matt Pettineo - https://therealmjp.github.io/ - Scratchapixel - https://www.scratchapixel.com/

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

I've been very happy happy with https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu as a Start Menu replacement. If ads have rolled out to my Windows install, I wouldn't even notice.

Whenever I set up a new computer for older family members, despite it being windows 11, I always install open shell[1] and retro bar[2]. Between the two, I've made the operating system look very close to Windows XP visually, and they always appreciate it.

[1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

[2] https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar

There's Open-Shell but it's not exactly a full WM replacement.

Hi yall, I used Open-Shell to change the icon.

There is also Open Shell, a free and open source tool which performs a similar function.

I wish so bad there is a port (a fork) of the Legacy Kickoff start menu for Windows: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/1083

Classic Start Menu

I use Open Shell (fork of Classic Shell) as a replacement to original Start Menu. This gives me full control over what appears in start menu - no results from internet, animated tiles, etc (I am on Win 10 though, from what I read the Win 11 is supported, but not yet officially [1]). It could be a solution to the ads appearing in start menu.

[1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/1564

Looks like you're going for an XP theme. May I suggest using open-shell to skin the taskbar, start menu, and start button if you wanna take that extra step? You can also find the taskbar skin and start button here. Also, I would remove the search bar, task view button, and news & interest area of the taskbar just to bring things together. This is all just a suggestion, you don't have to if you don't want to.