There are now more than a handful of Start menu replicas out there for people that need their daily Start menu fix on their Windows 8 machines. From classic ones such as Classic Shell and StartMenu8 to experimental ones such as Pokki and RetroUI Pro. There are just no shortages of what type of Start menu one might need.

We reviewed Start8 from Stardock recently.  It is probably one of the better replicas out there. It works almost exactly like the Start menu from Windows 7 and can be switched to the fancier metro Start screen mode that it scales down to size. The problem with all these clones is that they’re all still third-party solutions and require extra processes running in the background and taking up resources.

If people wanted the original no-fuss Start menu, then they were out of luck. Microsoft replaced the traditional Start menu in Windows 8 and offers no solution to re-enable it, even in the corporate Windows Server 2012. Long-time Windows users and angry critics have been calling for the death of Microsoft because of it.

While third-parties have been hard at coding to satisfy the needs of those angry users, nobody asked if the native Start menu is really gone or just deeply hidden inside Windows 8? They’d be happy to know it’s the latter, but just some of it. Programmer Tihiy successfully worked on a solution to bring back the original Windows 7 Start menu to Windows 8.

According to Tihiy, some Start menu codes are still present in the explorer.exe process of Windows 8. Those codes are shared with the Jump Lists function and thus are essential and were not removed. The Start menu shell interfaces, start button, and Windows key codes are removed however. The exact method is not clear but it’s possible to speculate that Tihiy ported the required codes from the Windows 7 and re-implemented them in Windows 8 through private APIs access. Whatever the case is, the final product — StartIsBack — is exactly what it claims and includes some extra features.

After running a rather small install file, you’ll find that this is the very same Start menu from Windows 7. You won’t find any StartIsBack processes in task manager because there is no startisback.exe. The installed codes will hook itself to the native explorer.exe in the memory at boot up, thus does not modified the actual system file. You can search, pin programs, and drag&drop files to the Start menu as you could in Windows 7. There’s even the hidden “Exit  Explorer” menu item that shows up by Shift+Ctrl and right clicking the Start menu. Remember the Customize Start menu setting that was in the Windows 7 Taskbar Properties? It’s no longer in Windows 8, but it’s brought back in its own Properties box. You can get to it by right click the start button, select Properties and see that all the options are exactly the same to Windows 7.  Continue reading →