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Actually the windows start menu used the same folder structure as the Win 3x program folders items. >Windows 95 Back in 1995, people lined up at midnight to ge

Actually the windows start menu used the same folder structure as the Win 3x program folders items. >Windows 95 Back in 1995, people lined up at midnight to get Microsoft’s latest release of Windows, and it was the first version, alongside the enterprise-focused Windows NT 4, to introduce the Start menu. It was designed to make Windows easier to use, and group or organize applications in a list. Before it arrived, Windows users could access apps through Program Manager. It was largely a basic list of apps, with no real organization. Clearly not even looking at how the start menu works from a file structure layout is kind of funny if you're going to waste your time writing an article about it.

Sophira 11y ago
You're actually very wrong about that, but it's easy to miss thanks to clever coding on Microsoft's part in Windows 95/98/NT4. Program Manager in Windows 3.x would actually store its "program groups" in .GRP files that were stored directly in C:\WINDOWS\. If any of those files were corrupt, Program Manager would give an error and simply not show you the group. New program groups were created using an DDE interface to PROGMAN.EXE, which could be guaranteed to be running at all times. (Unless you changed your shell= setting in SYSTEM.INI, of course.) In addition, you couldn't nest program groups, nor could you have program items outside a program group. It basically was a flat list of groups (which were listed in the PROGMAN.INI file - you couldn't just copy over a .GRP file and have it show up!), and each group was a flat list of program items. And although there were program groups, it was true that many users would simply put most of their apps into a single program group for ease of access. Windows 95 changed all that. Now the Start Menu was stored in C:\Windows\Start Menu\ (user profiles weren't really a thing on the 9x line of OSes; they existed in some form if you used an enterprise network setup, but that's beyond the scope of this comment) and were now plain folders and files, with all the advantages that entails. Although the Start menu has changed locations (and, on the NT lineage, was split into two locations - All Users and the current user), it still retains this filesystem layout today. The cleverness in Windows 95/98/NT4 came from the fact that the old DDE interface that was used to create new program groups and items programmatically (used by installers) stuck around, even while Program Manager itself was relegated to a sideline and no longer guaranteed to be running. (Windows would launch it invisibly when the interface was used.) When they were used, a little window with a picture of a beating drum and a progress bar would appear to show the user that the group and items were being created, as the process could take several seconds and the installer might otherwise appear to be hung. Of course, programmers were encouraged to simply use the new folder interface; it was much easier and quicker to use, and more flexible. The location of the Start Menu/Programs folder was exposed as an environment variable, so it was easy to write to the correct location. Program Manager itself stuck around and could be used (and in the Windows 95 setup could even be selected as the primary shell instead of Explorer), but it looked very different as minimised groups were no longer shown as icons but as what basically amounted to a tiny title bar. Program Manager was eliminated entirely with Windows XP (IIRC) and I suspect the DDE interface went at the same time, though I honestly don't know - I haven't had a program that would use that interface for ages.
- dfox 11y ago
  The DDE calls to progman still work at least on XP. Various installers (even for recent, but niche, software) still use these DDE calls for creation of program groups. One tell-tale (and annoying) sign of installer using DDE is that the created program group gets shown as explorer window. Also, non-NT windows supported multiple user profiles at least since 3.1. At first only thing that was per-user was password store for networking, and with W95 essentially everything that is per-user today. (I suspect that the common myth that there were no user profiles in w95 comes from the fact that by default there was no prominent "log off" entry in start menu). Obviously, there was no FS-level security, so only thing that was protected by profile password was the aforementioned password store for SMB.
  - Sophira 11y ago
    When I said that user profiles weren't really a thing, I meant that they really didn't save much different per-user unless your network was set up to have roaming user profiles, which is what I meant about the enterprise networking setup. I'm pretty sure that even Windows 95 had roaming support, and as such the Start menu could change between users such a network, but I could be wrong about that. [edit: I just tested and the DDE interface works still even in Windows 10. Wow.]
    - dfox 11y ago
      IIRC Windows 9x had local profile support in that different local users had different HKCU, desktop, start menu and such, but did not support roaming profiles in the sense that these data were not replicated to domain profile directory and profile directory offered by domain controller was essentially normal windows share that was used for documents folder (and used directly online, without the replication) Edit: essentially only thing that you would get by joining to domain was logon scripts
- yuhong 11y ago
  Program Manager was eliminated entirely with Windows XP (IIRC) XP SP2 actually.

Sophira 11y ago

You're actually very wrong about that, but it's easy to miss thanks to clever coding on Microsoft's part in Windows 95/98/NT4. Program Manager in Windows 3.x would actually store its "program groups" in .GRP files that were stored directly in C:\WINDOWS\. If any of those files were corrupt, Program Manager would give an error and simply not show you the group. New program groups were created using an DDE interface to PROGMAN.EXE, which could be guaranteed to be running at all times. (Unless you changed your shell= setting in SYSTEM.INI, of course.) In addition, you couldn't nest program groups, nor could you have program items outside a program group. It basically was a flat list of groups (which were listed in the PROGMAN.INI file - you couldn't just copy over a .GRP file and have it show up!), and each group was a flat list of program items. And although there were program groups, it was true that many users would simply put most of their apps into a single program group for ease of access. Windows 95 changed all that. Now the Start Menu was stored in C:\Windows\Start Menu\ (user profiles weren't really a thing on the 9x line of OSes; they existed in some form if you used an enterprise network setup, but that's beyond the scope of this comment) and were now plain folders and files, with all the advantages that entails. Although the Start menu has changed locations (and, on the NT lineage, was split into two locations - All Users and the current user), it still retains this filesystem layout today. The cleverness in Windows 95/98/NT4 came from the fact that the old DDE interface that was used to create new program groups and items programmatically (used by installers) stuck around, even while Program Manager itself was relegated to a sideline and no longer guaranteed to be running. (Windows would launch it invisibly when the interface was used.) When they were used, a little window with a picture of a beating drum and a progress bar would appear to show the user that the group and items were being created, as the process could take several seconds and the installer might otherwise appear to be hung. Of course, programmers were encouraged to simply use the new folder interface; it was much easier and quicker to use, and more flexible. The location of the Start Menu/Programs folder was exposed as an environment variable, so it was easy to write to the correct location. Program Manager itself stuck around and could be used (and in the Windows 95 setup could even be selected as the primary shell instead of Explorer), but it looked very different as minimised groups were no longer shown as icons but as what basically amounted to a tiny title bar. Program Manager was eliminated entirely with Windows XP (IIRC) and I suspect the DDE interface went at the same time, though I honestly don't know - I haven't had a program that would use that interface for ages.

dfox 11y ago
The DDE calls to progman still work at least on XP. Various installers (even for recent, but niche, software) still use these DDE calls for creation of program groups. One tell-tale (and annoying) sign of installer using DDE is that the created program group gets shown as explorer window. Also, non-NT windows supported multiple user profiles at least since 3.1. At first only thing that was per-user was password store for networking, and with W95 essentially everything that is per-user today. (I suspect that the common myth that there were no user profiles in w95 comes from the fact that by default there was no prominent "log off" entry in start menu). Obviously, there was no FS-level security, so only thing that was protected by profile password was the aforementioned password store for SMB.
- Sophira 11y ago
  When I said that user profiles weren't really a thing, I meant that they really didn't save much different per-user unless your network was set up to have roaming user profiles, which is what I meant about the enterprise networking setup. I'm pretty sure that even Windows 95 had roaming support, and as such the Start menu could change between users such a network, but I could be wrong about that. [edit: I just tested and the DDE interface works still even in Windows 10. Wow.]
  - dfox 11y ago
    IIRC Windows 9x had local profile support in that different local users had different HKCU, desktop, start menu and such, but did not support roaming profiles in the sense that these data were not replicated to domain profile directory and profile directory offered by domain controller was essentially normal windows share that was used for documents folder (and used directly online, without the replication) Edit: essentially only thing that you would get by joining to domain was logon scripts
yuhong 11y ago
Program Manager was eliminated entirely with Windows XP (IIRC) XP SP2 actually.