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Classic Shell is gone. What to use instead.
Posted 13 August 2026
Classic Shell was the start menu for the better part of a decade. Then, in December 2017, its author stepped away and development stopped at 4.3.1. He did the decent thing on the way out and released the source, which is why this story has a happy ending — but the installer you'll find floating around on download sites is still that same 2017 build, and it was written before Windows 11 existed.
That's the part worth knowing before you install anything. A start menu replacement hooks deep into the Windows shell. When Windows moves and the software doesn't, you don't get a polite error — you get Explorer restarting on you. Don't install the old Classic Shell on Windows 11. There are two free, maintained options that pick up exactly where it left off, and one of them isn't mine.
| Open-Shell | ViStart | Classic Shell | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Still maintained | Yes — community project | Yes | No — ended 2017 |
| Price | Free | Free | Was free |
| Open source | Yes | Yes — GitHub | Source released at the end |
| Runs on | 7, 8, 10, 11 | XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11 | 7, 8, 10 (of its era) |
| The look | Classic 95/2000, XP and Windows 7 styles | Windows 7 Aero, and anything a skin does | The same, frozen |
| Also restyles Explorer | Yes — toolbar and status bar | No — start menu only | Yes |
| Around since | 2017 (as the continuation) | 2007 | 2009–2017 |
Most people should just install Open-Shell
When Classic Shell stopped, a group of its users forked the released source and carried on with it under the name Open-Shell. It is the direct continuation — same classic cascading menu, same enormous settings dialog, same Explorer toolbar — kept working on Windows 10 and 11 by people who use it themselves. It's free and open source, there's no company behind it and nothing to buy.
If what you want is Classic Shell back, that's the answer, and I'd rather tell you straight than pretend otherwise to win an install. Search for Open-Shell, take it from its official GitHub releases page, and ignore the download-portal mirrors — that's where the bundled-adware repacks live, and it's the single most common way people end up with junk on their machine while installing something that was free in the first place.
When ViStart is the better call
ViStart is mine. I've been making it since 2007, which means it predates Classic Shell and is still going after it. It solves the same problem from a different direction, and there are three situations where it's the one you want:
- You're on XP or Vista. Open-Shell starts at Windows 7. Classic Shell's XP-capable builds are from 2013 and nobody should be installing those now. One 1.8 MB ViStart installer covers XP through 11 — if you're reviving an old machine, this is the only maintained name on the page that turns up.
- You want Windows 7, not Windows 2000. Open-Shell's heart is the classic cascading menu — lists, small icons, the 98/2000 lineage. ViStart draws the Aero-era Windows 7 menu: the glass panel, the search box, the right-hand column, jump lists. If the thing you miss is specifically Windows 7, that's the difference.
- You want to change how it looks properly. ViStart takes skins — the deviantArt-era kind, an open zip you can pull apart and rebuild. Ubuntu, macOS, flat, glass, whatever somebody dreamed up in 2009. Open-Shell has skins too, but a handful; this is a desktop-modding-era app and the skin library is the point.
And where it loses, honestly: Open-Shell has more people working on it than ViStart has, it's more configurable if you like a settings dialog with fifteen tabs, and it restyles Explorer, which ViStart deliberately leaves alone. ViStart is one developer plus a community, and the codebase dates to 2007 — either a red flag or the whole charm, depending on your constitution.
If you'd rather pay for one
There are two good commercial options — Start11 from Stardock, and StartAllBack — and for some people they're genuinely the right call, particularly if you want Windows 11's taskbar fixed at the same time. I've written that comparison out properly in ViStart vs Start11 vs StartAllBack, including the cases where I'd tell you to buy one instead of using mine.
The short version
Classic Shell isn't coming back, but nothing of value was lost — the project it turned into is free, maintained, and open. Install Open-Shell if you want what you had. Install ViStart if you want the Windows 7 menu specifically, if you want to skin it, or if the machine in front of you is too old for anything else. Both are free, neither wants your email address, and you can have both on the same PC while you decide.
Free, no sign-up, no bundled extras. Direct link to the installer if you'd rather skip a step.