Forget the Windows Start Menu Use Toolbox instead.

The Windows start menu is not really excellent when you want to find something fast. It always takes some clicks to reach the destination - be it a program, the control panel or a drive that is connected to your computer. Toolbox was designed as a application launcher that makes it easier to access drives, folders and applications in Windows. It uses an intuitive way to display toolboxes that contain links to everything that you can think off. You can link to drives and display their size, launch applications with one click and open folders with another. Access to those elements can’t be faster in Windows.

The best thing is that you customize the toolboxes anyway you want. Add icons, make the toolbox transparent, let it remain always on top, use background images and much more to make it look the way you want it. I’m using it to display all of my drives and their free space in the left corner of my desktop. Clicking on a drive opens the root folder of that drive and displays the contents.

Toolbox is free and does not need to be installed at all. Just unpack it into a folder of your choice and run it from there. You can create two toolboxes that use predefined elements using the Wizard. One creates a toolbox with all of your drives and the other one with all your personal folders. If you do not want to use those you can create a new toolbox, change its size and add elements to it.

Looks good, feels good, one of the applications that I can recommend to every Windows user.