Vista Start Menu Emulator

Vista Start Menu Emulator is a tiny and portable application that makes the Start menu of your Windows XP look like the one in Vista. It is very simple to use, as there are no configuration properties involved.

Since installation is not a prerequisite, you can drop the program files anywhere on the hard disk and click the executable to run.

Otherwise, you can move Vista Start Menu Emulator to a USB flash drive, memory card or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any machine with Windows XP effortlessly.

An important aspect to keep in mind is that the Windows Registry does not get new entries, and files are not left behind after removing the tool. A standard file deletion is suffice to accomplish this task.

Once initialized, the Start menu automatically gets the appearance of the one found in Windows Vista. It features a blur effect, pinning system, and recent items list, among others.

Although Vista Start Menu Emulator does not create an item in the system tray area, it runs in the background. Its status can be deactivated by terminating the process from Task Manager. During our tests we have noticed that Vista Start Menu Emulator slowed down overall performance, unfortunately.