So, the WinX Start Menu is completely broken...

... and not just badly designed? Great to hear. What a bleeping joke: If you have more than 500 shortcuts (if that seems a lot to you, you may want to remember that a virgin Win7 install has roughly 300 of them; my workstation has a bit more than 1000), you're screwed, plain and simple:

So, no way to access shortcuts beyond those 500, in any way, not from that inane "All Apps" view, and not by searching. As far as the Start Menu is concerned, anything beyond the first 500 shortcuts simply doesn't exist. Awesome. How stupid are these clowns at Microsoft, really?

Oh, and it gets even better:

Words fail me...

 

I have to agree with that. It's just plain stupid and something ready needs fixing yesterday.

 

Just gets better and better, doesn't it.

 

So many artificial limitations. I don't get it. It feels like Microsoft just wants to be Apple with a unified structure and walled garden and a locked down OS. But MS needs to realize that people choose Windows for a reason, not because they want an Apple clone but because they want a robust and configurable working environment. Clearly Sinofsky and Ballmer leaving the company had zero impact on the direction Microsoft is moving.

 

You aren't really screwed, you just have to navigate through Windows Explorer to where the program's .exe is located, and start it that way. The same way that's been possible since Windows 95, and similar to Program Manager in Windows 3.1 before that!

But indeed, although I do occasionally start programs via Windows Explorer, that's far from ideal as the only option, and that's a pretty embarrassing bug for a final release. But for me, it's an example of why not to upgrade in the first month, not something I expect will survive the first couple sets of patches. Though if it does survive, that would be a major minus.

 

Sure, awesome. Too bad that's not a fix, and technically barely even qualifies as a workaround. Obviously I can try to start a program by going into the program's installation folder and running the executable. Unfortunately, for quite a few programs that's not going to work, since the shortcut may contain crucial parameters that are needed for the program to work correctly. Plus, how do you find the program and its installation folder? You may or may not know that this may not be an easy task. Not all executables have obvious names, nor do their installation folders. So, if you want a workaround, then why not try the obvious solution and just go to the still existing folder hierarchy that holds the original shortcut that was and still is used by any real Start Menu. At least this is going to work. However, all of this is beside the point. Fact is, that Start Menu is badly broken, and in a particularly nasty way.

There is already a major minus in that the dumbed-down nonsense we get in WinX is not a real Start Menu to begin with: It's still that stupid Win8.x Start Screen, just in a different form factor. In short, it does not have the functionality of a Start Menu, period.

 

Personally I rarely ever use the start button. So this is not an issue other than if I support others that do use it. They have done this before with the shortened ability so I am sure a fix will be forthcoming. I downloaded Start10, not too impressed. I would have liked to see the metro app link actually allow the live tiles, at least as an option.

 

I was being sarcastic, hence why I included the Program Manager throwback. Nearly everyone who would encounter this would indeed have their workflow be screwed as a result.