How To Organize Your Windows XP Start Menu - Part 2

We discussed in How To Organize Your Windows XP Start Menu - Part 1 what you do to move folders around in your Start Menu, but now comes the question of how you move things around in and out of folders.

The first thing you need to do is to go to “Start” and then “My Computer”.

You will then click on your “Local Disk”, usually named “C” and locate the folder named “Documents and Settings”.  You will need to double click that folder to open it up.

Once inside in “Documents and Settings”, you will need to locate the folder named “All Users” and double click on that to open it up.

The next to last folder you need to go to is “Start Menu” inside of “All Users”.

Finally, the last folder is “Programs” inside of “Start Menu”.  Is it any wonder that people don’t know where this is hiding?  Once you have Programs open, you move folders around just like you would for a normal file move, create new folders, delete others ad so on.

A typical example of folders I like to condense is all the various Google products.  Every time you install one of their programs, they seem to feel that means you need another folder in your start menu.  So I like to create a folder names “Google”, and then move things like Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Talk and so on inside of that folder, causing them to take up much less room in your Start menu.

While this may sound like general house keeping, it is, but it is well worth taking an hour of your time every so often just to organize your folders for your own sanity.