Okay, as per your suggestion, I’m now running Classic Shell to get my Win7 menu back on Windows 8.1. Works great, but I’ve been wondering, how do I update the software?
I’ll be candid, while the author has done a great job with Classic Shell and all its many capabilities that bring the easy of the start menu back to Windows 8 and Win8.1, I don’t feel like he’s done such a good job with the update process, so your question’s a great one. Further, while the program should theoretically be checking for updates periodically, my experience is that it doesn’t, so it’s possible that you, like me, are multiple updates behind, which is bad.
Knowing this, however, you can just remember every so often to have a quick check to see if the program’s updated. Or, when Windows 10 comes out in a month or so, just upgrade to that and try to wrap your head around the weird hybrid Windows 8 start screen-style start menu that’s going to be included. 🙂
To start, let’s see Classic Shell in action on my Windows 8.1 system:
Looks a lot like the old Start Menu, doesn’t it?
To proceed with the update, go to “Programs” and follow the path as shown:
You can see the path there, hopefully: Programs > Classic Shell > Classic Shell Update.
Choose that option and…
Your version will probably also have the “Automatically check for new versions” box checked, but when you Check now, surprise, there likely is an update ready to download and install:
The updates sound good and it’s always smart to stay up-to-date with software anyway, so click on “Download” to proceed.
Surprise, it’ll download:
Once it’s done the resultant behavior is rather confusing, because Widows simply shows you the Downloads folder.
No explanation, no auto-loaded updater. Just this:
You can see it looks like I missed at least 4.2.0 on the update sequence. How’d you fare with this update?
To install the new version of Classic Shell, double-click on the setup program, in this instance “ClassicShellSetup_4_2_1”.
Now it looks like something designed to update the program!
As with all setup wizards in Windows, this one’s a no-brainer to step through, so I won’t show you each window. Suffice to say, agree to terms, agree to the default installation location and you’ll have updated Classic Shell to the very latest version in just a minute or two.
And that’s how it’s done. Learn more about Classic Shell if you’re curious too. It’s got a lot of neat tricks.