ViStart

Lee-Soft.com·LeeSoft.ViStart

The fully customisable start menu replacement

ViStart replaces the Windows Start menu with a fully skinnable Windows 7-style menu, on every version of Windows from XP through 11. It lists your installed programs, jump lists and Microsoft Store apps, searches files and settings, and takes over the Start button so the menu opens where you expect it. Thirteen skins ship with it and the skin format is open, so the menu can be made to look like almost anything. It installs per-user, needs no administrator rights, carries no adverts and asks for no account. Free and open source, written in Visual Basic 6 and maintained since 2009.

winget install --id LeeSoft.ViStart --exact --source winget

Latest 8.1.0.5344·August 24, 2026

Release Notes

Runs alongside ViFind now.

ViFind keeps a decoy Shell_TrayWnd window to host the notification area, and ViStart's taskbar lookup took whichever Shell_TrayWnd the shell handed back first - so on a machine running both, ViStart adopted ViFind's window as the taskbar and put its Start orb on ViFind's bar at the top of the screen. It now walks every Shell_TrayWnd and takes the first one owned by explorer.exe. An unidentifiable owner still passes, so Windows XP keeps its taskbar.

Installer type: inno

x866BDEBE7FD370685BA4EC182D4F0F57889D1A0E4FD78EB28738F1D311F38E434B

Details

Homepage
https://lee-soft.com/vistart/
License
AGPL-3.0-only
Publisher
Lee-Soft.com
Support
https://lee-soft.com/vistart/
Privacy Policy
https://lee-soft.com/privacy-policy/
Copyright
Copyright (C) Lee-Soft.com
Moniker
vistart

Tags

customizationlauncheropen-sourceshellskinningstart-buttonstart-menustartmenutaskbarwindows-11windows-7

Older versions (1)

1.0
x86EF02973F79CF2CD96EDF4BF9F33443895E3FF21FDDCC6A54106151D5E67136CC