Simplest way to get WinXP-style sliding cascading menu on Win10 (without MS Update bricking the system)?

I lost my entire HDD due to Microsoft Update bricking my AMD system, where
only God knows why and only God knows how to recover the data.

After buying a new HDD and installing Windows 10 on it, I'm trying really
hard to not tweak the system (except for the barest of minimum tweaks that
are necessary for efficiency).

I suspect all my tweaks are things Microsoft Update hated, so I'm trying
/not/ to tweak the new setup but Lord knows, I need a KISS cascading menu
because that stupid Cortana thing just sucks for too many reasons to
elucidate here.

Without resorting to Classic Shell or Winaero, what's the easiest way to
create a very simple working cascading menu of the style that we're all
used to, which, in words is something like:

Start menu
archiver [list of archival program shortcuts, e.g., 7-zip]
browser [list of browser program shortcuts, e.g., Opera]
cleaner [list of cleaner program shortcuts, e.g., Ccleaner]
database [list of database program shortcuts,. e.g., Google Earth]
editor pic [list of picture editor shortcuts, e.g., Pinta]
editor pdf [list of PS/PDF editor shortcuts, e.g., Foxit]
editor txt [list of text editor shortcuts, e.g., GVim]
editor vid [list of video editor shortcuts, e.g., Shotcut]
finance [list of finance program shortcuts, e.g., TurboTax]
game [list of game program shortcuts, e.g., Steam]
etc.

Must I resort to the Classic Shell or WinAero?

Or does Windows 10, by now, so many years after the release, finally have a
way to implement a basic KISS cascading shortcut like that which worked
just fine in Windows XP?

ultred ragnusen wrote:

I lost my entire HDD due to Microsoft Update bricking my AMD system, where
only God knows why and only God knows how to recover the data.

So, you're saying that Microsoft Update magically destroyed your hard drive?
I'd be interested in knowing exactly what happened.

[snip]

Must I resort to the Classic Shell or WinAero?

To my knowledge, yes.

--
Can you hear the silence?
Can you see the dark?
Can you fix the broken?
Can you feel my heart?

wrote:

I lost my entire HDD due to Microsoft Update bricking my AMD system, where
only God knows why and only God knows how to recover the data.

So, you're saying that Microsoft Update magically destroyed your hard drive?
I'd be interested in knowing exactly what happened.

You have no idea if you even ask that question, of the hell that the
Microsoft Update put me through, and which I'm still living.

Nonetheless, despite your naivety (you're only naive because you haven't
been burned yet - I'm not saying you're naive overall - just on the fact
that MS update hates customized sysems, apparently) to explain to you the
horror that I went through and am going through would be the topic of an
entirely different and very long thread.

Must I resort to the Classic Shell or WinAero?

To my knowledge, yes.

That's what I was afraid of. Let's hope we are both wrong.

BTW, I already have organized a folder hierarchy for the menus, which is
simply named folders with named links (aka shortcuts) inside of them.
menu editor {pic,txt,pdf} [associated shortcuts]

So all I need is a mechanism to turn that into a cascaded menu that can be
/added/ to the existing Win 10 interface (which I'll call the Cortana GUI
for lack of knowledge of the official name for it).

To be clear, I no longer wish to /replace/ the Cortana GUI, but just to
augment it with a single addition of a cascaded menu, in a way that won't
brick my system with every Microsoft Update (which I've been dealing with
for a year now).

ultred ragnusen wrote:

I lost my entire HDD due to Microsoft Update bricking my
AMD system, where only God knows why and only God knows how
to recover the data.

After buying a new HDD and installing Windows 10 on it, I'm
trying really hard to not tweak the system (except for the
barest of minimum tweaks that are necessary for
efficiency).

I suspect all my tweaks are things Microsoft Update hated,
so I'm trying /not/ to tweak the new setup but Lord knows,
I need a KISS cascading menu because that stupid Cortana
thing just sucks for too many reasons to elucidate here.

That concern is one reason why I try to work with Microsoft
operating system programs. From the earliest versions of
Windows, I loved to mess with the operating system. After
being smacked down so many times for doing so, nowadays I try
to cope.

If you are concerned about data, the first thing you do is
make a backup copy of the drive. Then you try fixing it.

John Doe wrote:

That concern is one reason why I try to work with Microsoft
operating system programs. From the earliest versions of
Windows, I loved to mess with the operating system. After
being smacked down so many times for doing so, nowadays I try
to cope.

I, like you, used to try to "fight" Microsoft pollution by "cleaning up"
the mess that happened in each of the menus and folders that are known to
the world (e.g., the start menu and the program files hierarchies, and the
user data hierarchies such as "My Documents").

The almost incomprehensible litter and inconsistency is sort of like what
you'd see on a busy NYC street as the hoi polloi walk by your stoop,
littering as they see fit and acting as they feel, all of which is
extremely inconsistent and meaningless, in the end, as you can't make any
decent sense of it all.

So what I did was CUSTOMIZE the system to use folders outside the Microsoft
well-known ones and to make my own menus, and to change the default temp
and "my pictures" to what I wanted them to be, etc.,

But something in my myriad customizations is what Microsoft utterly hates.
They f*ked up the Microsoft Update for at least two years, where the good
news is that nothing installed (which was fine by me) as they all failed to
install, but they didn't brick the system.

Finally, with this latest update, they bricked the system.
Lesson learned.

If you are concerned about data, the first thing you do is
make a backup copy of the drive. Then you try fixing it.

The safest way I know to make a backup is dd but that doesn't work on
Windows and the entire drive refuses to be mounted in an SATA/PATA/IDE
adapter to USB, so how am I supposed to back up the hard drive when the
commands don't exist to do that backup and when the drive won't be mounted?