Are you someone who, when you press Start and the Programs, you see a page full of program icons?

 A neat and tidy Start Menu should have only eight items showing, these being the eight folders in which are stored all of the working programs on your computer. It looks like this:

Inside these eight folders are the means to start every program on a computer, but they are neatly stored in their relevant folder instead of sprawled all over the screen.

To achieve this, (in Windows XP) open Windows Explorer, then C drive, Documents and Settings, All Users, Start Menu, and then click on Programs.

Create the folders in the following way:

1. Highlight the Programs folder. Now click on File in the top left-hand corner.

2. Choose New, and then Folder.

3. Down in the right-hand pane has appeared a new folder which should be highlighted and ready to Rename. Call each by each of the names, with the exception of Accessories and Start Up. These are Windows folders and should not be changed. You have six folders to create.

When you have created all of the folders, simply drag and drop all of the programs folders in the right-hand pane of your Explorer window into its relevant, newly created or Windows folder.

Windows XP has two sets of user's folders. The Administrator's (or it might be your name) and All Users. You have just tidied up the All Users one, now you need to do the same to the Administrator's folders.

It's easy with drag and drop, but follow these instructions or you will end up with a mess!

Your left-hand side pane should look like this, without the red lines and numbers:

Highlight and copy Nº2 and paste it to Nº 3. If you do it wrong you will have a load of sub-folders somewhere where you don't want or need them. When it warns you the folder(s) already exist, tell it "Yes to All" and it will overwrite them.

What you've just done is saved yourself the work of creating those six folders again.

Now open up the Programs folder (Nº4) and drag and drop the folders that need to be moved, into their relevant folder.

When that is done click on Nº1 and Nº3 respectively and move any icons showing into their relevant folder in the left hand pane.

When THAT'S done, you need to make the two sets of folders the same as each other, so, copy Nº4 and paste it to Nº1. Tell it "Yes to All" and it will overwrite them. Now you should have a neat and tidy Start Menu with all of your program sub-folders easily accessed.