The Windows Start menu saga, from 1993 to today

One of the first Windows 10 features we learned about was the return of the Start menu, which is sort of funny, since the concept of the Start menu is over two decades old. Microsoft tried to replace it with the Start screen in Windows 8, and you only have to look at the adoption numbers to see how most consumers and businesses felt about it.

The Start menu has changed a lot over the years, but there are a handful of common elements that have made it all the way from Windows 95 to Windows 10. We fired up some virtual machines and traveled back in time to before there was a Start menu to track its evolution from the mid '90s to now.

Chicago

.related-stories { display: none !important; } ars.AD.queue.push(["xrailTop", {sz:"300x251", kws:["bottom"], collapse: true}]);

What you’re looking at here is build 58s of “Chicago,” one of the earliest extant betas of what would go on to become Windows 95. Things still look awfully Windows 3.1-ish in many parts of this build, but you can see the seeds that would later grow into the familiar Start Menu, Taskbar, and My Computer features, among a few other things.