Classic Shell: Forum

Hi folks,

Classic Start Menu works like a dream on my two 64-bit Windows 7 machines but not on my 32-bit machine. No matter how many times I restart, uninstall, re-install, repair, etc, ClassicStartMenu.exe will never run. I've changed every option in security permissions and compatability types, but it won't work. Using a process explorer I can see that when I click it the .exe shows up for a few seconds, along with two instances of "com surrogate", then just disappears. I've tried using regsvr32 on all of the DLL's in the installed directory, and the only one which won't register is - you guessed it - ClassicStartMenuDLL.dll. I downloaded ProcDump, and though it won't actually create a dump file (?!) it does say "Exception 000006D9" when I hit Ctrl-C after ClassicStartMenu doesn't run. The other executables - ClassicExplorerSetting.exe, ClassicIE_32.exe, and ClassicShellUpdate.exe - all run fine. It's just the darn start menu. I've turned off all of my antivirus programs. I've shutdown Zonealarm and even created custom entries in it for the Classic Shell executables. Nothing works.

Is the ClassicStartMenuDLL.dll corrupted? That's my guess since RegSvr gives an error with it. I've downloaded the installer multiple times and it gives me no errors when installing, so I don't think I downloaded a corrupted installer. However, the program just won't work.

Please help!

ClassicStartMenuDLL.dll has nothing to do with COM, so it is not registered.
One reason for ClassicStartMenu.exe to exit is if there is another one already running. Are you sure it is not running already?
Try the following command lines from a command prompt (non-admin command prompt):
ClassicStartMenu.exe -settings
ClassicStartMenu.exe -nohook

Tell me what happens when you run those.

I've double-checked and another instance of the process is not running. When I use "ClassicStartMenu.exe -settings", it will show up in the process list and stay there, but nothing happens - no window comes up, nothing. After I terminated that process, I tried "ClassicStartMenu.exe -nohook". When I ran the command prompt as Administrator and used that command, the settings window came up for about a second, then disappeared, and the process disappeared from my process list. When I ran the command prompt as a non-Administrator and used -nohook, no window came up, and the process started but disappeared after a second or two.

I think I figured it out .... there is something ZoneAlarm is doing to block the process. Though I'd created an entry in ZoneAlarm giving ClassicStartMenu.exe "super trusted" status etc, when I shutdown Zonealarm AND manually terminated the other processes ZA leaves running - then ClassicStartMenu works. I can even re-start ZA after that point and ClassicStartMenu stays working. I will keep doing that from now on - turn off ZA when the computer starts, start up ClassicStart, then turn ZA back on. It's an annoying workaround, but I can't figure out what in ZA is still blocking the process. Anyway - problem hopefully solved!