Comment by vintagedave

I recently found there’s an active community modding Windows to be more like older Windows, including modifying Explorer.

Some examples:

* Restoring the Explorer navigation bar: https://windhawk.net/mods/explorer-frame-classic

* Making Explorer behave more like Vista/7: https://windhawk.net/mods/aerexplorer

* Fixing the white flash on a new Explorer tab in dark mode: https://windhawk.net/mods/fix-explorer-white-flash

* Restoring old-style context menus: https://windhawk.net/mods/disable-immersive-context-menus

* Even using classic non-Aero themes in Win11: https://windhawk.net/mods/classic-theme-enable

I haven’t tried this myself yet. I’m unwilling to inject code into system processes on a work VM.

But I can’t help wondering if a better path for performance for Microsoft would be lighter code, not trying to preload it.