Do you like the look of the old Window 3.* Program Manager? You can have Explorer open with a very similar appearance. To do this, you will need to edit the system.ini file. Open the file and find near the bottom of the file in the [boot] section the shell= line. Enter the following in the shell= line to get a Program Manager effect.

C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /root,c:\windows\start menu\programs

If the path to your Start Menu is different than is listed above, make the according changes.