Looks like Microsoft has retired Classic Start Menu option in Windows 7. I haven’t seen any official confirmation about it they confirmed in a indirect way.
While working on Windows 7 machine, I looked for a way to get Classic Menu. Though I coun’t find any setting, there was a GPO policy setting with name “Force Classic Start Menu”. I thought it will enable classic menu in some way but this GPO has a description saying, “Classic start menu is removed from windows 7” and this GPO is applicable to OSes before to Win 7.
You can find similar information at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617162(WS.10).aspx
However, you can get classic start menu view in windows 7 by installing a third party utility called “CSMenu“. Hope this helps.
Happy Learning..,
Sitaram Pamarthi