The few win11 I've touched were all on NVMe drives, but I'm pretty sure they're fast enough for a start menu. I mean, your gear should not be needed to get a responsive start menu.
I'm curious, did you clean up what's by default in the start menu? Stuff like "recommended", "candy crush", and the likes? On the win11 I tested, those parts loaded slower than the rest, I wonder if the start menu has a timeout of "load then open".
Had I switched to win11 I'd have slapped Classic Shell on it, as I did on win10. It's a reimplementation of the win7 start menu with windows-version-appropriate design, but with win7 reactivity (opens literally the next frame, in no small parts thanks to the absence of animation).
After checking the responsiveness of the start menu earlier, I uninstalled or unpinned the useless stuff in Pinned.
I don't think it made a difference, it was already lag free before.
It's annoying they put Office Copilot and Instagram there, but it uninstalled with just two clicks per item, taking a minute or so to get rid of everything.
I'm curious, did you clean up what's by default in the start menu? Stuff like "recommended", "candy crush", and the likes? On the win11 I tested, those parts loaded slower than the rest, I wonder if the start menu has a timeout of "load then open".
Had I switched to win11 I'd have slapped Classic Shell on it, as I did on win10. It's a reimplementation of the win7 start menu with windows-version-appropriate design, but with win7 reactivity (opens literally the next frame, in no small parts thanks to the absence of animation).