Here's how
1. Create a toolbar and put the icons in it. To get everyone to fit on one line, don't have more than say 50 in a toolbar. But you can have multiple toolbars.Example: make 50 or fewer desktop shortcuts, rename them as you choose, then right click on the desktop View uncheck Show Desktop Icons, right click taskbar, Toolbars (i.e., New or Desktop): then all the shortcuts will be in it.
2. Make sure 'Lock Toolbars' is off, then SHORTEN the toolbar so that the chevron shows.
3. Click on the chevron, and your icons have become menu'd. If you right click the menu, you can sort the icons by name and even still rename those you want, so you get the order of the icons you want, precisely named as you want in the order as you want. Your own START MENU as it used to be, under XP. You can still change the icons using shell32.dll from Windows 7 or XP or imageres, also in System32, not to be confused with files of the same name in the later Win8 or 10. You can use ANY icons, even the old Plus! from Win95.
Click here for a video where I show that (first 14 minutes). So notice that the 'overflow' goes to the menu, avoiding the problem of two lines, yet there are two toolbars taking up only ONE line (Quick Launch and Desktop, in the video, works the same way in Windows 10). Good thing, because Windows 10 offers almost no customizability (MSFT is callous to remove customizability).
The trick works in Windows 7-10 (Win7 shown, but I did it in 10, just don't have the screen recorder yet).
When you got the line as you like, lock the toolbars.
By the way, if you like top and bottom toolbars like you can do in XP, you can in fact install (post Win10 install) one of those classic 1990's et seq office suites like MS Office 2003 (which Windows Updates will still update, shocker) or like Smart Suite 9.8.2. Both of them have toolbars, which you can stuff with any other icons you like. So far, I've had no trouble with the toolbars, in 64-bit Win10 (build 10240, but winver.exe says I'm activated, since I gave Win10 my Win8 key upon initial Insider joining).