Windows 8 - Classic Menu

[Hav3n]

Anyone here a Windows guru? What is the most current and best way to restore the classic "Start" button menu scheme in Windows 8? Is there a built in back door? Or is a 3rd party solution required?

I used XP forever, barely had a Vista machine for a couple of weeks before I switched to Mac. Missed 7 and now with 8 out I got a PC again and need the start button back. I cannot deal with the "start screen" tiled nonsense and it keeps loading apps as if they're running on a full screen tablet. Give me the normal minimize, expand/contract, and close buttons as well you whores at Microsoft!!!

Anyways...thoughts?

[opus]

I had a friend who was going nuts with windows 8, and wanted the classic windows 7 menu and look.
As he didn't want to reinstall win7, I found classicshell for him.

Though it was through a danish website, I spent a few mins googling and found an english version.
(if not the orginal?)
http://www.classicshell.net/

Make sure you check the FAQ area for questions about installation, disable updates.. etc etc..
http://www.classicshell.net/faq/

And ofcourse, It's FREE.

-opie

[Streak]

Haven, know this is an old post, but 8.1 changes back to the old way. Also, there's supposed to be a patch forthcoming for 8.1 that fixes something or other, but I've not been able to get a straight answer what it fixes. . . . .

[Swanny-CG]

I saw 8.1 and I didn't see a start menu. Do you have to turn it on or does patching to 8.1 enable it by default?

[ryeontherocks]

i am not sure what the big deal about this is? i have used my main page exactly as i have done in the past, there is a start menu and you can use tiles and good ole icons on desktop....even with old 8 and 8.1 it might be the way you set it up when installing.

[Trench]

I saw 8.1 and I didn't see a start menu. Do you have to turn it on or does patching to 8.1 enable it by default?

Yes, there is a "start menu" which is enabled by default for Windows 8.x installations. But it's no longer simply a small list of programs that pops up trying to give you access to program items without obscuring too much of your desktop.

Hitting the "start menu" button in Windows 8.x (a Windows icon which is down in the bottom-left of the task bar, same position as Windows 7's "blue ball" start menu icon was in) switches you away from your desktop completely and gives you a full-screen view of a "menu" which can contain both active applications (think weather and news gadgets, scrolling photos, etc.) plus normal installed application shortcuts like the "old" start menu had.

(This start menu is "active" because it's actually the screen Windows boots up to by default, and is the screen that would be shown by default on a phone or tablet device too, where it makes more sense you want all this bullshit updating and scrolling all the time before you finally choose a more specific application to go into.)

If you launch "a normal application" from the start menu, you're then taken back to your desktop where you see all your already-running applications and the new one you just started. If you select one of the "Windows Apps" from the start menu instead -- the somewhat limited phone-like applications which come with Windows 8.x -- those phone-like apps run full screen and or in docking arrangements that are full screen until you explicitly switch back to your desktop and "normal applications" that are running.

So the start menu is the jumping off point for the "two different application experiences" Windows 8.x now offers, and the start menu itself is now also a "full screen experience" just like the new Windows phone-like applications are.

That "full screen start menu" the big foo-foo-doo that so many people don't like about Windows 8.x, when all they intend to do is keep running the same "normal" Windows applications they used on Windows 7 and don't have any interest in the new phone-type applications and/or aren't running Windows on a phone-type device.

Once you're used to it, not that big a deal, but a bit disconcerting to "lose sight of all my running desktop applications" just because you wanted to select something off the start menu. It's also a bit of a pain that some of the normal Windows control panel stuff can now be hidden inside more phone-type configuration applications that Windows 8.x makes you use.

-Trench

[Swanny-CG]

To me it's like dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator, and make everything, desktop, tablet, phone, etc., all look the same. I don't need or want my phone to look like a computer and I certainly don't want my computer to look like a phone.

I think calling it a return of the start menu is a misnomer, because I have seen what you're talking about and IMO it's no start menu. Classic Shell gives you that back. I don't ever need to go into Metro or whatever it's called now, I don't do any of that realtime crap.

I think I'm pretty open to new tech and change but this one (again, IMO) misses the boat by a lot.

[Trench]

I certainly didn't need my desktop experience to change, nor feel like the Windows 8.x are in any way "intuitive" for existing Windows PC users.

I see a bit of Microsoft's quandary in that there is almost "no line" between what Windows knows as "a PC" and what is "actually a tablet", since both can be WinTel-based fully-featured PC platforms. Yet on the tablet a more phone-like experience can be appropriate, while the same hardware in a box with regular keyboard-mouse-screen plugged in has no /technical/ need for the different experience.

Yet Microsoft themselves don't want to have to "teach and maintain two different Windows experiences", IT managers don't want to have to teach users two different experiences, it's better for Microsoft if people get a consistent experience across all the platforms Windows runs on, etc.

I finally made the jump from 32-bit Windows 7 to 64-bit Windows 8.1 with Update 1 (the April 2014 refresh release) on my primary work laptop, and I'm a week into using it that way. Not a huge deal since most every application I want from the start menu I keep on my desktop anyway, so it's not that I find myself in the "start menu" very much.

-Alan

[Swanny-CG]

We're going to have to start supporting Surface devices on our MDM solution, MobileIron, and neither MI nor MS is sure how to make it work, yet they both say it works no problem, for sure. Good times.