Quick fix to kill tile/Win 8 interface?

Topic

New Reply

After three weeks of new HP Pavilion laptop with Win 8 I’ve had enough. Reminds me of the story about how the bagpipes came to be: one Scotsman says to another, “I know — let’s invent an instrument that will really annoy people.” So is there some quick way to get Win 8 back to a Win 7 interface? I’ve surfed around this forum for about an hour but missed the answer if it’s here. I gather there are some technical advantages to Win 8, but the bar that keeps interrupting by popping out of the right side of the screen accompanied by the date and time at lower left is driving me crazy — if I wanted to get to the tiles I’d have hit the Windows key!

Reply | Quote

Replies

Read all about it here: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//149299-Method-to-hide-the-Charms-Bar

Reply | Quote

There’s a list of utilities which restore the Start button here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Start_Menu_replacements_for_Windows_8

Some of those utilities also provide options to boot straight to the desktop without having to go via the Metro interface, and options to disable the Charms icons.

Some of the utilities are free, some not.

Classic Shell and Start8 seem to be the ones most generally recommended.

Reply | Quote

Install Classic shell and set it to:
1. Disable Hot Spots (windows 8 Settings tab)
2. Skip Metro Screen (windows 8 Settings tab)
3. Aero Button (Start Button tab)
4. Windows Vista/Windows 7 style (Start Menu Style tab)
5. Windows key Opens Start Screen (Controls tab)

Those settings will give you a Windows 7 look and feel (including booting into the desktop) while still allowing you to call up the Charms bar with Windows key + c and go to the Metro environment with the Windows key in case you ever need them. Browse each of the other settings tabs to make any other additional changes that suit you. I also set the Control Panel to open up as a Menu under the special items tab.

Jerry

Reply | Quote

If I were you, I would go to online and look for Windows 7 Professional 64 bits. Be carefull not to get a Windows 7 Upgrade, because under Microsoft’s rules you can’t upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 7 unless you have the Enterprise edition. You will need a full retail, an “OEM”, or a Promotional disk.

Newegg has Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit – OEM for $139.00. They have the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit – OEM for $99.00. If you look around, you may be able to beat those prices.

Two things to check for before you get anything though are

1. The EUFI Secure Boot. You may not be able to load anything except Windows 8 on your computer. Some of the new EUFI Bios check for signing before they will allow an operating system to be installed. And of course the only operating system that is signed is Windows 8.

2. If you have a new computer with new hardware, drivers may not exist for Windows 7 or older.

Get a scratch hard drive, download Windows 7 Enterprise Edition 90-day Free Evaluation, burn it to a DVD, and see if you can install it on your computer, and if you can find drivers for all the hardware, before you buy Windows 7.

Reply | Quote

Yes, I’ve been using Win 7 Pro 64-bit for a couple years now. A great improvement over XP. Bought the inexpensive laptop loaded with Win 8 as a backup. Thought I’d try Win 8 with an open mind. Thanks for the tip about EUFI; I was not aware of this.

Reply | Quote

Yes, I’ve been using Win 7 Pro 64-bit for a couple years now. A great improvement over XP. Bought the inexpensive laptop loaded with Win 8 as a backup. Thought I’d try Win 8 with an open mind. Thanks for the tip about EUFI; I was not aware of this.

You may not want to spend the money to buy Windows 7 for an inexpensive laptop that you bought as a backup, so you may want to consider adding a Start button to the desktop UI [ClassicShell, Start8] or putting the Start folder on the task bar. There are other things that you can do to make Windows 8 less Windows 8.

You might also like to consider Ubuntu 12.04 [Long Term Support] or 12.10. It’s free.

Reply | Quote

Now I’m offended! Great improvement over XP indeed (not)! Pish posh, water off a duck’s back.

Reply | Quote

More fun with Windows 8 UEFI, Secure Boot, Fedora and Ubuntu

Take a look at this. As J.A. Watson says, he has looked at exactly one system, a HP dm1 but it had a setting in the EUFI BIOS for Legacy Boot, and when he enabled it, it also disabled Secure Boot.

http://www.zdnet.com/more-fun-with-windows-8-uefi-secure-boot-fedora-and-ubuntu-7000009292/

Reply | Quote

You can uninstall many of those Modern UI apps that will likely be duplicated in some form on your desktop, like the email client and all it’s trimmings.
Nobody says you have to settle for a watered down version of an email client made for low powered devices.

Reduce the amount of duplicity in Modern UI for less a intrusive desktop user experience.

32758-Apower
Put the power Options back on the desktop.

Reply | Quote

These guys here might be worth having a look at.
Although I haven’t tested any of their apps myself, they might be worth looking into.

http://winaero.com/

Reply | Quote

Any can be Uninstalled or just not used, it’s all options & free-choice. * * * Nothing forces the Start screen to be used… 100% optional.

Thanks for your thoughts, Drew. With all respect, my experience is the opposite. I approached Win 8 wanting to use it, but found the consistent, inexplicable explosions of the charms bar and the time/date window in front of the work I was trying to do to be nothing but counterproductive. Part of it may be that the new machine is not a touchscreen, which appears to mean the sizable touch pad must also be the interface with Win 8, thus only a portion of the touch pad remains useful for scrolling, clicking, etc. Once I figured that out and realized I had to be very careful to use only a portion of the touch pad when working in Word, Excel, Outlook, the Chrome browser, or other programs — and my efficiency correspondingly slowed — I was able to reduce somewhat the interjection of the charms bar or appearance of the tile start screen.

Still, there remain times when I find myself stuck in a loop that begins while I’m working away, then the charms bar and time/date box appear, stealing focus, or the tile start screen appears; I hit the windows key, click the desktop tile to return to the desktop, and attempt to get back to work, but as I touch the first key or touch pad — BOOM — I’m back to the tiles again. I will go through this loop several times until finally I find some part of the touch pad that doesn’t trigger the inexplicable pre-emption of my work. I don’t know what causes this, or how any designer could consider this to be useful. It’s like driving down the highway alongside a meth-addled gorilla that keeps grabbing the steering wheel to put you into the ditch. And this is after installing Classic and taking the steps recommended above. (I found Start8 to be utterly useless.)

Were that I could say that “nothing forces the Start screen to be used.” This seems to be an OS designed to impede and frustrate the user.

Reply | Quote

The charms bar can only be activated when the mouse hits the top and bottom right side corners of the screen, and then the mouse would
need to also be moved up or down to activate the time view (to the left lower of the desktop). There is no need to go through the start menu to get
back to the desktop. Just move the mouse or hit win+c.
And the charms bar when inadvertently activated does not steel focus from the mouse cursor when typing on the keyboard, which would actually be
a totally inconvenient user experience.

So unless you are clumsy with your mouse there is no way you can inadvertently activate the charms bar. It just takes a bit of getting used to if you do get
your mouse in the way, but it is by no means invasive to what is being done in the desktop.

Reply | Quote

I could never get a handle on using a laptop’s touch pad to begin with.
Picking up a cheap wireless mouse and disabling the track pad might be a better solution.

Reply | Quote

I could never get a handle on using a laptop’s touch pad to begin with.
Picking up a cheap wireless mouse and disabling the track pad might be a better solution.

My laptops can be plugged into docking stations, so when I use them on a desk, I not only have a real mouse, which I prefer to a touch pad, I also have a real monitor and a real keyboard. I also have it plugged into Ethernet, not WIFI, but for most things the difference on that is not really detectable.

When I am not using the lap top on a desk, on a lap for instance, the mouse is far more trouble to deal with than the track pad.

Reply | Quote

I use a Logitech Anywhere MX mouse with my laptop. My wife uses a MS 5000 Bluetooth mouse. Neither of us like the touchpad either.

Reply | Quote

Clint

So unless you are clumsy with your mouse there is no way you can inadvertently activate the charms bar. It just takes a bit of getting used to if you do get
your mouse in the way, but it is by no means invasive to what is being done in the desktop.

I guess i must be clumsy then as I frequently triggered the Charms Bar when I didn’t want it until I Disabled the hot spots via Classic Shell. Don’t be so quick to pass judgment on the capabilities of others. What works for you is not necessarily true of others.

Jerry

Reply | Quote

I guess i must be clumsy then…

Googling for:
+”windows 8″ +”disable charms”
gives about 252,000 results so it seems that there’s an awful lot of you “clumsy” people around

Reply | Quote

I have disabled the Hot Corners on the desktop as well. The Charms popping out were not as distracting as others have mentioned, especially when I hid the Charms Bar, but they still did once in a while. I can still access Charms with Win + C so I do not feel as though I am loosing anything. I never used the upper left corner hot spot (don’t even know what it’s called)

Reply | Quote

The charms bar is nowhere near as annoying as the Windows 7 “Peek at the Desktop” before we turned it off.

Reply | Quote

Both were equally annoying to me. Had one Windows 7 customer that was convinced he had a virus because the desktop kept popping up on him until I disabled it. Windows 8 will drive him crazy with four places to trigger unwanted events by accident.
Jerry

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the link to VG. Seems to be working. Using a mouse rather than the track pad also appears likely.

Reply | Quote