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Windows 8 for people who hate the Metro UI

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Lum
Lum Posts: 6,460 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Combo Breaker
edited 26 May 2013 at 4:18PM in Techie Stuff
I'm getting rather bored of people slating Windows 8 purely on the basis of of the new metro UI. Yes it is horrible on non touchscreens, but on this basis people are being advised to seek out the more expensive Windows 7 instead, which is a bit silly as Windows 8 does actually perform better than Windows 7 on the same hardware and does have some improvements for desktop use, such as an improved file copier and task manager.

Here's my list of tweaks and apps to fix Windows 8 and make it behave like earlier versions, please feel free to add your own and I will add them here.

You don't have to follow all of them. I've put them roughly in order of most important to least important, so just keep going until you get fed up of it. The first two should be sufficient for most people

StartIsBack.png
StartIsBack with the optional Aero8 skin and Win8-style start button. Default is Win7 style for both.

I have tried to avoid making this a general app recommendation thread. The only reason 8) is there is because whatever codec pack you were using on your earlier version of Windows will probably not work on 8, and the only reason 5) is there is because Windows 8 ships with a Metro-based PDF reader, so the only way to de-metro this is to install a third party reader; previous versions of Windows did not ship with a PDF reader at all. Similarly the recommendation to use Windows Live Mail is because this post is about getting the stock Windows <= 7 experience back. If you previously used Thunderbird then you should continue to do so.

After you have followed these, your Windows 8 should be pretty much identical to Windows 7, apart from cosmetic differences such as the window theme being flat and solid coloured instead of transparent and a few dialogue boxes that state "tap here" when they mean "click here".

List of tweaks:

1) Start Menu Replacement
Free: Classic Shell (3rd Party, open source)
Paid: Start Is Back (3rd Party, $3 for two computers, $5 for five computers)
DIY: Manually disable the new start screen then pin your apps to the taskbar. (thanks: Johnmcl7)
Personally I prefer Start Is Back as the author of this actually found the Windows 7 start menu code still buried inside of Windows 8 and simply activates that. This includes jump lists, new program highlighting etc. etc. Classic Shell is a third party recreation from scratch, it gets the job done but is not quite as swish.
There are a few other start menu replacements out there. Start8 is another third party recreation, and is overpriced, although it does have a neat feature where you can choose to have the Metro UI appear as start menu rather than fullscreen. ViStart is another free recreation but contains adware and is therefore not recommended.

Update: Since originally writing this post many other programs have appeared that do the same thing. I have not tried any of them. They may be good, they may be a spyware ridden disaster. All the programs mentioned in this post, with the exception of ViStart, are safe.

I recommend configuring StartIsBack like this:

StartIsBackConfig.png

2) Window borders
Free: Tiny Windows Borders (3rd Party)
DIY: Manually edit the settings in the registry
The big thick windows borders are probably designed to make desktop mode usable on a touchscreen. Run this and you can make them small again, just set border width and border padding both to zero. All this app does is change the same two registry keys described in the second link. You can delete it once you have set the borders how you like them.

3) Outlook Express, Windows Mail and MSN messenger
Free: Windows Essentials 2012 (Microsoft)
If you're used to OE or Windows Mail, you'll be glad to know these still exist. They are now called "Windows Live Mail" (not to be confused with the Windows Live website, that also offers a webmail service) and are obtained as part of the Windows Essentials 2012 package. This package also includes Windows Messenger which is basically MSN messenger (probably not any more since MSN Messenger has been retired in favour of Skype ) and a few other optional extras such as Windows Movie Maker.

4) PDF Reader
Free: Sumatra PDF (3rd Party, Open Source)
Free: Foxit Reader (3rd Party, Warning: Make sure not to accept any of the adware offers)
Free: Adobe Reader (3rd Party, Warning: Untick the McAfee Security Scan option before downloading)
Pick whichever reader you were previously used to. Personally I find Sumatra to be the best choice as it does not support all the fancy scripting you get in modern PDFs that is so frequently used to exploit Adobe Reader.

5) Microsoft Security Essentials
This is now built into Windows 8 and re-named to Windows Defender. Unlike the Windows Defender in Vista, it is both antivirus and antispyware. If you used to use Security Essentials you do not need to take any action after installing Windows 8.

6) File Associations

Now that you have all your software installed, this last stage needs to be done by hand, but doesn't take too much if you attack it on a case by case basis. Basically if you open a file and it opens up in a fullscreen metro app, close it (alt+f4) right click the file, open with and pick a non-metro app. It's easy to spot the metro ones as their icons are big solid colour squares, just avoid those.
If you want to do them all at once read this .

Most folk will want to stop here. The rest of this post addresses cosmetic issues or parts of windows that most people never use.

7) Windows Media Centre
Paid: Windows Media Centre (Microsoft)
Free: XBMC (3rd Party, Open Source)
Free: MediaPortal (3rd Party, Open Source)
Windows Media Centre was included in certain editions of earlier Windows versions. It's no-longer included with Windows and to be honest you're not missing much, the third party media centres linked above are much better.
This is a pure cost cutting decision by Microsoft, since they have to pay licence fees for DVD playback abilities and many Windows 8 devices wont even have a DVD drive.

8) Alternatives if you just need DVD playback
Free: VideoLan (VLC) (3rd Party, Open Source)
Free: Shark 007 codecs (3rd Party, Warning: The installer will present you with various "offers", make sure to untick them as they are adware. The app itself is clean however.)
VLC is the easiest option, it's a standalone player that will play pretty much anything. Shark007 is a nicer, though more complicated option, it supports all the same formats as VLC but enables them to be used in Windows Media Player, Windows Media Centre and any other player you might install. It also makes video files show up as thumbnails rather than VLCs traffic cone icon.

9) Windows theme
The new theme is not to everyone's tastes, but it can be changed. Note that this does involve installing a hack to enable non-Microsoft themes to be used. This is nothing new as similar hacks exist for XP, Vista and 7. The hack I recommend doesn't modify system files, but instead runs as a service. I am using this one two Windows 8 machines and it's working fine for me.
First install UxStyle . Then find a theme that you like. There is a good collection at WinAero.com including recreations of the XP, Vista and Win7 themes. Generally they come as a ZIP file that must be extracted into C:\Windows\Resources\Themes if you're not sure how to do this, it's probably best to stay away from changing the Windows theme.
Lastly there is a project underway to bring back the transparency effect from Vista/7. It's not really stable yet but I will update this post if it improves.

One last thing that should only affect a very small number of people. Most of you will want to skip this.

10) Virtual PC / Windows XP Mode (not to be confused with compatibility mode settings)

This was only ever available in Windows 7 Pro, Ultimate and Enterprise and is not available in Windows 8. If you intend to use this then it may be necessary to stick with Windows 7, however if you happen to own a separate licence for Windows XP then you can use this licence with an alternative Virtual Machine product, which will likely have significantly better performance anyway

Free: Hyper-V (Microsoft, only works on fairly recent CPUs)
Free: VirtualBox (3rd Party, Open Source)
Free: VMWare Player (3rd Party, only free for personal use)

Configuring VMs is somewhat beyond the scope of a post like this. If you were using XP Mode previously then hopefully you know what you are doing. VMWare is, however, very very good. I've been able to run full screen 3D games with hardware acceleration and get better frame rates than those games got on the XP hardware they originally came from.

If your copy of XP has an OEM licence (i.e. a sticker on the case) then the licence agreement is supposedly non-transferrable to new hardware, and a virtual machine counts as new hardware. Apparently this clause was overruled in the European Courts, but you might have fun getting Microsoft to activate it.

Also note that if your XP licence was upgraded to Windows 8, you no-longer have an XP licence to use for this purpose, unless you have another XP machine somewhere.
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Comments

  • prowla
    prowla Posts: 13,984 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    So, you are bored of people not liking Windows 8, but you admit that it is horrible on non touch screens (though some of the issues, ie. 3 disconnected GUI metaphors still applies there), and then you go to list some unofficial add-ins (some of which cost money) to use to try and fix things.

    They might go some way to addressing individual issues in isolation, but the underlying problem is that it is a confused product.

    Windows 7 should be around for many years and is a superior OS.
  • Lum
    Lum Posts: 6,460 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Combo Breaker
    No, I am fed up of people advising people to waste money on an older product by fearmongering about change.

    Windows 8 (compared to 7) is cheaper, boots faster, performs better, has lower hardware requirements and it finally comes with an antivirus straight out of the box. The complaints with the UI are fixable which is what this post is about.

    Given that Windows 7 is 2 to 3 times the price of 8 at the moment, and the only paid addon I suggested costs around £2, these suggestions are the most cost effective option. Once you set them up, you will have no metro UI, no hot corners, no charms bar. The only differences between the two will be cosmetic.

    FWIW, Tiny Windows Borders isn't really an addon. It just simplifies the process of editing a couple of registry keys for you. Once done you can delete it if you like. That and a start menu replacement are the only unofficial addons listed here that you wouldn't have had to install on Windows 7 anyway.

    Basically, for those prepared to put in a little bit of work, you can save money and get a better performing product, isn't that the kind of thing this site is about.
  • banger9365
    banger9365 Posts: 1,702 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    and if poeple learn how it works they do not need the addons
    and i agree with Lum ,but they are not fix's they are addons and they do crash from time to time,
    with out them win 8 is not what we are used too but it work well ,even better than win 7
    there or their,one day i might us the right one ,until then tuff

  • Lum
    Lum Posts: 6,460 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Combo Breaker
    The only non-Microsoft addon that you install* is Start Is Back, which so far has been perfectly stable for me and others I know who have used it. Not surprising since all it really does is activate a bunch of hidden Microsoft code.

    But yes this post is for people who have decided that Metro is not for them, or for people who are about to spend money on a new PC or OS and are being put off by all the scaremongering about Metro.

    If Metro works for you then great, if it does not then this guide will help you put things back how they were, and hopefully show to a prospective purchaser that they don't have to worry about whether they will like the new UI or not.

    Personally I find that the included Metro apps are basically reduced functionality versions of the older desktop apps. They will likely be a lot of use on a tablet and the switch between Metro and desktop will work well on one of the new generation of hybrid machines that are coming out, but for my desktop I just don't use them and then the Metro UI just becomes a full screen start menu.

    You can actually use Metro pretty well in this way, remove all the live tiles and remove all the entries you never use, but I find that a traditional start menu means smaller mouse movements.

    *Tiny Windows Borders you run once then delete, and the addons in 5) and 6) you would have installed in Win7 anyway
  • Johnmcl7
    Johnmcl7 Posts: 2,838 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    edited 3 December 2012 at 5:30PM
    Another tip I'd add is you can set a task so the machine starts in the desktop mode rather than the Modern UI which is detailed here:

    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/windows-8-basics-tips-tricks-and-cures/3/

    Alternatively you can just press the windows button and D to take you straight into the desktop if you don't want to set it up automatically.

    If you right click the area where the start button was you get a handy power users menu instead which allows you to go straight to event viewer, device manager, uninstall programs etc. without needing to go through the control panel.

    I have just upgraded my desktop to Windows 8 with no touch interface over Windows 7 for the various improvements, mainly the better performance although there's other handy little upgrades like the vastly improved task manager - no longer do you need third party tools to get basic information about the processor, you can now see it at a glance and the display for larger numbers of processors is much better.

    John
  • Mista_C
    Mista_C Posts: 2,202 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    Lum wrote: »
    Windows 8 (compared to 7) is cheaper, boots faster, performs better, has lower hardware requirements and it finally comes with an antivirus straight out of the box. The complaints with the UI are fixable which is what this post is about.

    Just to point out they have the same hardware requirements because other than Metro/Modern UI, and a few tweaks to GUI rendering which are almost unnoticeable to the average user, they're essentially the same beast.
    If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:
    • 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
    • 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
    • 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
    • DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
    If you want to run Windows 8 on your PC, here's what it takes:
    • Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2 (more info)
    • RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
    • Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
    • Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
    Microsoft are very proud of the boot/shutdown speeds of Windows 8 but I would argue the MUI negates that on the Desktop PC by making things more cumbersome.
    I appreciate the point of your post is to provide some great information to balance out that discrepancy but I think the whole grumpiness over Windows 8 comes from non-touchscreen users feeling like Microsoft have flipped them the bird when, amongst the various versions (and like Win7 with multiple versions on one DVD selected by the licence key entered) they could have quite easily added in the option to deselect MUI for non-touchscreen devices.

    Instead you've got the choice of use it, run through a bunch of instructions for 3rd party apps/p**s about with the registry and a handful of system files or use a different OS.
  • Lum
    Lum Posts: 6,460 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Combo Breaker
    I was referring to real-world testing rather than stated requirements there.

    One of the many problems that dogged Vista when it came out is that PCs that only barely met the minimum requirements really did perform badly with Vista, yet plenty of OEMs shoveled them out of the door for under 300 quid in Curries with a "designed for Windows Vista" sticker on the case.

    Windows 7 and 8 you will have a much nicer experience on that same hardware. People have even gotten it running on lower spec machines that that stated.

    And yes you are right that you will have to run through a bunch of instructions and a couple of 3rd party apps. If you have read these instructions and are not comfortable with doing so, then go ahead and spend extra to get Windows 7, I am sure you will be happy with it. The purpose of this post is to inform people that 8 can be made to behave and so the extra spend is not necessary if you're prepared to do a bit of work.

    It's a bit like the hassle of stacking up cashback sites and coupon codes. Some consider the hassle worth it to save money or get a better product, others can't be bothered.
  • Mista_C
    Mista_C Posts: 2,202 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    Lum wrote: »
    I was referring to real-world testing rather than stated requirements there.

    One of the many problems that dogged Vista when it came out is that PCs that only barely met the minimum requirements really did perform badly with Vista, yet plenty of OEMs shoveled them out of the door for under 300 quid in Curries with a "designed for Windows Vista" sticker on the case.

    Windows 7 and 8 you will have a much nicer experience on that same hardware. People have even gotten it running on lower spec machines that that stated.

    And yes you are right that you will have to run through a bunch of instructions and a couple of 3rd party apps. If you have read these instructions and are not comfortable with doing so, then go ahead and spend extra to get Windows 7, I am sure you will be happy with it. The purpose of this post is to inform people that 8 can be made to behave and so the extra spend is not necessary if you're prepared to do a bit of work.

    It's a bit like the hassle of stacking up cashback sites and coupon codes. Some consider the hassle worth it to save money or get a better product, others can't be bothered.

    I quite agree with you. My thinking was more from the point of view of my customers who are more likely to ask "How do I switch this off?" rather than "Is it possible to switch this off?" expecting a Control Panel Applet or a checkbox in Appearance or the like.
    In this instance the majority of them haven't got the confidence to follow the instructions and will end up either paying someone like myself to do it for them or opt to go with something they're more familiar with, e.g. Windows 7, adding to the overall cost. That's not to say I disagree with you at all, quite the opposite and commend you on your helpful post. I just think it would have been nice if Microsoft had given a little thought to those people where touchscreens are not an appropriate interface for their IT use.

    A lot of people (customers) are wary of 3rd party apps (unless it's a trojan masquerading as a Flash game it seems :( ) and get nervous about registry editing because they once heard some urban myth about a guy changing a registry setting and in doing so affected the timeline thereby altering the outcome of WWII.

    The most common complaint I hear isn't so much that MUI is difficult to use, it's not, it's that it's ugly and cumbersome when compared with iOS or Android when used on a machine without a Touchscreen. iOS and Android are more reminiscent of a Desktop full of icons whereas MUI feels like the green felt noticeboards we had in school.
  • prowla
    prowla Posts: 13,984 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Lum wrote: »
    The only non-Microsoft addon that you install* is Start Is Back, which so far has been perfectly stable for me and others I know who have used it. Not surprising since all it really does is activate a bunch of hidden Microsoft code.

    But yes this post is for people who have decided that Metro is not for them, or for people who are about to spend money on a new PC or OS and are being put off by all the scaremongering about Metro.

    If Metro works for you then great, if it does not then this guide will help you put things back how they were, and hopefully show to a prospective purchaser that they don't have to worry about whether they will like the new UI or not.

    Personally I find that the included Metro apps are basically reduced functionality versions of the older desktop apps. They will likely be a lot of use on a tablet and the switch between Metro and desktop will work well on one of the new generation of hybrid machines that are coming out, but for my desktop I just don't use them and then the Metro UI just becomes a full screen start menu.

    You can actually use Metro pretty well in this way, remove all the live tiles and remove all the entries you never use, but I find that a traditional start menu means smaller mouse movements.

    *Tiny Windows Borders you run once then delete, and the addons in 5) and 6) you would have installed in Win7 anyway
    I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you say here.

    But why are the included apps reduced functionality - how does that make sense?

    No matter what you do, you can't get Metro to the have "eye candy" features of Windows 7 - they have taken them out.

    Tablets are fine, but touchscreens are not viable for continual day-to-day use; you cannot hold your arm up for extended periods and the health & safety departments are going to go gaga. Perhaps the surface desktop cops-on-tv programs, where they swoosh the perp's picture on the desktop across to a screen hanging from the ceiling, may be a vision of the future, but Windows 8 doesn't seem to have even the basics covered (eg. moving a window with momentum). (Actually, can I copyright "Momentum" as the name of the next big user interface?)

    And then the next improvement suggested is to strip out the live tiles from the home screen (which I think are its only redeeming feature, though I'm not really that interested in rolling world news from an American perspective), and leave a whole-screen launcher.

    It's poo.

    Metro is the most retrograde step in computer user interfaces that has ever been introduced by a manufacturer.
  • Lum wrote: »
    I'm getting rather bored of people slating Windows 8 purely on the basis of of the new metro UI. Yes it is horrible on non touchscreens, but on this basis people are being advised to seek out the more expensive Windows 7 instead, which is ridiculous.


    Have you tried using this heap of junk on something like Photoshop ?.......or any other specialised software package ?

    You cannot use programmes like this with touch a screen software package or a "!!!!!!!ised" version of one. W7 is excellent for this sort of thing - long may it last !
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