Windows 8 without Metro

[SteveRiley]

Hmm... something I'll have to check in the morning when I'm on campus and have a Windows 8 PC handy.

* Add a Start menu to Windows 8
* Remove Metro from Windows 8

[dmeyer]

That's quite cool but how does it interact with metro apps? Some metro apps launch full screen and sort of stay that way until you switch to another app.

I'll just assume that it doesn't interfere with any of the new security features and doesn't make security programs go crazy like a lot of Windows customizations do.

Also there is Classic Shell which is open source.

I have a feeling that MS will actually make the old style available in SP1 although only for Professional and Ultimate. They are sort of forcing early adopters to take what they give them and after a while will give business users (not normally early adopters) a package that they can adopt. Its sort of like "Here, live with this and when you finally accept it, we will you give you what you wanted and had back."

[notabug]

I don't currently have Windows 8 installed, but I did have the pre-release installed in vm in Windows 7 for a couple weeks. This was before I was aware that 'Metro' could be disabled. My question is, would it be advisable to uninstall all Metro style apps before disabling Metro itself? I still don't see myself ever upgrading to Windows 8 (if that is really an upgrade), but creating a Windows 7 look-alike while gaining the speed and efficiency of Windows 8 might be a plus for Windows users and for only 40 bucks. Just thinking out loud.......

[dmeyer]

Everything is Metro now. Basically, all the awesome new security features that WIndows 8 introduced rely on the metro platform. So you can't uninstall all the metro apps because all/most new apps will be Metro apps. Metro style on the other could be avoided quite a lot but not totally since things like Internet Explorer, Skype et al. have adopted metro styling and many others have have done so partially e.g. Chrome so that they run to their full potential on the patform with tiles etc.

This Metro stuff is weird and confusing!

[notabug]

This Metro stuff is weird and confusing!

+1 might be an understatement thanks

[SteveRiley]

OK so none of the old registry hacks work on RTMed Windows 8 Enterprise Edition. I tried various alternative tools; Classic Shell appears to be the most flexible.

[kernelbasher]

I tried it on my eeepc, turns out the res is not sufficient for Metro, the installer didn't complain though.
It worked fine if you didn't use Metro
Needless to say, I didn't keep it long.
Nice pointers Steve..

[NickStone]

There's too much bad language in this thread. I would really appreciate it if you refrained from using the W word please.

[kernelbasher]

There's too much bad language in this thread. I would really appreciate it if you refrained from using the W word please.

wouldn't want willy wonka wondering what we want would we

[bsniadajewski]

Windows I wouldn't worry too much. It's that M-word that's troublesome.