Windows 8

Anyone notice that windows 8 has a delay on programs starting up on boot?

I want to change this so all programs load on user log in. Any ideas?

 

Make sure you run windows update dudes.. there were a few updates released.. yesterday? or today.. I didn't see them yesterday so Today I guess..

: I

 

I fixed the issue with Windows updates getting stuck at 12% on a colleagues new HP laptop. I haven't been through this thread as it's far too long etc. but uninstalling the audio drivers and running Windows update appeared to resolve the issue.

And after all the updates Windows seemed much quicker overall and on startup.

 

Start8 worth it for $5? I know TPB has it for torrenting, but I refuse to do that.

 

What are you trying to do with Start that needs you spending money on it?

 

Yes, absolutely if you're like me and missed it from the moment you installed Windows 8. Start8 gives you all the functionality of the Windows 7/Vista Start menu plus the new Start screen as well. Having the option of using both is better than being stuck with just one, yes? Start8 is what had made Windows 8 just about perfect in my book as everything is easier to find plus I have all the new features and speed of the new operating system. Microsoft should never have removed the Start menu for desktop users IMO.

 

I just realized they offer a trial at stardock and damn am I impressed, it's just amazing. I am gonna buy it once I get close to the end of the trial. Can I leave Microsoft a feedback somewhere about this? Maybe tell them to make this the default and get rid of those live squares for good. I mean they look nice, but it's very awkward with a mouse...

 

Classic Shell is a free alternative to Start8. The latter is a bit more polished to me and for $5 certainly worth it.

 

I just don't see the point in having two start menu's. And finding an app is quite simple, even if you're on the desktop. click the bottom left of the screen, start typing the name of the app you want, hit enter.

 

Seems people have fallen for the Microsoft's Con on calling the Metro screen a new Start menu. It's true the normal program icons are derived from the start menu folders and not the desktop icon folders, but nevertheless it is nothing more than a touch oriented desktop. The presence of all the start menu icons on the Metro screen just means a crapload of clutter. Sure, you can trim down the icons, but you can do that with the normal start menu too, and still make it easier to 'point and click'. It's not really a step forward where you have to use a search command instead of a simply point and click.

Microsoft would be glad to know people like the ugly normal program icons and the seasick green background of the Metro screen Just like they would be glad people like the whole screen of basically shades of white that is present in Office 2013, very pleasant to look at for 8 hours a day!

Microsoft could have easily made Windows 8 very attractive, appealing, and fully functional, and still have the 'uniformity' to improve tablet sales, but they went the full tablet method instead. Attractiveness does not mean poor performance. Anyone who has used Windows 8 RP compared to the RTM of Windows 8 can attest (if they have half a brain) that aero has no affect on performance. If the simple Aero effects are affecting the computers performance then the computer is really crap. Not only has the aero code been significantly improved since Vista, and now the UI is actually fully accelerated, but computers have also come a long way in the last 6-7 years.

Like I've said elsewhere, ideally windows 8 would have aero, and panels on the desktop (so you can have wallpaper) that can be switched places, changes in size, and able to scroll the two panels individually. You could even move one panel to a secondary screen, such as the Metro app panel. The metro apps could be either just straight edged like now, or with a thin alpha blended border, but be soft edged. The other panel would be for normal desktop icons, NOT the entire start menu. At the bottom of the desktop panel you could have a search bar, with the option to search the start menu and metro apps, or the whole system. You can have a taskbar at the bottom (like now) with the desktop toolbar on by default (for quick access when in programs), and the start menu as per normal for point and click access of other items. Metro apps could at least be easier to close off, and have a separate LUA/UAC function, such that you can have LUA turned off for normal use and on for metro apps. This is extremely easy for them to do, since it knows what are metro apps to block them with LUA disabled currently. This is a beneficial thing for power users.

So, what do people thing of that? Any better than what we have currently? It won't affect the uniformity between tablets and desktops, because even though the look is very different, the concept is the same. If you can work out how to use one, you can very easily work out how to use the other. As it stands, even though they tried to make them the same, they are different, due to the need on desktops and laptops to use normal apps.

Problem solved.

 

I watched a YouTube video last that showed that the Search tool doesn't work quite as well as expected... type 'device manager' into the Start screen Search box and it returns no results on my system. Yet the Device Manager is clearly listed in my Start8 Start menu > Control Panel list!!!

But seriously... having to type to search for mislaid files or images is one thing but personally I find it a backwards step over pointing and clicking from a shortcut on the Start menu (Start8 in this case).

 

The best start menu I've seen in any OS is in Linux Mint, esp the way its arranged in categories. Aside from that, and perhaps even more convenient, is the "menu bar" (a 'panel') which you can pin to the taskbar and has the major start menu items there under 'Applications, system, places' with pop-up menus. I'd love to one day find some 3rd party app that does that in windows. There are some launcher type apps that do something similar, just not as well.

 

Darren: Well... Device manager isn't really an application, imho.... just an extension of the control panel.... which you can find in the search really easy. And it's not even a matter of searching for "mislaid files". You don't have to click the application if you know what it's called. just start typing the name in the search til it comes up, and hit enter. Not nearly as bad as the search feature in previous iterations of Windows.

thatguy:....... why are you still here? You've already, as you put it, "pooped on Windows 8 enough".... and yet you keep returning to do the same... and basically saying the same exact things. Yes, we know you would have loved to have tiles on the desktop so you could have custom background wallpaper (Though i'm pretty sure there's a workaround for that by now for "Metro"). But if you had tiles on the desktop... why the hell even bother with the tiles? If you ask me, THAT would look far more cluttered than having a separate environment with the live tiles.

It's not everyone else falling for "Microsoft's Con" that the "Metro interface" is the new Start menu. It's more the fact that you're following along with every other Win8 basher thinking that Metro was ever meant to be the desktop. If it was, i'm pretty sure they wouldn't have had a classic desktop environment in not only the retail desktop/laptop versions of Windows 8, but also Windows 8 RT for tablets and such.

And just so you know, i'm enjoying my nice relaxing blue wavy background in Metro alongside the desktop on my second monitor. And Metro is only open if i'm doing something with it (which isn't very often). Any other time it's only the desktop on both. i.e. "Metro" = START MENU!

 

I created a 20GB partition on my 1TB HD for Win8 last night, messed about with it a bit.

my list of gripes;

1) Trying to actually find anything was a nightmare, I shouldn't have to "search" for everything and I don't use keyboard shortcuts except ctrl-c and -v...I'm not even going to try and remember all that junk.

2) 1.4 GB of RAM idling on the desktop...WTF...video, keyboard, and sound card drivers and that's after turning off Windows firewall and Defender which cleared about 100MBs worth...I thought this was supposed to be more efficient than Windows 7?

3) The OS booted slow as hell for me...sure it was on a platter drive but my 2005 era Dell laptop (Inspiron 6000) with a 2Ghz single core CPU boots Windows 7 faster than my computer does Windows 8. Pathetic.

Otherwise it wasn't too bad after installing Windows 8 start button and adding the quicklaunch back to my task bar. I hate "pinning" things. Also, let me boot in past the "Metro" screen thankfully. I installed Waterfox and all it's 64bit plugins, some benchmarks, etc and really it was about what I expected...Not a single valid point in upgrading for me at this time. There is nothing wrong with Windows 7 that Windows 8 "fixes" either as far as I could tell.

 

@ Zboe - I agree with you wholeheartedly that you shouldn't have to search for applications, regardless of whether you only need to type in a few letters. I think it is clumsy when all my applications are immediately accessible from the Start8 Start menu on the desktop plus I have frequently used ones added to the Quicklaunch taskbar. True, you can add application shortcuts to the Windows 8 Start screen as well but these plain icons look ugly when mixed with the more attractive (often animated) tiles plus everything starts to look extremely cluttered because there is no option for sub-folders (just look at how horrid the All Applications screen looks for example on the Start screen).

As someone else pointed out, the Start screen is almost another operating system which runs its limited functionality apps fullscreen as opposed to windowed on the desktop. The Internet Explorer 10 and Mail apps for example are horribly cutdown from the desktop equivalents to the point where they're pratically useless for all but the most basic of tasks on a desktop PC. And if Start screen apps are constantly switching to the desktop to run the full and superior versions then it just highlights IMO how dumb it was for Microsoft to have removed the Start menu in the first place. The constant switching from the Start screen to the desktop is just jarring for a modern operating system, especially as they're so different.

Microsoft are just forcing a tablet/mobile interface needlessly on desktop and laptop users for no logical reason. If the Start Screen apps were as fully featured as the desktop equivalents then I could perhaps understand it but they aren't. It takes me just a couple of second to load anything from the desktop with Start8 installed and, IMHO, that superb app is really the only reason I've stuck with Windows 8. Without it, I think that I would have reverted back to Windows 7 due to the annoyance and dumbed down functionality of the Start screen. As it is, with Start8, I can use either without feeling frustrated or annoyed. Windows 8 *needs* third-party tools like Start8 to be fully usable in my experience. Windows 8 itself is actually pretty good once the Start screen becomes an option not a prerequisite.

 

Yeah, I'm going to give it another shot with Start8 this time and not the other one I had. It did the job but I don't think it was as polished. I still had crap popping up for if I moved my mouse into the corners but you couldn't actually click on it and other weird quirks.

Oh well, off to create a new partition and try it again...

 

Just so you know, Classic Shell was just updated on 12/14/2012 and it seems to be working very well. Again, I', sure that Start8 is a bit more polished and offers a few more features, but overall either one should provide all of the functionality that users need. Regardless, I don't feel either one is really needed. General desktop use feels exactly the same as it did in Win Vista/7 to me. I rarely ever see/need the "Modern" start screen in my everyday use. And my system has been rock solid and stable, both with standard everyday use and gaming.

 

Start8 is better than the other one I tried before, it boots straight past Metro without even seeing it, and the corner things are disabled completely and not just hidden. Except for the little tykes styling (ugly bright colors and blocky interface) it now works just like my windows 7 install.

I only put 3 links in my start menu anyway even in 7; computer, run and control panel. My most used programs get desktop icons or put on the quicklaunch bar...no need for a giant tiled mess of poo formerly known as Metro. I also enabled the real admin account and disabled UAC, firewall and defender and that seems to have gone well. I installed regular Windows 8 this time instead of Pro and my memory usage is down but still high considering this was supposed to be something they "improved" from Windows 7.

My motherboard seems to be the only one in the P8P67 lineup though that Asus hasn't made Win8 compatible driver installers for though, which is not cool.

Overall, with Start8 and some tweaking it's not a horrible OS, just not great IMHO.

 

stardock has some good programmers it seems, definitely top shelf apps in terms of performance, features and stability. Their stuff always feels like it was integrated with the OS from the get go.

 

I also bought and downloaded Fences and WindowFX from Stardock and both are superb apps IMO.

Fences allows you to group desktop shortcuts into their own little windows that remain fixed to the desktop. They can be rearranged and given titles plus can be quickly hidden by a double-click on an empty area of the desktop. Very useful if you're like me and get fed up of the icons shifting and rearranging themselves everytime you install a new graphics driver. You can also put fences on other pages which can be accessed by flicking left or right on the desktop in the same way as on a mobile.

WindowFX enables you to change the animation effects for accessing menus, moving/opening/closing/minimizing/restoring windows. It just makes everything prettier but it adds back something that was lost with the removal of Aera Glass from Windows 8.

Both Fences and WindowFX can be used with Vista and 7 by the way, they aren't just for Windows 8.