
One of the great features that never changed in Microsoft windows is Start button and the start menu. Users preferred it to access their programs more than any other method. Over the years Microsoft introduced many extra features to the classic start menu but they never got rid of it even in windows 7. Microsoft has got rid of the classic start menu in windows 8 to make it more touch friendly. It’s a revolutionary decision taken by Microsoft.
Although they believe that the future of the personal computer is based on touch screen devices majority of current pc owners don’t own touch screens. If you have installed the preview version of windows 8 you might have found that it’s a bit odd not to have a start menu. We can bring the good old start menu back to windows 8 so most of the non-touch users will feel comfortable to use windows 8.
In the first release of windows 8, Developer Preview had a hidden start menu that could be activated by editing just a single registry entry. However Microsoft has completely removed start menu from the later versions. So that there’s an 85% possibility that we will never be able to enjoy the good old start menu in Microsoft windows ever again. So we have left only two main methods out of three methods that we previously had to get the start menu back in windows 8.
1) Using already available windows tools to get a start menu
- Creating a new toolbar
2) Installing 3rd party software to bring back the old start menu
- ViStart
- Classic Shell
Using already available windows tools to get a start menu
Creating a new toolbar
You can have a classic start menu like feature by following few steps. This way you don’t have to install any 3rd party software. Also it’s very easy to undo the start menu when you are more comfortable to use the metro GUI.






Installing 3rd party software to bring back the old start menu
Maybe you find the previous method less attractive as it doesn’t look nice although it has all the features that the classic start menu had except commands like power off and search bar. The best way to get a start bar resembles to windows 7 start bar with a start button icon is to install a trusted 3rd party software which supports windows 8.
ViStart
ViStart is great 3rd party software used by windows users to customize their start menus from a long time. It offers a great modern start menu just like windows 7 original stat menu. Also it officially supports windows 8. If you install this software it will give the authentic windows start menu look and feel.

classic shell
Classic shell is other good 3rd party software which offers a lot of classic windows options to windows 8. If you like the classic start menu which was originally introduced in windows 98 this is the best 3rd party software that you can use to bring back the start menu in your windows 8 pc. You can select other options such as going to the classic desktop window straight after logging in.




Feedback
Hope you found this tutorial useful to install a classic start menu in windows 8. We would love to bring more solutions like this to you on how to customize windows 8 so you can feel more comfortable using it without any touch screen devices. Please feel free to share your views on this tutorial so that we can come up with better solutions in the future.
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