xpclient

Btw, doesn't the Everything search product from Voidtools work by directly indexing the NTFS MFT?

A year late to revive this post but Taskbar Pinner will be most useful to you guys.

Thanks. Looking forward to it as well.

KNARZ has published this method to boot natively to desktop like Server 2012 by modifying the System Policy: http://www.wesnext.com/login-directly-to-desktop-bypass-metro-ui/ . Evil has been defeated!!

Nice. Thanks for doing the work of finding the drive letter.

Making Classic Shell more compact is easy. Make the menu single column from "Menu Look" tab. Reduce main menu width to 20, sub-menu width to 30. On my laptop, at just 1280 x 800, it takes up 1/3 (33%) of the screen. To make it further compact, check "Small icons" on the Skin tab. It can easily be made narrower than the Windows 7 Start Menu. The only space it takes more than the Windows 7 menu is the block indicated in red. I don't think that's too large a part of the screen. And that's just compared to default height of Windows 7 Start Menu. If you enable more items in your Windows 7 Start Menu, it can grow taller too. If this is not enough to make folks happy, then there is always Start8.

Ever since Developer Preview, I asked on the B8 blog to MS to add a Group Policy at least to not automatically pin shortcuts to all desktop apps on the Start screen. They obviously didn't listen. Not pinning desktop shortcuts to the Start screen is a good idea, giving clean separation of serious work apps vs toy/fun apps.

In Windows 7, the Start Menu always only links to Libraries. If you use Classic Shell, you can directly link to "My Documents" bypassing the Libraries.

This particular annoyance is fixed in Classic Shell's implementation of the menu though. It can be set up by raising the "menu delay" option value such that the menus only open when clicked, instead of opening when hovered over. So they don't close either unless you click somewhere, they won't close just by hovering if you don't like that.

Wait a minute -- so that Vista/7-style skin for Classic Shell, simply changes the look and not the functionality? --JorgeA Nope. After that skin, it will still be a flyout menu. That is its distinguishing factor from other hundred replacements and isn't going to change because Vista/7 style restricts all programs to a too limited area for browsing with mouse. Of course, if you wish you search, then it's similar but again, not the same. If there are MANY search results, Classic Shell can show them in multiple columns, no scrolling required. It's open source, you are free to modify it as you want and fork it. In fact, one unique feature of Classic Shell on Windows 7 and Vista is that it turns the Vista/7 style menu also into a flyout menu. Go to the "Windows Start Menu" tab and check the "Cascading All Programs menu" option. Then it looks like this (Note: this is the Windows 7 menu which Classic Shell hooks to show "All Programs" with flyout style): Excuse the ugly grey menus, those you can make white or glass.

Ask Ivo in the Classic Shell forums if he wants to make it work with Tihiy's excellent patch.The method of hooking CSM into Explorer is different on Windows 7 and 8, so for Windows 8 with Tihiy's patch, yet another way will have to developed. That may not be worth it, just to be able to use them both simultaneously. I personally think it's not worth it.

No JorgeA. In spite of that skin, Classic Shell's All Programs menu does not open in-place/inline like the 7 Start Menu, which is what Andre doesn't like, because it covers more of the screen. But we consider that an advantage, honest so it will never change. Read here: Why Classic Start Menu? on why Classic Shell was developed. One of the main reasons is cascading menu presents a better to browse. It isn't going to change.

I see and understand what you mean. I was just replying to the menu closing complaint. Classic Shell's menu can be made to show as a single column. Then it takes less than half of the screen. not the full screen if you don't want. You would be amused to know that the top two reasons why Classic Shell was developed when we already had the Windows 7 menu were: #1. Being able to use accelerator keys in a menu to navigate using the keyboard. E.g.Win key, then U for Shut Down, Win key, then P for Programs and so on. #2. Not having a limited area to show all your programs to eliminate scrolling. (Windows 8's approach suffers badly to reduce scrolling despite using full screen because a. it doesn't show by organized set of folders. b. everything has to be oversized to support touch c. covering the taskbar and notification area makes you lose the visual context). But if touch is your primary input method, then Classic Shell's menu icon size can be increased too to any icon size that Windows supports. Windows 7's menu (or its clones) don't scale for large icon sizes comfortable with touch requirements. It's good that both types of menus are available, so users can use whatever they want.

I hate this and you don't give us an option to use the original Vista/7 style But you didn't tell if you tried changing one setting. In Classic Start Menu settings, adjust the "Menu Delay" value to something like 10000 instead of the default value of 400. The "Menu Delay" setting is located on "Basic settings" tab if you are viewing only Basic settings or on the "General Behavior" tab if you are viewing "All Settings". Voila! Suddenly, the issue is eliminated! Menus won't close and yet the entire full screen will be utilized to show all your programs. No more precision required. Even if mouse moves outside of the menus.

I would like an objective discussion/fair criticism on quality too besides piling up all the Start menus in the world. That would help me and Ivo to improve Classic Shell.

Here's a revelation into the evil, wrong, ruthless, directionless mind of Steven Sinofsky which confirms that in the future the desktop is going to go away: http://www.itwriting...ws-and-net.html As Bill Gates once said, no one can tell Steven what to do so essentially Microsoft is at his mercy, not Ballmer's. Ballmer just wants to be part of the success as CEO, while not taking any leadership stance as this article confirmed: http://www.fastcodes...design-strategy Now why would anyone want to kill the largest, most prevalent, most successful, most dominant PC ecosystem for greedy mobile ambitions is beyond me. Does he think by killing "legacy" desktop, Msft can get bigger than Apple once again? Such a person can't have the best interests of users at heart.Only reason for killing desktop might be "developers, developers, developers...". The Windows desktop is not "hot" any more like iOS is for developers.That and a Steve Jobs-like capitalist mentality to rule the world and become the largest company again, at the cost of putting user distress to something of secondary importance.

AB-proof. ROTFL. Edit: No offense please.

You're welcome.

I will always uninstall the bundled Flash package on Windows 8 because compatibility with a number of Flash-using apps I use (one example is Live Messenger Winks) is broken on Windows 8. If I uninstall it and install the regular flash in Windows 7 compatibility mode, everything works properly.

Similar problem as this one? Might be a bug.

You mean the location-aware printing feature of Windows 7? Someone must have configured the default printer on your corporate network.

I am not sure about this alternate OS trend being good then bad now. As long as the three idiots are at Msft, (Ballmer, Sinofsky and JLG), everything will come out TOTAL CRAP after this. The very top people need to be honest, visionary and intelligent like Gates or Allchin.The current management is clueless, arrogant, dishonest and dumb. That's harsh but true.

Apparently the morons will waste a 10 digit amount on marketing the OS that no one wants

Almost everything is a regression. File Explorer's status bar is ruined, Ribbon introduced compared to the simple toolbar. Previous Versions with Shadow Copy replaced by File History which doesn't even save delta differences. Many small Windows 7 features broken and carelessly dropped. Overall, if you ask me, it's a VERY CRAPPY product. Vista was better on an uber high-end system than this s*** except maybe performance of Windows 8 is no problem.If you love everything "simplified" (read uber-dumbed down), then Windows 8 is for you. There are options removed from even various Control Panels. Group Policies which work only up to W7 but don't apply to Windows 8 because they "simplified" it. New Task Manager is a big disaster, although some of them find it "improved" and "new" because it looks cartoonish and eye-candish. File copy dialog is also worse IMHO because it requires more clicks to compare file size, date etc. Programmatic file associations are removed. Metro crap will always load in memory unless you use Tihiy's patch. Can't change logon screen programmatically. Ugly Metro graphics everywhere will p*** you off. Fun things like games and Flip3D and killed by "simplified" Metro crap. Shell dialogs like AutoPlay, Open With are ruined by Metro crap. Glass transparency gone, Classic theme and Window metric/Appearance settings removed. Windows Update doesn't even notify you via balloon of new updates because they thought it was annoying, so decide to leave no option!!! Update available notification is moved to logon screen where you will miss it if you use autologon. Even dialogs for BitLocker are "simplified": http://4.bp.blogspot...lock+dialog.png . All in all, it's a grandma OS designed by Head Grandma, Julie Larson Green. Even the BSOD and Chkdsk repairs have been dumbed down. You get Hyper-V (which requires SLAT-compatible CPU, but you lose Virtual PC. Hyper-V doesn't have sound for VMs AFAIK. And most importantly. It's an attempt to kill the desktop and Win32 API which is now "secondary", "legacy" and in "maintenance mode" while WinRT gets all the love and is "the future". Microsoft's other products, Office, Visual Studio etc are also taking a beating due to crappy Metro-style design which they think is "modern" and "beautiful". Windows Media Player is dead, no improvement to the crappy WMP 12 and isn't even included in Windows RT. Media Center is dead. Backup and Restore is dead.All concept of backward compatible design and leaving alone what already worked is dead. They will constantly re-imagine things and stuff you love in Windows 8 may disappear in Windows 9.