[Windows 8 General] Andrea Borman:
Re Windows 8-

Well I thought I would give Windows 8 Consumer preview another chance.Last time when I installed it. I think where I went wrong was that I might not have had enough space on my hard drive. Because someone told me that my Windows Old folders were taking up a lot of space.

Every time you reinstall Windows,which I have done several times.You old programs get put into a folder called Windows Old. And I had 4 Windows Old folders that took up 40 GB space on my hard drive. So someone advised me to format my C Drive during the next install of Windows.

So yesterday I installed Windows 8 CP again but this time I formatted my C drive only. But I copied my driver files onto my E drive in case I had to install drivers.My netbook is an HP mini 201 1 GB netbook that came with Windows 7 Starter. And there is a folder called set which has all of the HP installers to install drivers and other HP programs put there by the makers,HP.

I copied that folder to my E drive and the install of Windows 8 is on my c drive. so only the C drive was formatted. So this time I had a clean install of Windows 8 CP not an upgrade. So all of my Windows Old files were deleted,leaving me with more disk space.

And to my surprise Windows 8 CP is this time working like Windows 8 DP was. But you cannot disable the Metro theme. But this time I tried some of the programs that bring back both the start orb and Windows 7 start menu.

First I tried Vi start which worked but has limited customisation features. So I uninstalled that and tried Start Menu 7 now called Start Menu X.

Start Menu 7 like Vi Start brings back the start orb and the Windows 7 start menu.You can customise the start orb and there is a choice of the Windows 7,Windows 8 or Apple Mac start orb.The start menu on start menu 7 is actually better than Windows 7's start menu. There are several different themes.

Also I have installed Vista Start Menu which is made by the same people who make Start Menu 7. Vista Start menu does not bring back the start orb but it does put the Windows Vista and classic Start menu on Windows 8. And I liked this as well so I have got both programs on my computer. So I can switch between Start Menu 7 and Vista Start menu.

And you can bring up the Vista start menu by clicking on the short cut on your desktop or taskbar.So I have a start menu on Windows 8 that is better than the one I have on Windows XP and Windows 7.

Start Menu 7 and Vista Start Menu both work on Windows 8 CP. You can get Vista Start Menu from here-http://www.vistastartmenu.com/

And Start Menu 7 can be downloaded from here-http://www.startmenu7.com/

Both programs are free but you can upgrade to the paid version. But I don't think it's worth it. As the free version has a lot of features anyway.

The start menus of Start Menu 7 and Vista Start menu are not exactly like the Windows 7 start menu.More like the Classic start menu but with extra features.But as I said it is an even better start menu than Windows 7 or Windows XP.

And while it is true that you cannot disable the Metro theme in windows 8 CP. You now have the Windows 7 like start menu back so you don't see much of the Metro theme and don't have to deal with it quite so much.

There is also another program that works in Windows 8-Taskbar Classic that puts the Classic Windows 98 start menu in the taskbar on the right hand side. But I did not like this. But some people might and it is still another option on Windows 8.

We don't know if there will be an option to disable the Metro theme in the final version of Windows 8. But the main problem I and other people have is not having a start menu we are used to. But installing other software that does bring back the start menu solves this problem.

And Win Aero the people who made Metro Controller for Windows 8 DP have just made a ribbon disabler for Windows 8 CP. But at the moment it is only available in 64 bit. But on the website it says they are working on a 32 bit version. so that will be yet another option for Windows users on Windows 8.

So by the time the final version of Windows 8 is released there will be a lot more software that will bring back the Windows 7 start menu. I hope so.

But as for me now on Windows 8 CP this time it is working better for me. So they must have fixed the problems that used to be there but are not there now. Andrea Borman.