Classic Shell: Forum

I love Classic shell. Went crazy trying to customize windows 8 when I got my new notebook the other day. I expected windows 8 to be an evolution of Windows 7. It wasn't. It was a new direction from Microsoft. I went for Chinese takeout and got McDonalds. If Microslop wants to bump more people into a certain market, let them advertize in conventional ways rather than butt into our unrelated activities and force us to notice what we may not even be interested in. I don't want a schizophrenic, Jekyl and Hyde desktop, period.

I didn't research it beforehand because it wouldn't normally be something you would need to do. And no one warned me.

I started with Power8, which is fine and no charm side bar! While I was complaining to the people (Canada Computers) who sold me my new notebook with windows 8 pre-loaded on it (and wanted to charge me $200 to remove windows 8 and replace it with windows 7 and shorten my warranty by a year, a second mugging in other words), a sympathetic fellow told me that if I choose to keep windows 8, classic shell would ease the pain. I told him I was using power8 and asked him if classic shell bypassed the Metro and the charms sidebar. He said yes. I've still got the charms sidebar (and the Metro flickers on briefly, or did once). In this forum someone seems to be directing those of us who still see charms (Acer V5 with touchscreen, which I have no use for but couldn't avoid) to go to the control panel in the start and do something. I've already removed the classic shell and put the power8 back on. But I'd rather have the classic shell, which looks great. This is soooo distracting. I blog and all of this was so that I could increase my productivty. I was working, away from home, on a first generation netbook. You can imagine. Okay. I will re-install classic and try again. Unless I've misunderstood the meagre instructions above, I'll switch again to classic shell.

When you install Classic Shell, right click the Start button, click Settings. Enable ALL SETTINGS and go to the tab called "Windows 8 Settings". There you can set "Disable active corners" to All. That will prevent the charms from popping up on the desktop when using the mouse.

Since you are using a notebook, your touchpad drivers may also have enabled the Charms. Classic Shell can't disable the touchpad charms but your Mouse Control Panel may have settings to disable the gestures which activate the charms. Here are two common touchpad vendors' control panels (integrated with the Windows mouse control panel):










You can also try Skip Metro Suite: http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.103 which kills the Charms hidden window at startup.

On Windows 8.1, you can try Winaero Charms Killer: http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.219 instead of Skip Metro Suite.

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Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Thanks. I'll experiment. Later...

Later was a few seconds. Thanks! Enabled not 'basic' but 'all', found the relevant setting and voila!