Weekend Feature: 2 Amazing Tools To Bring Back The Windows 8 Start Button And Menu !

If you need a Start menu in Windows 8, here are two amazing tools that can easily bring back not only the Start Menu but also the Start Orb.

Do you remember this old classic Windows 7 Start menu:

Classic Windows 7 Start Menu on Windows 8

Yep, that’s what we’re used to. You can have it back using the tool ViStart. Here’s what it would look like on Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Download Lee-Soft’s Classic Start Menu for Windows 8

As you can see, it’s the classic Start button and links to all the known links like Control Panel, Network and Recent Items. However, the Start menu response time is not the best, it may or may not react in some cases for a few seconds.

Metro Start Menu for Windows 8

If you are looking for a more sophisticated solution that adds the entire Metro menu to your Start button, then take a look at this:

Download Startdock’s Start8

This tool from the great folks over at Stardock works extremely well.

We’ll be on the lookout for similar tools, but the two tools above are so far the best solutions to quickly restore the Start button and Start menu. I clearly prefer Stardock’s approach, because it integrates the new Metro style and gives me access to new Windows 8 features. Optimized for a desktop PC.

Windows 7 Themes on Windows 8

Next on, you should download some of our Windows 7 themes. As Jon reported, Windows 7 themes can be installed on Windows 8 without problems.

If you would rather stay on Windows 7, but want the new Metro look you can find various shell themes on our Windows 8 themes page