I am being force to use window 8.1 pro by Microsoft due to the need to develop windows phone app. No matter how hard i force myself to try, same with the majority windows 7 users, I hate the new metro interface and miss the good old start button. Good news, there is an open source program that restore your start menu in windows 8. http://www.classicshell.net/ Mind you that it can be slow if you enable item in the menu as a list, especially the recently open doc. You can speed it up by changing them to link. More info here. But this still takes like 10s to start. To speed things up further, disable your jump list in Classic Shell, and the windows as well by right click on windows task bar->properties->Jump lists, unchecked all item under privacy section. And you might also wanto change the default shell logo, probably to your familiar windows logo. You can get a bunch of them at the forum. FYI, the best size for a logo is 36. You might also wanto disable the pretty but pointless lock screen, so you can directly boot to your desktop or login page. Follow this tutorial.