So your a power windows user, or just used to what you h

ad. You made the stupid move to upgrade to Windows 8 and while its faster and has cool features it also has the annoying part of no start button, a new dangled metro interface obviously build for touch screens and your widgets have gone. Well instead of searching all over the web here are the files i use and they work ( x64 and apparently x32). Now just quickly, while this worked 100% and has worked for a week or so for me DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, and read the readme included with ex7forW8 in contains some minor known issues.

This is also IMO a better alternative then that crap Start8 program and a few others i have seen.

Lets get that start button back,

START BUTTON

Grab this file ex7forW8_1.0

Run the setup, you will need a Windows 7 disk of the same type as your PC (So Windows 7 X64 for patchign Windows 8 X64 and same with 32 bit). If you dont have the disk for whatever reason you just need the explorer.exe in the same directory as Ex7forW8.exe and explorer.mui under a folder “en-US”  in the same location as Ex7forW8.exe.

Now when you run Ex7forW8 you should see;

Choose what you want either the old Windows 7 or the new Windows 8. Best part is this doesn’t change any system files you can change back whenever you want. So kudos to Tihiy the developer and I donated $5 for his great work.

So the windows 7 startbar is back but keeping the new windows 8 explorer features. 1 down.

GADGETS

Now did you have a gadget you loved, I personally had a desktop gadget that showed my internet usage, as well as a gadget that pinged certain devices to ensure they were online. Windows 8 removed these (without telling me i might loose them). So you will need the following file 8GadgetPackSetup (12mb) or go to the developers website and download: http://8gadgetpack.bplaced.net/ . Install it and you should get the gadgets back, now if you dont want the sidebar just right click it and choose remove sidebar. In the Control panel you will have this new (or old) gadget gallery.

And just drag what you want back to the desktop.. easy.

And finally I have my windows back to how i want it, with the added features of windows 8 with the easy usability of windows 7.

So hopefully this has helped you out, and made life a little bit easier. You can ask questions but I wont be walking you through with any more detail than what i have written here.