I was almost ready to link to a screenshot of my laptop to have you show me where paint or calculator was on my desktop, because I couldn’t see it after following your instructions. And then…
Well, what do you know, there is a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom!! Guess that’s why I haven’t seen all the application icons! :smack:
Thanks! Now, can you solve the flash/chrome lagging problem? 
all that means is he’s a smug Apple fan. if you have difficulty with changes to Windows, how easy is it going to be to transition to a completely different operating system?
If flash is lagging, you may need to turn off the hardware acceleration OR turn off their protected mode feature.
To see if hardware acceleration is the problem, open a page with a video, right click on the video, click settings, and then try changing hardware acceleration (if checked, uncheck the box, if unchecked, check the box). Close the browser, open it again, and see if that fixes it. If not, you should try turning off protected mode.
Right now I am not on a Windows 8.1 PC so I can’t verify that the file location instructions are exactly the same for you, but the “Chosen Solution” from this thread is what fixed the issue in Firefox for me. Due to permissions, Windows may hate you messing with the config file. The main idea is to get that file open, change the ProtectedMode value to 0, and then save it back in that folder. As it says, you may need to copy the file out in order to make changes, then copy it back in, to get around Windows trying to keep you from messing with its stuff. It may not let you rename the one file as shown in instructions, but as long as you get the value changed and either saved or overwritten in there, you’ll be good.
PS: Pardon me if I’m getting too nitty-gritty (“hey I know how to do that; stop treating me like I’m dumb!!”) but to open a file in notepad that wouldn’t normally open that way, you want to right-click on the file and choose “open with” and then find notepad in the following list.
Thanks for the answer, but it’s more flash games that start off okay, then start to crawl to the point of nothing for about 4 minutes, and then start working again. It does this every 10 minutes or so. All the resources I’ve found say disable the built in flash player for chrome and only enable the Adobe provided one. I’ve done that, and then reversed that, and downloaded latest files, uninstalled, reinstalled, and nothing seems to fix it. Not that big of a deal, I don’t really NEED to play Bloon Tower Defense 5 while waiting for laundry to get done 
Oh well, I tried! The native/non-native player option was the other thing that tickled the back of my mind as a special Chrome consideration but if one of those three things didn’t do it, heck, I dunno. Computers are complicated and flash is kind of a bloated piece of crud. I can’t wait until we move on to better things than flash.
Back to the thread at hand… 
Windows 8 & 8.1 is a phone operating system because somebody at Microsoft believed the hype that the PC was dead and everybody was going to replace every PC with a tablet or phone. It is designed to work on a handheld touch screen without a keyboard. There was a major revolt to this decision and so they tacked on a few afterthought corrections for keyboard users with 8.1.
Third party developers have created fixes for most of Microsoft’s screw-ups. But they are extra cost and/or effort. The basic design of the Win 8 interface sucks unless you are using a phone/tablet (to be fair it might even suck then, I have never seen a Windows tablet or phone in the wild much less used one). The stupid ribbon that pops up every time you touch the mouse makes the system almost unusable on a desktop. Again there are ways to install additional software or root around and disable the more objectionable bugs in the software, but out of the box Win 8 is a failure on a desktop.
Nice that I should find this thread right after I solved one of my biggest Windows 8.1 gripes. My account is linked to a Hotmail account; it always annoyed me that windows displayed my email address instead of my name. Turns out that I had never typed my name into the appropriate box in Hotmail’s (now Outlook.com’s) settings.
To address the OP…my Windows 8.1 PC is an awesome machine. Windows 8.1 itself is fine; all of my programs that worked under Windows 7 work properly, and my wireless printer isn’t quite as temperamental. Startup is super fast! I’ve also grown to enjoy the Live Tiles; my start screen is basically a wall of news tiles (mostly from News Bento). I despise the mixed interface though – most programs run on the standard desktop, but a few blow up to full screen. It takes a bit of tweaking to get a split display. I also don’t understand why Microsoft split the computer’s settings between Control Panel and PC Settings. Also, the selections in the app store aren’t good at all – especially if you’re using a PC without a touch screen.
The power settings are just plain wonky, though. When I first got the computer, the screen would go black after one minute; after touching the mouse or keyboard, it would display a logon screen. It turns out that I was seeing the results of a screensaver setting – even though the screen saver was not in use. Selecting a screensaver, tweaking the appropriate settings, then deselecting the screensaver fixed the problem. About once per month, the computer will decide to stop going into Sleep mode; running the power troubleshooter seems to fix this, even though it doesn’t appear to actually change any settings. And my iPod will no longer charge when plugged in unless I have it set to be recognized as a hard disk drive by Windows…this has something to do with a power-saving feature for laptops, which would make perfect sense if this computer was a laptop. None of the registry fixes I’ve tried have helped.
And they changed that in Windows 8.1.1, as it was a common complaint. There’s now a power button at the top right of the Start Screen if you’re using a mouse and keyboard. Still different, but much more intuitive.
Not they didn’t. (No they’re not.) Windows 8 still has icons, and they’re still called icons.
Additionally, it has charms, which are contextual functions, launched by one of the five icons on the charms bar. There’s a good reason for these to have their own name, because they do something distinctly different from shortcut type icons.
Additionally, it has tiles, which are a bit like a cross between icons and widgets.
There’s also a ‘shut down or sign out’ submenu in the power menu (right click bottom left corner)
Oh, speaking of icons, all of the icons that you previously found in various folders under “Programs” on the Start menu are now laid out on a single, scrollable screen. (They’re still organized, of course.) It’s a nice change, IMO.
With possible exception of “somebody at Microsoft believed the hype that the PC was dead” pretty much the entirety of this post is wrong, unless the point was that Win 8.0 isn’t as good as 8.1… if so, then ignore the following.
The “Win 8” interface is essentially, a smarter Win 7 Desktop side by side the Metro UI. You can take or leave Metro as much as you want. The Desktop, is the same thing, except without the horrific Start Menu Folder layout, with built-in .ISO mounting and a ton of other nice new features.
As a developer, it would be very awesome if Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 were the same thing. Very awesome. Despite some visual similarities, they aren’t.
On my home laptop, I screw around with Visual Studio 2013, IIS 8.0, I use Trimble’s SketchUp to draw 3D plans and I play a few video games all in the Desktop.
I have a Surface RT that I got for cheap and it feels more intuitive to have a touch screen on the metro side. But, mouse and keyboard work fine for Metro Apps.
I don’t know what you mean by the ribbon that appears when you touch the mouse. Unless you are swiping in from the right on your touchpad and activating the Charms… Which, maybe I am alone, but I love the Charms. No right clicking on menus to find app settings, just swipe in.
The only real issue I have had to deal with on my 8.1 machine is using a 16 bit USB to Serial driver to program my remote control. Because it’s unsigned, there are some hoops to jump through. Fortunately, I use it so rarely that I am not upset about the security precaution. However, if I was using it daily I would have to find a better solution than the one I currently employ.
I love Classic Shell. I’ve had it installed on this computer as long as I can remember.
While at the same time removing NFS support from all but enterprise Windows 8 users (all 5 of them–though to be fair, in the Windows 7 generation, only Win7 Ultimate and Enterprise had NFS support), out of the box commercial DVD playback, and removal of Windows Media Center unless you upgraded to Windows 8 Pro AND paid for an add-on pack. For individuals using Windows as a front end for HTPC uses, Windows 8 and 8.1 were a massive step backwards unless you were willing to front even more cash.
Fair enough, I don’t use NFS or WMC at home so I was not aware of that change. My Lenovo came bundled with DVD playback support, which I have used once, so that bothers me far less than the current DVD support on the XBox One. Which, is a rant for another thread
Yes. I have Win 7 on my home machines, had to have Win 8 on the work machines. I have spent hours making Win 8 look and feel like Win 7 so that we could get some actual work done.
I’ve used 8.1 and love it. I don’t use it on my regular machine because I don’t want to pay for an update to an expensive video editing program to the version that works with 8.1.
From what I understand, Microsoft went back to PARC, and discovered that in the years since they came up with windowing, they had come to the conclusion that it was a Bad Thing, that people wasted too much time fiddling with windows and moving them around - that they were taking advantage of higher resolution displays and splitting screens and tiling information.
If Microsoft had never introduced the Win8 interface, and Apple had instead, it would have been praised by their users as the best computer interface ever invented.
If this were true and you could unplug the “Metro UI” (AKA bloated crap to try and make MS look relevant again) and just use the Windows interface then it wouldn’t stink quite as bad as it does. If things were really set up so you could “take or leave” them then it wouldn’t take hours of time and downloading third-party apps to completely disable the crapware that MS has tied to Win 8.
It’s really just like back in the early days of Android when if you got a device from anyone but Google the first thing you did was root it to get rid of the branded overlay put on by the manufacturer that destroyed Androids innate speed and functionality. Only, in this case, MS has added what amounts to an ill-conceived third party add-on interface over their own software.
Charms? is that what they call it? Anyway, it popping up has nothing to do with a particular motion. Anytime you move the cursor with the touch pad the stupid thing pops up and you can’t do anything, scroll, click, type, etc. until you carefully move your cursor so that it isn’t on top of the ribbon and click on the desktop. I basically freezes the computer and requires a click off the ribbon every time you move the cursor. I was able to reduce the number of times this happens by changing settings but I still can’t work for more than 5-10 minutes without the thing popping up and locking the screen on me. :mad:
It sounds like you are saying that Windows doesn’t use windows anymore. Not sure what point you are trying to make. What do you think Windows uses in place of windows?
The Windows 8 interface is identical to the Windows 7 interface except for the splash screen they added with all the advertising on it. Once you get to the desktop nothing has changed.
There is no new functionality on the splash screen. There is nothing that shows there that you could not do with active desktop in Windows 7 if that was your thing. Forcing everyone into that interface was their error. To each his own, but I have no idea why anyone would use that interface when it is quicker and more efficient to just use the desktop. It’s like Microsoft Bob all over again and Charms are basically “Clippy: The Next Generation.” Only this time it’s not optional.
Have you actually used Win 8.1? It doesn’t sound like you have. Nearly every Metro app on my Surface is simpler and runs better than it’s desktop counterpart, which is still sitting right there for me to use. And what “crapware” are you referring to? At least on my Surface Pro 3 there was not a single piece of crapware installed. I don’t think there were even any third party applications if I recall.
Don’t know what your deal is with the charms. I’ve never had them pop up on their own while I’m using the computer, with either the touch pad, touch screen or mouse. Actually I think I’ve seen the charm bar less than 20 times since I bought this thing last summer.
Win 8.1 isn’t perfect, it does feel like 2 separate OS’s when you switch between desktop and metro, and that’s annoying for sure, but if you had a bunch of crapware on your system then it must have been loaded on there by the OEM or something because mine had zero.
ETA:
What advertising?!? What splash screen? There is no advertising whatsoever on mine. What type of system are you using? You need to point the finger at whoever made your system and loaded stuff on there dude. Most of your complaints have nothing to do with Win 8.1.