Brining back the Start Menu [kind of] on Win8 Dev Preview (without reg hacking, third party utilities, etc)

Talbott Crowell's Software Development Blog - Missing Start Menu – Programs Menu quick fix for Windows 8 Developer Preview

"One of the things that frustrated me about Windows 8, when I started trying to use it was the lack of the “Start -> Programs” Menu. Every time you get to the desktop and click the Windows Icon in the bottom right it brings you to the tiles screen. After installing Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview, and Visual Studio 2010, there were a few tiles, but not all the ones I needed (for example I had no way to launch Visual Studio 2010). Plus there were extra tiles I didn’t need. This is an “alpha” release of Windows, so I don’t expect it to work perfectly, but I wanted to see if I can be functional with the Windows 8 preview and use it for presentations and such. So my first attempt was to add items to the task bar, but that only works if they are on the tile screen, so I got some access. Then I tried adding icons to the desktop, and realized that would be way too time consuming. Finally, I resorted to adding a toolbar to the task bar and it works brilliantly. So here are the steps to get your programs menu back.

Step #1: Right click the task bar and choose “Toolbars” -> “New Toolbar…”

[GD:Click through for the rest of the instructions]

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While not a 100% bringing back of the Start Menu (sigh.. I really LIKE the Win7 Start Menu... I hope it comes back in the Win8 Customer Preview [aka Win 8 Beta]) but this is a pretty close stand-in for it.