And a hidden thing in the bottom left corner of the screen is a "start"-type button thing that when right clicked will show you a list of common tasks like Event Viewer, Disk Management, Command Prompt, Task Manager, Control Panel, Windows Explorer, Run, etc. It's sometimes helpful to use that, although these days with most stuff on my Windows 8 Menu or I just type a few letters, I don’t bother with these various other menu things, but just FYI…
Logging Out of a system is done by click on your name from the Windows 8 Style menu as shown in the Figure here:
To shutdown or restart the computer, you can navigate the menus (like Charm, Settings, Shutdown), or what I did was create a Windows 8 style menu "app" that I simply click that’ll shut down my computer. You effectively create a "shortcut" on the "desktop" and then you "Pin to Start." That’ll add the shortcut to your Windows 8 menu. Here’s what it looks like:
1) From the Windows 8 menu, click Desktop to switch to the old Windows 7 style desktop
2) Right click on the desktop and choose New | Shortcut
3) When prompted for the Location of the item, enter in c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe /p as shown below, then click Next
4) For the name of the Shortcut, type in something like Shutdown, then click Finish
5) Right click on the shortcut that is on your desktop and choose Pin to Start
You now have an icon on your Windows 8 menu that allows you to shutdown your system with a single click.You can change the command syntax in #3 above to restart the computer by making that c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe /r or /h at the end (instead of /r) will hibernate a system.Oh, and one more thing - so once I tricked out my Windows 8 menu with all of the icons I wanted, how do I transfer my icons, menu items, etc. to other systems? Microsoft came out with this thing called the User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) that is the new generation of "roaming profiles." However, unlike roaming profiles of the past where EVERYTHING was moved from system to system whether you wanted it or not (ie: registry settings, apps, icons, junk on your desktop, etc), with UE-V profiles, you can specifically just note to "roam" your Windows 8 menu. Microsoft did a case study on my organization’s experience with UE-V[link download].More information on UE-V is available on the Microsoft site. UE-V isn’t free; it’s part of what Microsoft calls its Desktop Optmization Pack (MDOP) that includes a bunch of other tools like RemoteApp, App-V (application virtualization), VDI, etc. Any case, you might find your organization owns MDOP as part of the Software Assurance for Windows client licensing, and if so, explore UE-V where you can roam your Win8 menu from your desktop, to your laptop, to your tablet, to your VDI guest session, to your Remote Desktop (terminal server) guest session, etc.Hopefully, this is a place to start. I REALLY fought the whole Windows 8 menu thing for a long time, even filed several "bug reports" during the early adopter program noting that the whole Windows 8 menu was a major "bug," although with a bunch of these tips and tricks I’ve noted in this article, I think you’ll find this whole Windows 8 menu thing to actually be a LOT easier to use and definitely faster than having to fiddle through a bunch of menus.Questions and AnswersAs the "comments" section below has gotten pretty massive, I wanted to create a little index of some of the more helpful questions/answers that people have asked about (and I have answered). Scroll down to the appropriate Comment/Reply below for more info:
- Having Windows 8 "forget" the WiFi passcode and WiFi default connection so you can re-enter in a new key or choose a different WiFi default connection (see response to posting from "Sara" from January 5, 2013)
- Accessing POP3 email from Windows 8 (see response to post from reedfunchap from January 4, 2013)
- Re-associating Windows 8 with a new email / logon / local account without having to restore the whole new system (see response to post from catey44 from January 1, 2013)
- Difference between a Windows 8 Store "App" and downloading an app from a vendor's site (see response to post from Scott Schulte from January 1, 2013)
- Disabling the "Charm" from popping out all the time see response to post from Jesse A Vasquez from December 23, 2012)
- Adjusting the timezone in Windows 8 (see response to post from Sabir Ali from December 17th-ish, 2012)
- Choosing a different "response" when a device is plugged into a system, ie: setting a new default action for a device (see response to post from Ken Reynolds from early December 2012)
- As I respond to "comments" with information of value, I'll continue to add the info in here for a quick summary...
Several other postings I’ve done on Windows Server 2012, Exchange 2013, Intune, System Center, etc. Just click the Next Article or Previous Article buttons on this blog post to get to other articles I’ve covered, or click here to see a listing of all of the various blog posts I’ve done over the years. Hopefully this information is helpful!
Rand Morimoto is the President of Convergent Computing, an early adopter partner of Microsoft that put Windows Server 2012 in production environments over 18 months before the product release. Rand is also the author of the book "Windows Server 2012 Unleashed," over 1565-pages of tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned on Windows 2012; "Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed," "System Center 2012 Unleashed," etc., all by Sams Publishing.