How to show the administrative tools on the modern ui screen in windows 8

Administrative Tools in Windows are system management apps to change important settings of operating system. They include the Disk Management tool, Local Group Policy, Local Users and Group Management, Computer Management, Services and many other important management console tools. By default, they are hidden from the Start screen in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. To access these tools, you need to use the Control Panel. There you will find them under Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative tools. If you are using them frequently, you might want to show them on the Start screen.

To show Administrative Tools on the Start screen in Windows 8.1 Update, you need to do the following:

1. Go to the Start Screen.
2. Press the Win + I shortcut on the keyboard. The settings charm will appear on the right.
   
   Tip: See the ultimate list of Win key shortcuts in Windows
3. Click the Tiles item. It will open the additional settings pane:
   
4. Move the Administrative tools slider there from left to right to turn them on:
   

You are done. The whole set of Administrative tools will be shown on the Start screen inside the Apps view.

Tip: To go to the Apps view quickly press the Ctrl+Tab hotkey on the keyboard while you are on the Start screen Tiles view. You can also pin the desired items directly to the Start screen using its context menu.

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The Windows 8 Start screen is a sparse and lonely place for the power user, until you tweak it. Here’s how to display the Windows Administrative Tools on it.

The Windows 8 Start screen is a sparse and lonely place for the power user, until you tweak it. One trick I showed you is how to access the Windows Power User Menu from the new interface or Desktop.

From the Start screen, use the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + C to bring up the Charms bar. Then click on Settings.

Then select Tiles.

Now click the switch to yes to Show Administrative Tools.

The Administrative Tools tiles like Disk Defrag, Computer Management, Windows Firewall and more will now display on the Metro Start screen. To see them you’ll need to scroll the screen over to the right.

Now that the Administrative Tools have been added to the start screen, create groups for those items for easier access.

Since it’s apparent that Windows users have to live with the new tiles “modern” Start screen, why not make it easier get things done? Combining this with the Windows Key + X power user menu will help the power user access admin tools quickly. Another way to help make the new Start screen handy is pinning Desktop items to it.

Sometimes, it may be necessary for you to frequently access the Administration tools from the Start Screen in Windows 8. This might be specially be useful if you are a power user where the access to the administration tools from the start screen will speed up things. Although, the user can access some of the tools via the shortcut key, it makes things easier by having the Tile in the Start Screen.

The Administration tools in Windows 8 includes some cool tools like Task Scheduler, Performance Monitor, Disk Clean-up, Computer Management etc.

To display the Administrative Tools in Windows 8 Start Screen, follow the below steps

1. Move the mouse cursor to the top right corner of the screen to display the Charms menu and tap settings.

2. in the Settings Pane, Tap Tiles.

How to Display the Administrative Tools 1

3. In the Tiles Pane, slide the toggle button to yes below the Show Administrative tools.

How to Display the Administrative Tools 2

Now , the Administrative tools will be shown in the Windows 8 Start Screen.

The modern UI is the new face to Windows, no matter whether you like or not. I’ve decided to live with it, though most of my Windows 8 time is still spent on the classic desktop. One of the features on Metro UI is its predefined layout, including the number of rows of tiles you see on the screen and how big each of them is. For example, on a 10″ tablet, you only see 3 rows of the tiles on the screen, and each of them are intended to look bigger. Usually to a regular user, you will have to live with what’s been decided.

However, here comes an open source utility called Metro Scaler that lets you easily customize the basic look of Morder UI through a scaling slider so you can adjust those settings to meet your own preference.

Metro Scaler is a very simple portable tool that you can download directly from the open source project page on Codeplex. And you can simply double click to launch it after you have downloaded it. The main window is very simple, including only a preview screen and a slider. You can easily slide the slider to the size of the screen you want to optimize your Modern UI screen.

Once you are satisfied the setting, click Scale button. You will get a confirmation telling you that the change has been made but you will have to restart your Windows 8 machine to have the change taken affect.

Your Metro UI will be optimized and scaled to fit to the size of display you previous chose. One thing I noticed that depending on the size of your physical display, you basically will see the larger or smaller size of tiles but not necessary the exact number of rows like shown in the preview window. On my 14″ laptop, even though I select the scaling to 5″, I still see 4 rows of tiles when I log in.

Want more tweaking tools made for Windows 8, don’t forget to check out always updated A List of Windows 8 Tweaking Tools.

As you probably know Windows 8 does not have a classic Start Menu anymore. To replace that we now have the Modern UI Start Screen. For Windows Server 2012 this is no different. In fact, as soon as you enable the desktop experience feature on a Windows Server 2012 (RD Session Host) server the Modern UI Start Screen is launched upon logging on.

So when running Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012 that raises the question, how can we control the Start Screen the way we would usually control the Start Menu up until Windows Server 2008 R2. With Windows Server 2008 R2 a method that was commonly used (although it has it’s CON’s) was the redirecting the Start Menu to a central location. And by using Access Based Enumeration on the share that hosted the Start Menu, end users would only see shortcuts they were authorized to see, based on group membership.

So, what happen if we would stick to this solution and redirect the Start Menu using the following well-known GPO setting?

This is what a new user would see upon first logon:

That’s right, a completely empty Start Screen, whoops!
Why is that? This is because the Start Screen can simply not be redirected using folder redirection the way the Start Menu was redirected in Windows Server 2008 R2. Instead, what happens is the All Apps section of the Start Screen is redirected to the folder we specified in the folder redirection GPO.

As you might know you can access that by right clicking on the Start Screen (or by pressing CTRL-TAB).

Here the user is able to see shortcuts to the applications he’s authorized to.

From here, a user is able to pin the shortcuts he would like to see to his Start Screen

Using this method the end user is able to build his personal Start Screen. The fact that a user is able to customize the Start Screen to meet his needs is great. However, many users will be completely lost upon first logon when they are presented with the completely empty Start Screen.

Let’s build a configuration so that the end-users receive a default pre-defined Start Screen as a starting point at first logon and allow them to customize that to their needs by adding or removing shortcuts and adding sections to group shortcuts together.

Step 1
Logon as a test user and create the Start Screen you’d like to become the default pre-defined Start Screen. Below is an example of what’s possible.

Step 2The Start Screen is stored in a binary file called appsfolder.itemdata-ms and is located in %USERPROFILE%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\ After creating the Start Screen you want, copy this file to the following location on your RD Session Host Server(s): C:\Users\Default\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\appsfolder.itemdata-ms. If you want to save the current file make sure you create a backup of the exciting file first.

Step 3Mark the file C:\Users\Default\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\appsfolder.itemdata-as as Read-only.

This configuration sets the basics. If a new user now logs in he’ll receive the Start Screen we’ve just created. Basically he received a copy of that file in his profile folder under: %USERPROFILE%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows

As you might have noticed, this folder is under the local section of the profile, meaning it would not roam. However, a copy of the file is created in %USERPROFILE%\ upon log off so that the file roams across different RD Session Host servers.

Also note that because we had to mark the appsfolder.itemdata-ms file in the default users profile to read-only is also marked read-only in the user profile. Meaning that changes a user makes to the Start Screen are not saved. To achieve this follow with step 4.

Step 4Create a new GPO setting on a GPO that is linked to the OU that hosts your RD Session Host servers. And create the following GPO Registry Preference.

Key Path: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Value data:: c:\windows\system32\attrib.exe %USERPROFILE%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\appsfolder.itemdata-ms -R

What that does is it removes the read-only property of the appsfolder.itemdata-ms file inside the current users profile.

This allows the end user to customize his Modern UI Start Screen based on a Default Start Screen we pre-defined !

Ever since the unveiling of the Windows 8 developer’s preview, there has been a lot of talk about the utility of the Metro UI. While the Metro UI was already among the hot topics, even before the release of the developer’s preview, the discussion got more intense when the pre-beta version of Windows 8 was launched

This is because the Metro UI received a mixed reaction from end users. While some liked it’s sleek and stylish look, others have complained that it is merely an obstruction, which deprives the end user from simplicity of usage. In fact, many users who installed Windows 8, found it hard to locate the shut down button. To make life easier for users who simply cannot stand the Metro UI and the ones who would like to temporarily disable it, there are many free tools that have been developed by third-party developers. In this post we will provide you with an overview of these tools, so that you can make your Windows 8 experience more convenient by tweaking with the Metro UI functionality.

Windows 8 Start Menu Toggle

This was one of the first Windows 8 tools to be released on deviantART by a third-party developer. This simple tools provides a very basic feature of toggling between the Metro Start screen and the Classic start menu in Windows 8. All you have to do is to launch the portable EXE file and use the button on the main interface of this application to switch between the Metro and Windows 7 Classic Start Menu.

Note: Run this application with administrative privileges.

Additional Requirements: Windows 8 may require you to download and install .Net 3.5.1 run-times.

Download Windows 8 Start Menu Toggle

Metro Controller

If you are looking for a more advanced application for switching between the Metro UI and the Windows 7 classic start menu, then you might find Metro Controller to be of more utility. It is a portable software to partially or completely disabling the Metro UI. It allows disabling either the complete Metro user Interface or only the partial features of Metro UI. After being launched, it provides you with three options. The first option allows disabling all Metro features including the Ribbon Explorer, Lock Screen and Metro start menu. Whereas, the second option allows keeping the Ribbon Explorer, while disabling all other Metro features. If you would like to completely disable all Metro features, then use the third option. You can enable the Metro features anytime, by running the portable EXE file and selecting the “Enable Only Metro features” option.

Download Metro Controller

Metro UI Tweaker

If you find the above applications to be insufficient in terms of providing proper Metro UI tweaking options, then you definitely need the Metro UI Tweaker. It is perhaps one of the most advanced tweaks that are currently available for enabling and disabling the Metro features in Window 8. Metro UI Tweaker allows you to perform the following tasks:

• You can disable the Metro UI Start Menu and replace it with the Windows 7 style classic start menu.
• You can disable only the Windows Explorer Ribbon.
• You can disable Metro start menu and Explorer Ribbon.
• Enable any of the disabled options.
• Display Windows 8 Lock Screen, Log Off, Restart, Shutdown, Sleep and Switch User options in Windows 8 Metro UI
• Display Any application shortcut within the Metro UI (e.g. Google Chrome).

Download Metro UI Tweaker

We hope that the above mentioned tweaks will helps you customize your Windows 8 operating system to help you control the Metro UI according to your liking. Feel free to drop us a line regarding any queries or suggestions. Happy Tweaking!

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. The commission help keep the rest of my content free, so thank you!

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Comments

everytime I start up Windows 8 (am usually on OS X Lion) the Metro UI hits me in all it´s 27″ glory 😉

it´s sure might look nice on a tablet but in this size it´s just too much

again, thank you!

OK, I made another stab at disabling Metro UI in Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Methods that work to bypass or disable Metro UI in Windows 8 Developer Preview do not work in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Also, methods based on using the Task Manager and methods that are based on a showdesktop.scf don’t work either.

However, I discovered that overriding the default registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon]
“Shell”=explorer.exe

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon]
“Shell”=”explorer.exe /select,explorer.exe”

does in fact automatically skip past Metro UI (under most circumstances).

One can also do this override on a per-user basis with:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon]
“Shell”=”explorer.exe /select,explorer.exe”

In this latter case, you could dip your toe in the water by creating a new login id to experiment on before applying the change system-wide with the first case.

Note that in either case, after one logs on, it takes a couple of seconds for the desktop background to appear after the initial root folder for the user appears.

Also, note that this method leaves a vestigial explorer.exe process that remains in the background until a logoff occurs.

I also made two .reg files, one for the HKLM change and one for the HKCU change, which can be used to apply the desired change. These are in a zipped folder that can be downloaded from:

(Needless to say, if you decide to give this a try, be careful, do a system restore point, and be prepared to enter Safe Mode [if you can figure out how], or understand how to bring up the Task Manager with Ctrl-Alt-Del and start regedit.exe with Administrative privileges if you happen to get in real trouble.)

I also recommend that you disable the hateful lock screen via gpedit.msc by going to:

Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Personalization -> “Do not display the lock screen” and setting that to “Enabled”.

Finally, download and install ViStart to get the Start Menu back. Once you’ve done all three of these things W8 starts to become usable for actual enterprise-level work as opposed to pointlessly farting around with a toy interface that badly emulates a credit-card sized personal communication touch-screen interface like Android.

On Windows 8 boot up, users are welcomed with a beautiful and informative Lock screen followed by smart Login screen that provides various login options. Instead of the Modern UI screens, if you prefer a classic logon screen – the one with a simple user field and password field – here’s how you can get it on Windows 8.

Classic Logon Screen in Windows 8 using Local Security Policy or Registry Editor

Windows 8 lists all users accounts on the Logon screen. To disable this and show the user name and password fields follow these steps:

• Open Run dialog, type in secpol.msc , and hit Enter.
• This will open the Local Security Policy editor. In its left pane, navigate to Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options.

That’d do it. You can check if this worked by logging out of your account.

If you’re on the basic edition of Windows 8, you’ll have to set this policy using Registry Editor.

• Open Regedit and navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
• In the right side pane, create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it dontdisplaylastusername .
• Double click the value and change its Value Data to 1 .

Disable Lock Screen in Windows 8 using Group Policy Editor or Registry Editor.

The Lock screen displays the date and various notifications. This screen adds one more step to the process of getting to your desktop. A click is all that’s required to get from here to the login screen, but to login without messing with another Modern UI doodad, follow these steps:

• Open Local Group Policy Editor by typing in gpedit.msc in the Run dialog.
• When the Local Group Policy Editor window appears, navigate down the Local Computer Policy tree to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization.

Again, if you’re on basic Windows 8, follow this Registry instructions:

• Open Registry Editor and navigate to this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization.
• In the right-pane, create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it NoLockScreen .
• Set its Value Data to 1 .

That’s it. Now when you start Windows 8, you’ll immediately see the classic Windows Login screen.

While the new tiled Start screen is one of the most talked and controversial features of Windows 8 and has been successful in keeping many Windows 7 users from upgrading, users who know how to customize and use the Start screen probably agree that it’s one of the best features of Windows 8.

While majority of Windows 8 users know how to change Start screen background, change app tile icons, pin folders to the Start screen, and pin Chrome web apps to the Start screen, what many users not aware is that Windows 8 also lets users pin their favorite web pages to the Start screen, just like in Windows Phone.

For instance, you can pin IntoWindows to your Start screen and then launch it in the default web browser with just a click. The option comes in handy especially for users who want to make most out of the beautiful Start screen.

Here is how to pin a web page to the Start screen in Windows 8:

Step 1: Open the new Internet Explorer browser (Metro or modern UI browser) and open the web page that you wish to pin to the Start screen.

Step 2: Next, press Windows + Z keys or swipe from the top or bottom edge of the screen on a touch screen to see the app command bar (address bar with options that appears at the bottom of the screen).

Step 3: Click or tap Pin to Start icon, enter a name for the web page, and finally click or tap Pin to Start button to pin the web page to the Start screen. Switch to Start screen to see the web page. Note that the web page tile appears at the end of the Start screen.

By default, in Windows 8, Internet Explorer and Paint programs are pinned to the Taskbar for the quick access. Users who want to open the newly introduced Metro-UI style Internet Explorer can launch the same by clicking on the Internet Explorer tile on the Start screen.

The problem is that one can’t launch the desktop version of Internet Explorer browser from the Start screen without configuring the default settings under Internet Explorer options. When you search for Internet Explorer, the Start screen search result displays only the Modern UI (Metro UI) style Internet Explorer.

While it’s possible to configure the Internet Explorer tile on the Start screen to always launch the desktop version instead of the Modern UI-style browser, users who prefer to launch both desktop and Modern UI-style browser from the Start screen may like to how to open both versions of Internet Explorer from the Start screen.

Users who prefer to use both desktop and Modern-UI style IE browser can simply pin the desktop version of the browser to the Start screen so when you search for Internet Explorer you get both these versions in the search results.

Complete the below mentioned steps to pin desktop version of Internet Explorer to the Taskbar and launch the same from Start screen.

Step 1: Open up Windows 8 installation drive and then navigate to Program Files > Internet Explorer.

Step 2: Right-click on iexplore.exe file and click Pin to Start to pin the program to the Start screen.

From now onwards, you will see both Internet Explorer desktop and Metro UI-style browser in the search result.

You can also follow our how to create custom tiles on Start screen to launch programs guide to create your own tiles with custom background image.