Revisiting the Start Menu for Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 is Microsoft’s first major update to Windows 8 and in this update they have many great new features and enhancements. One of the more notable changes in Widows 8.1, compared to Windows 8, is the introduction to the Start Button. Please note that this is only a button, not a Start Menu for Windows 8.1. The Start Button takes you to the Windows 8 Start Screen (the full screen, tile based replacement to the Start Menu). For some people this is very difficult to get used to and they miss having the Start Menu from Windows 7 and previous versions of Windows. In this video we will show you how to get back a fully functional Start Menu for Windows 8.1.

Video Transcript:

Hey guys, Mark here from ReviverSoft. Today I’m going to teach you how to install a start menu into Windows 8.1. Now, Microsoft have introduced a start button back into Windows 8.1 compared to Windows 8 which had no start button or start menu. We believe Microsoft did this mainly because of public pressure because people were complaining that the start menu had been replaced with the start screen.

Those of you who are not familiar with a start screen, this is the start screen right here which is brand new in Windows 8. It is a full screen tile-based interface compared to the traditional start menu that opens up over the desktop. This will look different for everybody based on what you have installed on your computer, but it’s a full screen menu, it has tiles, it’s sorted differently than what you’re used to seeing in the start menu. Some people love it, some people hate it. For those people who don’t like it, we are going to show you today how to bring back a start menu.

ReviverSoft actually has built a start menu specifically for Windows 8 and it’s called “Start Menu Reviver.” I’m going to show you how to install it today and run you through some of the features.

To get it, go to the ReviverSoft homepage at www.reviversoft.com. On the front page you’ll see a link to Start Menu Reviver so you can click “find out more” or you can go to the URL that I’ve displayed below. Here you’ll see a [inaudible 0:01:31] page for Start Menu Reviver. It shows you a bit of the features of the product and gives you a bit of a view of what the product looks like. There’s a fantastic video that we’ve produced here that you can watch at a later time.

To download the product, just click on the “download” button. It’s only a small download, only five megabytes. I have actually downloaded it before to save some time and I’m going to run it for you now.

Once you’ve downloaded it, you have to accept a security warning for administrative privileges and then you’ll be asked to select a language, and then you go through a pretty standard installation prompt with a license agreement and choosing where to install the product as well; which location on your hard drive. The installation is very quick and easy.

There’s nothing bundled in the product, even though it is a free product. A lot of free software these days you start to see ads for pop-ups and things like browser toolbars and things like that. We don’t do that with any of our software. We don’t believe that it’s a great idea, and it’s not a good experience for the end user.

Here we are with Start Menu Reviver, it’s opened up. On first install it actually has a dialogue that opens up that is a tutorial. As you can see here, we’ve got some videos and some descriptions on how to use our product. I won’t go into all of these things because you can do that yourself and it’ll take up quite a bit of time for me to go through it. I’ll just show you quickly the product itself.

As you can see, it’s open in the bottom left. The start button has changed to our start button. If you click on it, it opens the menu; it doesn’t open the start screen anymore. Start Menu Reviver is quite different from what people are used to seeing for a start menu. It is designed to work really well with touch, so you can touch any of these tiles with your finger quite easily rather than having to use a stylus or something with a traditional start menu.

It’s also extremely easy to customize. We’ve designed our product so that you can move tiles around within it, you can change the way tiles look, you can change colors of the product. You can still get direct access to your start screen by clicking on the tile we have for the dashboard. It’s quite different, but we think it’s a really sexy looking start menu compared to what we’ve been used to seeing in traditional versions of Windows.

Download it today, it’s completely free. We really hope you like it, and feel free to leave a comment on the comments below of this video. We look forward to seeing you in our future video from ReviverSoft. Have a good day.