We have seen that Windows 10 is a Windows 8 more similar to Windows 7, fast and safe, but with a fresher and lighter appearance, with a renewed old-fashioned boot menu and without forcing users to endure unnecessary application screens. Without waiting for the release of Windows 10, you can keep Windows 8 / 8.1 easily transforming it into Windows 7 or even Windows XP, only in the appearance and functionality of the desktop.
To do this, you need to install some additional programs and make some changes to the Windows 8 desktop options.
READ ALSO: Transform Windows 10 into Windows XP
1) The start menu
First you need to restore the traditional start menu of Windows 7 and XP, the one that allows you to find and start all the installed programs, which, not surprisingly, was restored in Windows 10.
To put the Start menu back in Windows 8, as already seen in the past, there are several programs among which, the best one is Classic Shell, free.
With Classic Shell you can also disable the Windows 8 Start screen as well as restore the traditional Start menu.
You can choose different graphic themes for the menu and use customized images for the Start button. As we'll see below, this makes it really easy to get a boot menu that blends in perfectly with the look and feel of past Windows versions.
2) Enable custom desktop themes
Windows 8, as well as Windows 7, has internal protection that prevents the user from installing customized themes for the appearance of the desktop, which is essential to radically transform the graphics of Windows.
However, there are two programs that eliminate this limitation and they are: UxStyle and UXThemePatcher which, for my test, worked well.
These are patches that must be extracted and run once, which require a computer restart.
After applying the patch, to install custom themes also in an extreme way, just download them, extract them from the archive in a folder and drag the files to the C: \ Windows \ Resources \ Themes folder.
Then right click on the desktop, go to Personalize and apply the theme that should appear in the list.
3) Transform the appearance of Windows 8 into Windows 7
To return to the original appearance of Windows 7, you can download the Windows Aero theme.
Once installed and once added the boot menu with Classic Shell (setting the original one downloadable from here as an icon) it becomes really difficult, for those who do not know, to distinguish Windows 8.
4) Turn Windows 8 into Windows XP
For the nostalgic who have not accepted the end of XP, there is a graphic theme that makes Windows 8 identical to the older and more popular Microsoft operating system.
The theme to install is Royale 8.1.1 which in addition to the graphics and backgrounds, also has the original sounds of XP.
With Classic Shell you can also set the appearance of the Start button like that of XP
Custom themes can be uninstalled at any time by returning to the default Windows 8 theme from the desktop customization menu.
If you prefer, before doing these transformations, you can create a restore point (by going to the control panel of Windows 8) so that you can go back and undo all the changes.
READ ALSO: Turning Windows into a Mac: desktop graphics, functions, commands and widgets
