Disable the Lock Screen in Windows 8

Disable the Lock Screen

Windows 8 shows a lock screen when you restart your computer, log out, or lock it. It’s might be pretty but it adds one more keystroke to the login process. You can actually disable the lock screen entirely.

This option is located in the Group Policy Editor. To launch it, type “gpedit.msc” at the Start screen and press Enter.

In the Group Policy Editor, navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Personalization.

Double-click the “Do not display the lock screen” option, set it to Enabled, and click OK.

The next time you restart your system, log out, or lock the screen, you’ll see the login screen instead of the lock screen.

Google Chrome Low Resolution Problem

When you attempt to run Google Chrome within Windows 8 you might see the warning that it cannot be launched as the screen resolution is too low.

After you get rid of the warning it might then launch or more commonly will refuse to run!

Well, it's an easy fix.

Open regedit and then navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\Metro
Now delete the field launch_mode". Alternatively, set the value from 1 to 0.

Start Button in Windows 8

Since the launch of Windows 8 probably the most talked about feature is one that's missing - the Start button.

Since the launch there have been several third party utilities released that put the Start button and menu back on Windows 8. It looks like these will remain important as the leaked release of Windows Blue (Microsoft's next desktop operating system) doesn't have a start button either; it looks like Microsoft isn't going to listen to what it's users really want on Windows.

So here is a list all the Start buttons that I am aware of. Some of these start button utilities are free and some are paid for but all do a good job and the choice is normally a styling preference.

Here are the free utilities:
Classic Shell
Startisback
Pokki
Startw8

Here are the paid-for utilities.
Start8
RetrUI Pro

Personally, I use the Classic Shell utility - it's free, fast very easy to customise and still allows users to use the new Windows 8 interface as well. But there's nothing to stop you trying all of them out and finding which one is best for you - or of course you could just get used to the new interface.