How to Access the Apps Screen with a Self-Made Start Button in Windows 8

How to Access the Apps Screen with a Self-Made Start Button in Windows 8

Steps:

Canned Statement: Let me go ahead and add start button.

Right Click on the desktop and select shortcut

Copy and paste the following lines and click on Next

explorer.exe shell:::{2559a1f8-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}

When you see the second screen in the Create Shortcut wizard, type a short name for your shortcut. As you can see in Figure, I named my example shortcut Apps.

To complete the wizard, just click Finish.

Right click on the shortcut and choose the Properties command

As soon as you see the shortcut icon, right click on it and select the Properties command, as shown in Figure.

By default, the Change Icon dialog box displays the icons from the explorer.exe

When you see the Properties dialog box, click the Change Icon button to open the Change Icon dialog box, as shown in Figure. By default the Change Icon dialog box displays the icons from the explorer.exe file. As you can see, none of the available icons are very exciting. However, if you click the Browse button, you can search for other files that contain icons.

While the Windows flag icon is a good choice, you can add the Windows Media Center icon better

I first found a nice Windows flag in the imageres.dll file (C:\Windows\System32.dll) that I considered using, but then I remembered the green Orb icon from Windows Media Center was very nice and found it in the ehshell.exe file (C:\Windows\ehome). Both are shown in Figure.

Select the Pin to Taskbar command

I ended up choosing the Windows Media Center icon because it resembles the Start button but since it is green, it is different from the blue Windows 7 icon. Of course, you can use any icon that you prefer. As soon as you choose your icon, right click on it and then select the Pin to Taskbar command, as shown in Figure.

Drag the pinned icon to the left side of the taskbar

Once your custom Start button appears on the taskbar, drag it all the way to the left side of the taskbar, as shown in Figure. As you can see, using the green Orb icon and positioning it at the end of the taskbar really makes the desktop look like Windows 7.

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