I’ve been absent here the last couple of days because due to a series of unfortunate events, a cup of coffee was dumped into the keyboard of my brand new laptop. After a lot of work and internet tutorials, I’ve managed to resurrect what I surely thought couldn’t be possible. It’s still having a few keyboard issues, but it’s better than could be expected.
Before all of this happened, I had planned a fun (and hopefully helpful) tutorial on how to find the start/program menu on your windows 8 pc. When I first purchased the new laptop, I was completely puzzled when I installed software aaaannnnd… couldn’t seem to locate an icon to open word? Or photoshop elements? Where could they have gone? They didn’t automatically install a shortcut to the desktop, either. And where was the list of all of the programs on the pc? Hmm. So, of course, I did a little google search. And came up with some interesting info. If you’re new to windows 8, I’m hoping you’ll find it helpful, too.
First of all, your start menu is a totally new format. But you already knew that. This is the screen that appears when you click the windows icon in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. I haven’t really spent a lot of time exploring this because it seems a bit confusing to me. I’m sure I’ll get it figured out when I have time to play around, but – well, who has time for that? I really need to get to the nuts and bolts of what I need for work and classes at the moment, so I suppose that’s a project for summer. Next on my list is seriously changing that desktop background photo. -_-
Ok. So this is what you need to know to find your programs on your Windows 8 pc. Instead of immediately exiting this very different setup for the more familiar desktop, you can access your programs one of two ways. In this screen, type Ctrl + Tab, OR click the arrow within the circle that’s beneath the desktop “button”.
That will bring up a screen like this:
Walah! Your “programs” aren’t called programs anymore, they’re called “apps”. I have no clue what even half of this stuff is. But that’s pretty normal. Now that I can find it, I can at least start getting rid of the things that I don’t need of use.
Important things to note:
– Navigation scrolls from left to right, and not up and down anymore.
– From here you can double click on the program you need to access to open it.
– To exit this menu, you just need to hover over the bottom portion of the screen (but not all the way to the edge (about a half inch above), and an arrow that points up inside a circle will appear.
– click that arrow and you’re back to the basic start menu that will allow you to go into the desktop format
So, I’ll keep dreaming and saving and budgeting to get back to a mac one day soon, but in the mean time, I’m enjoying having a working computer. It’s really a necessary bit of life for me between blogging, business, and design classes! Having lost it for a few briefs days made THAT clear enough!
Can’t wait to dive in and get back to blogging this week with an update on how things are going in my little studio space update!
Leave a Reply