Customize Windows 8 Start Menu and Desktop
Windows 8 Start menu has made a big improvement since its predecessors, but you will most likely want to customize it according to your needs. To access this functionality: right-click the Start button, choose Properties, and click the Customize button.
A not so obvious feature of the Start menu is that it is composed of items from two different locations, both of which are hidden by default. One location is from Within your user profile. By default, C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu The second locations is inside the profile for the Public user account that is common (or public) to all users. Typically, C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
By using Windows Explorer to navigate to these locations, you can dig deep into the folder structures and shortcuts that make up your own Start menu. The odd thing is that is that these two locations are combined to form the Start menu display. You can customize the Start menu by dragging and dropping shortcuts like how you might have done in Windows XP, but doing so can get tedious. Instead, simply access these folders directly and move things around as you like, all while occasionally opening the Start menu to make sure you get the results you expect.
For example, you might want to create useful subfolders such as Internet or Utilities, rather than accept the default structure. Or, you could use some of Windows 8 technologies like taskbar and Start menu pinning and Start Menu Search to find what you need and stop micro-managing.
Customize Windows 8 Desktop
Windows 8 desktop may look very similar to that of Windows XP. But in fact, Microsoft has made some nice changes to the Windows desktop. Although of course with these changes comes a new set of skills to master. Mostly, you access desktop options through the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click an empty part of the Windows desktop. In Windows XP and Vista, this menu had options such as Arrange Icons By, Refresh, Paste, Paste Shortcut, Undo, New, and Properties. This has all changed in Windows 8. At the top of the right-click menu is a submenu called View, which enables you to configure features Windows users have been requesting for years. Features include switching between Large Icons, Medium Icons, and Small Icons (called Classic Icons in Vista).
You can also select auto-arrange and alignment options, and hide the desktop icons altogether, as you could in XP. In addition, you can choose to hide desktop gadgets. The Sort by submenu is similar to the top part of the Windows XP Arrange Icons By submenu (and the Sort submenu in Windows Vista). Here, we get sorting options for Name, Size, Item type (as in file extension), and Date modified. On the main pop-up menu, the Refresh, Paste, Paste shortcut, Undo, and New items all carry over from XP and Vista as well.
As with Windows XP and Vista, Windows 8 includes a New menu item in the Desktop properties menu that lets you create new objects on the desktop. These objects include folders, shortcuts, and a variety of document types. The exact document types you see here varies from system to system, depending on which applications you have installed. Some of these document types are installed as part of Windows 8 while others will show up as part of a separate application install. For example, Microsoft Office Word Document is installed with Microsoft Office or Word. At the bottom of the right-click menu is another new option, called Personalize. This item was introduced in Windows Vista and replaces the Properties option from XP. But now it displays the Personalization control panel section when selected. From here, you can access a wide range of personalization options.
You could see other options in the Desktop properties menu, but these are not typically installed by Microsoft. For example, some graphics chipset makers install links to their own utilities and that the Desktop properties menu is the place that makes sense to access those tools. Intel adds two menu options, Graphics Properties and Graphics Options, on systems using some of its embedded graphics solutions. Since these options are not part of Windows 8, and varies from system to system.