I am working in a pristine version of Windows 8 DP, but for those who want to work in a old style UI I'd suggest the following solution: Download the attached file and unrar it to your disk C. Open Group Policy Editor gpedit.msc and in "Computer Configuration - Administrative Template - System - Logon" double click on "Run these program at user logon", click on "Show" and in Value field add this string "Regedit.exe /s C:\Onstart.reg" (without """"). Then on "User Configuration - Windows Setting - Scripts(Logon/Logoff)" in the right pane double click on Logoff, then click on "Add" and type in the following "C:\Sd.bat" with no quote marks. Restart your PC. Why this method is better then renaming the dll file and altering RPEnabled to 0? When you rename shsxs.dll the new Task manager will not work and the old one will open with a long delay. If you set RPEnabled to 0 - you'll lose all new features like Ribbon, New Task Manager etc. In the proposed solution I change the RPEnabled value to 0 on shutdown and set it again to 1 on Logon. That's all.