How to make Windows 7 look like XP

Shawn, 'mode' (as in your reference to 'classic mode') implies more than just appearance - it implies behaviour as well.  And so 'classic mode' is a misnomer - it is classic in style only, without the substance of XP behaviour.

It has been a deeply depressing experience to be a Windows user lately - especially one who has work to do and who wants to do more than watch videos and exchange brief vacuities with other empty heads.  I've been a Microsoft user since DOS 3.3 and each successive OS release has expanded functionality and usability....and in consequence productivity - more than justifying the investment each time in relearning an unfamiliar interface.  Until Vista.  XP Pro was the apogee, since when it has been a sorry decline as MS has dived downmarket, perhaps thinking that being 'down wid da kidz' would broaden its market appeal.  Maybe, but there has been collateral damage to this approach.

I've just finished a week's experimentation with a new W7 machine sat next to my working machine. My interim conclusion is that by next April I need to find and get to grips with a Mac.  When all's said and done, a PC of any flavour is a filing cabinet - a whopping great series of them, and one of the most fundamental of OS responsibilities is to support management and manipulation of these files.  In the deep and complicated tree structure that results from half a career's work in several disciplines, finding the thing one wants obliges search - usually of a branch. W7 context menus don't expect this.  After finding the file I want, I look for the 'folders' button in the XP explorer toolbar to demonstrate (in the left pane) the place in the structure of the file.  I've seen others bemoan the loss of this. Me too. The context (to rapidly expand and collapse different parts of a tree structure) and subsequent file manipulation possibilities in XP are unparalleled.  I could go on - could detail many aspects of this and cite many other ways in which I will be less productive with a W7 than an XP machine, but hot air is futile, and listening is not something MS is noted for.

Why have I bothered? Well in part it is a cri de coeur - an expression of pain from a longstanding, knowledgeable (to IT degree) and hitherto loyal customer - just the sort that one would think MS would want to keep onside.  An in part it is in the hope that one of the shell developers will see encouragement in this to work on the full windows explorer function set.  You've got till next April.

I SECOND The Nomination!

Wow, They took a perfectly good, evolving, Operating System, adding an Service Pack here, Service Pack there, gradually perfecting a System that works fine.  I admit I was skeptical about installing Service Packs, at first, but eventually I adapted and began looking forward to each new Service Pack.

This 'Give the people what WE SAY THEY WANT' attitude, has got me looking more and more toward alternative Operating Systems.  When Win 7 wasn't quite ready (with its super secret code word name as if anyone cares) they stuffed Vista down our throats; within a year it was history, cramming Win 7 into EVERY single new PC, incessantly emailing upgrade offers to Win 7 .  None of us learned from the whole Millennium ordeal; what incredible wastes of time and money. 

If this slap in the face weren't offensive enough, they decided to, break necks spinning heads around, by releasing Windows 8; with no easy way to turn off that 'made for touch screen', Metro look.  Half the people I know are buying orb changers, from God knows who, just to get back to being as productive as we were before they choked us with changes we didn't ask for, the other half simply went to Apple.  If you've got to learn a strange new Operating System: Why Not? Apple is every bit as strange to me as Windows 8.

If they're going to make such drastic, literally, life altering changes, the least they could have done would have been to include Microsoft made Orbs and/or offer the ability to revert to the previous Operating System, for their loyal if not so tech savvy Customer base.  No wonder Seniors don't want anything to do with computers , especially those who took the time to learn a very difficult concept, just for the sake of seeing their Children and Grandchildren, more often, albeit Online.  Learning all over again is a nightmare for them.

I am tired of their changes, tired of being forced into changes, I may not be prepared to make at the time, and on their schedule.  It's this behavior that will see Microsoft circling the drain, far sooner than it should or would have been, if they just stuck with one concept and expanded it.  It's supposed to be WINDOWS not Tiles, on top of Windows, inside of Tiles with more Windows inside.  I mean how complicated should it really have to be?

Before I learn Windows 8 and am forced to endure that idiotic, Metro (tile) look adding more steps to already perfected features; I'll learn Apple for my next new Operating System, before I ever attempt to learn to use a touch screen Program, such as Windows 8, on a PC or laptop until they start herding us into their tablet markets.  I need a desktop in the office and prefer a laptop at home, I choose to take a tablet with me and I prefer Android when I do.

I don't know what they hope to accomplish, but when the last of my Win 7 PC's are done running Windows 7, I'm done chasing Microsoft along with my own tail.  I'm going to Apple, where the O/S changes but the platforms remain the same...

Hey Microsoft: you pushed so much, so hard and so far down my throat, that this last push was the last push.  I returned my Down Your Throat Windows 8 machine to Best Buy, under their 30 Warranty and  better spent my money, having my Windows 7 machines updated.

YOU FINALLY PUSHED TOO FAR!!!  I'm Done guessing when you'll pull the rug out from under me AGAIN....

Hi my taskbar is gray and locked to change it to the normal way. how do i do that?