how to make windows 8 look and act like windows 7

Well I for one think that this is a great answer Hurrah for you!!!!!!!!!

I ended up getting Windows 7 to work by deleting every drive/driver and running Linux grub through it. Once it was cleared it accepted Windows 7, only set back was that I needed to reinstall all the drivers. All is well, but still don't use it as much as I thought I would.

Could not agree more.  Every release of Windows is worse and worse.  Every time I move my mouse the stupid screen goes back to the start menu.   I can't find simple apps like before.  I can't switch between apps without opening a new instance, on and on.  Windows itself is nothing more than a way to access other applications.  Microsoft has literally made that so difficult now I just don't even want to use it anymore.  Do what I did, buy XP and reformat the drive and start over.

I'm still trying to figure Windows 8.1 out and I am totally glad I bought a Mac at the same time. I still don't understand the touch and App's functionality of this product, I have an IPad for this.

My new Lenovo Y510p is a slug and deleting all the extra "Apps" was not helpful.

Window's 8.1 is slower with extra memory and ram, it will not run most of the programs I have been running; it is irritating.

I bought my PC for school and now it sits in the corner, I reformatting the hard drive and cleaning all the excess unneeded extras off the Windows 7... wouldn't work, the way they now have the drivers setup in these new computers, you can't even run Linux from a thumb drive without starting up in Windows 8.1 and asking Windows 8.1 if you can boot from a thumb drive... used to be a click of F2 to configure then F10 while your system starts to select a drive... not anymore. Computers used to be like legos and now they are becoming more and more like cell phones with those little apps you can never really get rid off. I'm leaning more and more towards Linux and Mac products every since 8.1 and the fact that Microsoft Office is now an annual subscription.

I have deleted everything that has proven useless from my PC, how do I get rid of the new start menu and just go to the cheesy app menu directly? (without adding another cheesy app)

Is there a way to make the shutdown feature accessible?  

I have a feeling that this computer is going to be sitting in the corner rendered useless.

AGREED!