Can we disable the charms bar in Windows 8?

Anonymous
2013-01-22T14:37:05+00:00

Old Title: when I move the mouse around the right hand side bar keeps appearing, when I don't want it to.

I recently bought a new computer with Windows 8 and have managed to work with it OK.  The thing is that when I move the mouse around, the right hand sidebar with the Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings buttons (and the date and time, bottom left),  keeps appearing.  It is so frustrating as I keep having to click to get rid of it. Ironically, when I am ready to close the computer down, I have to fiddle around with the mouse trying to get the damn bar to appear so that I can get the settings button to shut it down. Are there any solutions for this?

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Anonymous
2013-06-05T09:31:15+00:00

"I am sorry to inform you that we do not have any option to disable the Charms Bar in Windows 8."

OMG, when I pay hundreds of my hard-earned dollars, especially in this economy, I expect to customize my product after purchasing. Did Microsoft have regular people try Win 8 for awhile before releasing it?

Got it!!! Its simple, go to control panel, synaptics touchpad and disable side swipe function, simples. it was really beginning to annoy me.

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Anonymous
2013-01-23T10:24:36+00:00

Hi Deborah,

Thank you for choosing Windows 8 and posting your query on Microsoft Community Forums.

It seems that you are not happy with the “Charms Bar” in Windows 8 as it always appears when you move the mouse pointer to the right hand side of your computer screen and would like to know if we can disable it.

I am sorry to inform you that we do not have any option to disable the Charms Bar in Windows 8. I can definitely forward your suggestions to the concerned department.

Microsoft has designed it for making things faster and easier. The charms bar help you do the things you do most often, like search, share links and photos, connect devices, and change settings without any difficulties.

For more information, please check this link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/charms#1TC=t1

Hope this information is helpful.

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Anonymous
2013-07-31T18:02:19+00:00

"I am sorry to inform you that we do not have any option to disable the Charms Bar in Windows 8."

OMG, when I pay hundreds of my hard-earned dollars, especially in this economy, I expect to customize my product after purchasing. Did Microsoft have regular people try Win 8 for awhile before releasing it?

Got it!!! Its simple, go to control panel, synaptics touchpad and disable side swipe function, simples. it was really beginning to annoy me.

This issue was driving me crazy with my new week old inspiron 7720 windows 8.  I even spent time on the phone with tech support who suggested using an external mouse. I followed your suggestion to disable side swipe function and it worked perfectly.  Thank you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-18T16:25:49+00:00

    Totally agree. Additionally I expect a reimbursement for my money spent on "Failure 8" in the form of FREE upgrade to Windows 9... Otherwise I'll feel CHEATED - what I actually feel - and my money stolen. I don't mention my LOST TIME with the "charms bar"...

    Microsoft shouldn't assume what they presume - that those gadgets make "easier" the user's tasks. On the other hand, they should assume their failure and REIMBURSE people.

    I don't think many windoze 8 users on desktops  or  laptops would argue with you there.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-18T19:45:39+00:00

    I totally agree with that. I was willing to say the touch screen itself they can keep the charms but should still allow it to be disarmed. The touchpad is not the place for doing this. First of all many users with high resolution and even the fastest scrolling speed cannot go from right to left and cover the whole screen so common sense is to start on the far right.. Unfortunately this built in function in my brain that I have been doing for years is now triggering a charms bar instead of scrolling where I want it. FYI that is the only touchpad related charms bar I know of.. The other 3 are mouse position related such as moving the mouse to very top right and either down or to the left will cause charms.. The least intrusive is the bottom right moving up. The very end of that bar is clickable for a shortcut to show desktop.. I have it happen to me when I pass my mouse slightly over the show desktop and moving it back into position and it pops that **** up... I found ways on my specific build to disable the far right to left from touchpad and to disable the top right moving left. This was highly annoying because ironically when you have a maximized window there happens to be an X out of window option such has existed in windows since the foundation of time... However again I slightly over veer with my mouse since I do keep it on fast speed it helps me be productive but god forbid I move my mouse like I used to.. Basically I would drag to very top right so fast and then slightly correct my mouse to hover over the X to close a window... However this behaviour I got used to for 20 years now was instead popping up the charms bar 100-200 times a day on me. Well my torment goes in with my laptop but I am making a new server for my downstairs office and am going back to Windows 7 Pro in that setup so I can regain stability and ease of use. The new Win8 also let me tell you is not very fault tolerant and there is a "Wait for all programs to close" bar when you try to restart... Basically windows has an unresponsive program and until it can safely terminate you have to wait for this 10 minute process of this message staying on your screen... Now if you just hard reboot, like in the past it most likely would not hurt you.. Maybe a 5% or less chance you would not be able to boot and have the need for using all the new recovery tools windows gave us in this release because you need multiple ways to recover because not any one of them is reliable. Win8 you hard reboot there is a 50% chance you are going to have to reinstall your OS, refresh it, recover it, etc or use the system disc to try and repair the MBR (Master Boot Record) They just suck and do not care at all... No one from MS comes in here with a fix or to even say it is escalated to a higher level. So many users feel the same way and if they could read they would see this charms bar implementation was poorly thought out and terribly executed. Did someone just single handedly make the decision to do this or did the whole team agree on this terrible idea that the mouse position and touchpad would cause so much unwanted behavior and imply there is no fix for it when I have personally found 2 of the 4 fixes and I dont work there? Better off to stick with Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit... I got **** done with that setup and I am returning to it because these idiots do not care about this train wreck of an OS.

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