So I tried it and found that it worked.ĭuring my experimentation with this technique, I haven't found any serious side effects or other problems. I figured that if anything could trump the Start Screen, it would be explorer.exe.

Then, it dawned on me that explorer.exe is still the heart and soul of the Windows desktop. In any case, it seemed there would be no way to get Windows 8 to boot to the desktop without a third-party tool, such as Stardock's Start8 utility, which, once installed, bypasses the Start Screen as well as revives the Start Menu.Ĭonvinced that there had to be another way to make Windows 8 boot to the desktop using a scheduled task, I began experimenting with different shortcuts and executables. Whether Microsoft did that on purpose or whether the contents of the SCF represented legacy code that was never intended to be a in the final code is unknown. Once the Windows 8 code was finalized, that particular shortcut was no longer recognized by the operating system. During the Preview/Beta period, it was discovered that if you recreated that shortcut in Windows 8 and set it up as a scheduled task that ran at log on, the operating system would run the SCF file and boot to the desktop rather than the Start Screen.

Windows 8 single click