SOLVED: How To Enable The POWER BUTTON in Windows 8.1 Update 1

This has taken me about a day to figure out!  I have a new Surface 3 that I have wiped out and imaged with a Win8.1 ISO sourced from the Volume License Service Center (with a release date of 4/13/2014, which I thought included Update 1).   After adding in updates KB2959977 and KB29330418 as per UPDATE 1 instructions which and rebooting I found that I most of the UPDATE 1 improvements (like a context menu when right clicking Tiles) worked as expected… but still no power button.

Then I found a lovely article from Paul Thurrott which explains that he was just as perplexed as I but he had someone from Microsoft explain that:

“…internal setting called the Power Platform Role that PC and device makers must set accurately in order to obtain the Windows logo.

If this setting is configured as “Slate,” the button will not appear, because it would be too easy to tap accidentally and tablet users are comfortable with the edge-based UIs

If it is set to “mobile device,” as a laptop or Ultrabook would be, the button will appear…”

To control the Power Button to be displayed or hidden requires a registry entry:

1. Use RegEdit and get to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell
   1. If you want the Power Button to be enabled for all users open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell
2. Create a new KEY named Launcher under the ImmersiveShell
3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) named Launcher_ShowPowerButtonOnStartScreen
4. Set the value to 1 to make the Power Button appear or set it to zero to make it disappear

Alternately you could just download the Power Button entry from me HERE and run it 🙂