How to Run Windows 8.1 Calculator in Windows 10

In Windows 10, Microsoft has removed the older Windows calculator application and has replaced it with a newer calculator app. The difference between the two is that the older calculator was a native Windows application but the newer calculator of Windows 10 is a Modern/Metro app. The newer calculator app takes a slightly longer time to start up while the older native calculator was lightning fast. If you want to switch back to the older calculator app, then you do not really have any choice. But if you have a Windows 7 or Windows 8.x PC, then you can copy some files from them to your Windows 10 PC and run the older calculator in your Windows 10 PC while still keeping the newer calculator app.

Run Windows 8 Calculator on Windows 10

Here is how you can run older calculator from Windows 7/8.x in a Windows 10 PC:

  1. From your Windows 7 or Windows 8.x PC, copy these files to a USB flash disk drive:
    C:\Windows\System32\Calc.exe
    C:\Windows\System32\en-US\Calc.exe.mui
  2. Copy these files to a folder on your Windows 10 PC. For example, I have copied these files to a folder D:\oldcalc\. You have to keep the Calc.exe.mui inside the sub-folder named en-US.Run Windows 8 Calculator on Windows 10
  3. Open Windows registry editor (press Win+R, type regedit and press Enter) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\.
  4. Create a sub-key named calc.exe and then create two String type values – default value set to the full-path name of the calc.exe file, and the Path value set to the folder path where you copied the calc.exe file.Run Windows 8 Calculator on Windows 10
  5. Now try to run calc from the Run dialog. Press Win+R, type calc and press Enter. You would see that now the older Calculator program is run instead of the new Windows 10 Calculator app.Run Windows 8 Calculator on Windows 10

If you want to use the newer Calculator app, then you can still launch it from the Start Menu or from the command prompt windows. The older calculator application is run only from the Run dialog. In case, you want to remove the older calculator application, then you can remove the registry key calc.exe that you created in the step 4 above and delete the files that you copied in step 2 above.

5 comments

  1. Continuing from previous comment,

    One can right-click on the “calc.exe” on the left pane, and click “export”, select location on hard disk, give a file name,
    that entire chain (including two subkeys) will be saved on harddisk as a .reg file
    Latr on, say, when you had to format your hard disk, or had to reinstall windows, you can just double click on that .reg file and the content will be merged in to the registry.
    there will be no need to go into registry and search the location and create all these.

    As eveyone will copy the two files to his/ her own preferred location, and the registry keys need to have the folder path hard-coded, one person’s .reg file will not work for other person.

    May be Trisha can make a file and tell people how to put the folder paths by editing the registry merge file, then it will be easy for all of us.

    Thanks.

  2. Hoooo my good, finally, great, I send many hours, I try many app from the microsoft store, nothing like the old calc, is perfect, just perfect, thank you so much.

  3. An alternative without messing with the registry:
    1-I sent the 2 files to myself with yahoo mail by appending a new extension (ex: calc.exe.pdf), in part because yahoo doesn’t let you to attach .exe files
    2-On the windows 10 computer I moved the files to \system32 and \system32\en-US
    3-Now I had to remove the .pdf extensions. Unfortunately there’s already a newer version of calc.exe in Win 10, which is much more simplified (e.g., many “keys” are missing in the scientific display). It seems impossible to remove or rename the Win 10 file (calc.exe). So I renamed my Win 8 versions calc-W8.exe and calc-W8.exe.mui. Then I right-clicked on calc-W8.exe and chose to pin it on the taskbar. It works!

  4. FINALLY!!! Thank you so much for helping get back the old calculator.

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