wingsangel, are you using a 3rd party program that gives the optiont to skip the metor start page. I had one installed once that would do that, it would just skip the metro page and go right to the desktop.
I'd say if you have a 3rd party program making it appear more like XP, then look for the option to uncheck that OR
a little more drastically, go to ADD/REMOVE and un-install that program that transforms Windows 8 to look like XP and then restart. The next time your screen should come up to the Metro Start page again. .... I think! LoL
I had this problem once briefly when I click on SKIP THE START SCREEN on one of those trasforming programs. Hope that's a start.
Jack ":-D