I too made the leap to windows 8 from windows 7, before the game ran PERFECT in windows 7 using the CnCGraphicsPatch, but in windows 8 i found myself having the exact same issue as the OP. The menu was gone, but even worse ingame performance was horrible (even with the CNCGraphicsPatch).
Thanks to the suggestion of running GAME.exe in windowed mode (using -WIN) and using 16-bit color compatibility mode at the properties window i solved the missing menu issue!
The game still wasn't playable for me though. In windowed mode the game would randomly crash on me. I found out this happens because the window border crosses the edge of your desktop window. Always make sure the window is centered and set at a slightly lower resolution, my laptop runs at 1920x1080 so I set the game at 1900x1050 in SUN.ini
Then the game had alot of flickering graphics, plus it performed so bad that even with the CNCGraphicsPatch, especially when scrolling around the map the game was unplayable, I found out that you can fix this by forcing directdraw emulation, I used a wrapper for that and placed in my TS folder. http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html
Now the game is perfectly playable, the only minor problem is that there’s a bit of flickering from the taskbar and near the edge of the screen at the metro/charms bar.
I hope this helps anyone!
