Win8 upgrade experience

Sounds as though you're well on your way Mike, good luck.

Thought I should mention that I don't work from the Start screen, it's just my start menu...

Windows Explorer is pretty much the same as Win7.

About 3 million updates,
Almost done with the first round of important ones

If you are upgrading via store to 8.1:

When it gets to 100%, close the window. Do not reboot just yet.

Find the $Windows~bt folder and copy it somewhere safe. That contains the installation media. (It'a big)

Now you can reboot to complete the upgrade.

Ouch I'm not sure where and what that is Siw2

Hi Guys. I have had 8 & 8.1 on my machine as a Virtual OS since it came out and I was bought 8.1 pro for Christmas. I have both ISO's and had been wondering what to do with them. Last week I "upgraded a 7 OS" with a clean install on my dual boot main machine. All my machines have at least 2 OS's for those screw up times. I installed 8.1 64 bit and ran the updates and most of the drivers for the motherboard were on the ISO. I updated Creative Labs & AMD Radeon drivers and installed classic shell. I disabled all the silly charms and deleted from the start screen all of the apps except desktop. The machine is set to boot to desktop. I tweaked the registry using some Windows 7 tweaks to add functions to the OS. I downloaded several themes and use one of the window background grey colours as my main them colour. What I have ended up with is a nice looking OS that is perfectly fine but does not quite look as nice as 7. If this would have the full glass effect I would be using it all the time. Still it is not bad. M$ could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had allowed us to choose what we want to install. I have changed my mind, 8 sucks. 8.1 with the updates is fine as long the modern interface is locked away and classic shell is installed and of course you don't have 20 Windows 7 Keys kicking around.

http://www.eightforums.com/attachmen...-greenshot.jpg

We all love freebies please share your tweaks

Add regedit to control panel Works on 7 and 8

Code
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{77708248-f839-436b-8919-527c410f48b9}]
@="Registry Editor"
"InfoTip"="Starts the Registry Editor"
"System.ControlPanel.Category"="5"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{77708248-f839-436b-8919-527c410f48b9}\DefaultIcon]
@="%SYSTEMROOT%\\regedit.exe"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{77708248-f839-436b-8919-527c410f48b9}\Shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{77708248-f839-436b-8919-527c410f48b9}\Shell\Open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{77708248-f839-436b-8919-527c410f48b9}\Shell\Open\Command]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,72,00,65,00,67,00,65,00,64,00,69,00,74,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,\
00,00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\{777082 48-f839-436b-8919-527c410f48b9}]
@="Add Registry Editor to Control Panel"

Here is three all my machines have.

How to Add Recycle Bin, Run, Search and Many Other Useful Shortcuts in My Computer? - AskVG

How to Add Windows 7 ?God Mode? Icon in Control Panel and My Computer Window? - AskVG

[Tip] Add ?Take Ownership? Option in Files and Folders Context Menu in Windows - AskVG

Change the mode of registry to edit instead of the default MERGE (dangerous in the wrong hands)

Code:
REGEDIT5

;Only use this patch in Windows XP and above

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\regfile\shell\open]
@="Mer&ge"
"EditFlags"=hex:01,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\regfile\shell\open\command]
@="regedit.exe /s \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\regfile\shell]
@="edit"


Windows will tell you what it is doing when starting and shutting down:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Windows will tell you exactly what it is doing when it is shutting down or is booting

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system]
"verbosestatus"=dword:00000001

If you want more PM me and I can ZIPor RAR them up and send them to you. I have a ton collected over the tweaking years...

SIW2 said:

If you are upgrading via store to 8.1:

When it gets to 100%, close the window. Do not reboot just yet.

Find the $Windows~bt folder and copy it somewhere safe. That contains the installation media. (It'a big)

Now you can reboot to complete the upgrade.

ThrashZone said:

Ouch I'm not sure where and what that is Siw2

Mike, I'm sure you're way past this question, but since I don't see an anwer.

The $Windows~bt folder will be on your system root drive (most likely c:) - I think it's a hidden file.
You'll have two folders the ~bt and yet another windows.old (mothing to do with the ~bt folder, just thought I'd mention it)

Hope that helps if you're still looking for an answer.