Solved Win8 upgrade experience

[Slartybart]

I had vista for less than 30 days/ win-7 was a joy that needed Zero tweaking,
8 is already more complicated,
But yes life goes on I'm on 8 now but that was just to kill the outlook.com connection,
Who knew what a local account was

The real bummer is Onedrive is stuck in win-8.1 forever,
It took 10 minutes to find the freaking snipping tool

You're just fighting it too hard.

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Once you accept Start is a fancy schmancy start menu, and you can pin things to it by right clicking, you will have a little more fun - cough, cough

 

[Slartybart]

Sorry about that, I sounded a bit gruff


Try this: on the desktop, unlock the taskbar and drag it up a little.
then go to All users Start menu
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
and right click what you need - pin to taskbar

that will make it more familiar to you, I think.

You could even move the taskbar to the left so it's more like a Win7 "start menu"
taskbar > properties > taskbar location on screen

Once you've built a pseudo start menu, you never have to go to Start
You can even put a shortcut on the taskbar for All Users start menu > programs

Just a thought

I'm wrestling with colors and sizes and an error of my own making when I moved an account off of c:
I do it every time - sheesh!

 

[lehnerus2000]

VHD

I'm thinking I might prefer to run W8 in a VM with W7 as the host.
Not sure if my hardware is up for it, but I might try that sometime.

Try making a VHD version.
You are supposed to get better performance.

I ran the W8 previews that way.
They acted like they had been normally installed on my HDD.

I followed these instructions:
Mister Goodcat | Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview as bootable VHD

Obviously make sure you have backed up your valuable data before you start.

Additional
You can make the Windows key take you to "All Apps" instead of "Metro".
You need to change some options in the "Taskbar and Navigation properties" window.

​

 

[Britton30]

Thanks Derek, Bill. I hate to look up acronyms when the author doesn't explain it, as, VUP (Version Upgrade Package).
Common ones that are universally known are okay, CD, DVD, HDD, SSD, PC, RAM, CPU, GPU, etc., and etc.
ESD is apparently an encrypted Windows Image (WIM) file.

 

[Indianatone]

ESD is also know for Electrical Static Discharge, little yellow label on ram, Hard Drives and other static sensitive parts

What is ESD or ElectroStatic Discharge

It looks like the upgrade to 8.1 can be shocking :roflmao:

 

[ThrashZone]

Start8 looks like a winner although I only briefly looked at it,
Win-7 startup was slow as molasses this morning just getting to the win-7 login

I had got a popup before that win-7 wasn't compatible but I can still use it, allot longer message than that but I'll try to take a screen shot if it returns,
Didn't happen this morning though :/

I found all the taskbar options soon enough they were not enough neither were folder options,
And pinning to taskbar isn't at all what I'm looking for buddy,
Start8 is practically win-7 start button

Tony that is no lie buddy

One thing that was kind of disturbing,
Flash is not listed in the programs list so it doesn't look as though it can be uninstalled,
It showed the out of date version but does not show the current version :shock:

I don't believe that was the case in win-7 and ie11 flash showed up in the programs list and the control panel.

 

[DavidE]

Flash is built into Win 8 IE.
You can open this page in IE for info:
Flash Player Issues | Windows 8

I use Classic Shell (free) for the Start menu and it works great for me ...
There is a Classic Shell sticky thread in EF
Classic Shell for Windows 8
Ivo is the thread starter and program author, and is very helpful if anyone has issues/questions.

Some of my other W8 findings...

For anyone using dual booting, booting into Win 7 can delete all Win 8 Restore Points and set the allocated space to zero.
If you use Restore Points this tutorial shows how to set the Win 8 partiton to Offline in Win 7, so restore points are not deleted.
System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete
The tutorial is for XP / Vista or Win 7, but it applies to Win7 / Win 8 as well.
I used Option 2 (manual regedit).
The Offline partition(s) are listed in Windows (file) explorer as "Local Disk", but they aren't accessible.
The correct label is still displayed when that OS is booted ... it is not shown as "Local Disk".

Win 8 Resume from Hibernate is MUCH faster than Win 7.
I use Hybrid sleep, so that's a welcome change for me.
XP resume was fast, W7 resume is slow, W8 resume is fast ...
I didn't use Vista long enough to know (or remember).

From what I see, it seems the "8.1.1" update is installed when updating from 8 to 8.1 via the App Store.
I see updates listed in Windows Updates / Installed Updates with an install date of of 3/18/2014.
That date is BEFORE I installed Win 8, and these updates can't be uninstalled ...

 

[SIW2]

win8 deletes my win7 shadow copies, pretty annoying. A lot of annoyances and restrictions with 8. Taste of things to come as the tech companies push us into their online services. That is what win 8 is for.

 

[DavidE]

I added the Offline registry entries for Win 7 partitions to Windows 8.
It hasn't caused me any problems, but I don't use Restore Points in Win 7...
You could try that and see if it fixes the issue.

 

[z3r010]

Start8 looks like a winner although I only briefly looked at it

I found start8 the best of all and use it on most of my PC's, however on my laptop I recently reloaded it with 8.1 update 1 with no added start menu, after using it for a week while on my holidays I think I could happily live with the standard functionality and I doubt I'd use start8 the next time my main PC is reloaded.

 

[DavidE]

I was curious so I clicked on Maps in the Start Screen to see it ...
Now I cannot get Map.exe to stop running, and it also runs RuntimeBroker.exe
I unpinned it from Start, killed the process, but when I reboot it runs again.
How can I get this freaking program to not run all the time ?
I can't find it anywhere in Startup items - Task Manager, AutoRuns, ...
It's now listed as suspended in Process Explorer

 

[Boozad]

Start8 looks like a winner although I only briefly looked at it

I found start8 the best of all and use it on most of my PC's, however on my laptop I recently reloaded it with 8.1 update 1 with no added start menu, after using it for a week while on my holidays I think I could happily live with the standard functionality and I doubt I'd use start8 the next time my main PC is reloaded.

It is the best by far, I tried a few myself. I do prefer having it installed as opposed to the native W8.1 option though, while the one pictured isn't anywhere near as fully populated as my W7 yet, I do use the Start Menu a lot.

W8.1



W7

 

[ThrashZone]

Start8 looks like a winner although I only briefly looked at it

I found start8 the best of all and use it on most of my PC's, however on my laptop I recently reloaded it with 8.1 update 1 with no added start menu, after using it for a week while on my holidays I think I could happily live with the standard functionality and I doubt I'd use start8 the next time my main PC is reloaded.

Good info John,
I haven't used start8 much just started no pun intended
30 trial so it's just a quick way to access items now,
I did finally see the little arrow on the bottom left on the metro screen which did take me to all control panel... listings,
That silly big arrow pointing to the bottom left and top right were most likely blocking it earlier dag-nabit


On another note,
After switching the default os to win-7 and time to 5 seconds the boot time has greatly improved to access win-7 Yea
Nothing between 5 and 30 seconds kind odd but good enough for me I suppose

 

[Slartybart]

If the search icon is on Start, you have 8.1.1

A few notes I forgot in my original thesis

I had some hidden WU (Silverlight, Binge, etc), but they disappeared after 8.1 - they were not installed as far as I can tell. I did see something with those updates mentioned, but I don't recall what or where it was - it didn't jump out, I was just looking around and saw a file and looked at it. Not important enough to go find it, just a note.

Defrag after Win8.1 was extremely fast - too fast perhaps. In Win8, there were 10-12 passes, but Win8.1 screamed though in less than 2. I installed Piriform Defraggler and that reported 18% fragmentation (over 450,000 files). Hmmmm - one of them is wrong.

I notice that my mouse and IE refresh are slow when this spindle (5400 RPM) gets even slightly fragmented (1-3%), so 18% was horrific.

New note: Win8.1 is only about 18 GB, whereas Win7 was about 23 GB. Pretty much the same configuration (no hibernation, no RPs) and 3rd party programs installed.

@Mike: I'm not trying to talk you out of putting a 3rd party shell on your system. I'm only trying to help you get past the initial "What! Where is..... How do I...." stage.

@Anyone: I get a kick out of folks commenting on Start - the same way I get a kick out of XP folks commenting on Win7. I've used so many operating systems that these things don't bother me - they might frustrate me as I learn them. I never really did get MVS , but I had a working knowledge - never liked it, but that was a long, long, longggggg time ago.


Hmmm, I'll have to look in task manager now - defragller finished and there are still a few fragmented files.
Scheduled Start
and
Scheduled Start with Network

I wonder what they are and what else is scheduled.

 

[ThrashZone]

Thanks I hear ya,
After unlinking outlook.com things are already better,
I hate having messengers..... always operating,
I've always accessed these items from outlook.com or Hotmail.com it's just the way I roll easy to sign in or out and into another account without worrying about Onedrive or Skype...... coming along for the confusion,

Everything else is on my homepage sitting doing nothing but waiting for me to go to the site
I've never been a fan of constant feeds so that's a very annoying feature of win-8..

I'm going to test start8's search and see what it's like,
Metro's search didn't even come up with snipping tool

 

[z3r010]

I've just spotted that a few of you guys only had new member access over at EF - that should be sorted now

 

[ThrashZone]

Thank you John much appreciated

 

[Slartybart]

Thanks I hear ya,
After unlinking outlook.com things are already better,
I hate having messengers..... always operating,
I've always accessed these items from outlook.com or Hotmail.com it's just the way I roll easy to sign in or out and into another account without worrying about Onedrive or Skype...... coming along for the confusion,

Everything else is on my homepage sitting doing nothing but waiting for me to go to the site
I've never been a fan of constant feeds so that's a very annoying feature of win-8..

I'm going to test start8's search and see what it's like,
Metro's search didn't even come up with snipping tool

Agreed, the instant gratification never impressed me. Automatically syncing systems / data is nice, but I like to know when things get done, so that if an issue crops up I have an idea of what just changed. Same thing for WU - check, but let me look first.

All it takes is a click to fire up an application and put things in order.

I think I mentioned this earlier, Turn off the live tiles (right click). How do you know which ones are live tiles? Kill anything that moves on Start (news, weather, Mail app, Bing....) - I just right clicked everything and if it offered "Turn off live tile" I did.

Snipping tool??? I did a search and it returned right away. Did you search Everywhere (drop down chevron on the search icon)?

I think it's still Windows search, but Bing desktop comes into play somewhere.

Are we having fun yet? You bet we are!

Bill
.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea Bing desktop/ Bing bar and Silverlight are all optional updates I passed on no different than win-7,
All other optional updates got loaded though and of course important ones
Interesting I came up with a blank on top right/ search all,
All I got was search online ?

 

[Boozad]

I've just spotted that a few of you guys only had new member access over at EF - that should be sorted now