Windows 8.1 – Anyone running it yet ?

Just downloading at the moment – anyone already downloaded the release version and installed ?

I’m up to my neck in 8.1 upgrade hell right now.. installed the update a couple of hours ago.. now my soundcard isn’t working along with half a dozen other bits of hardware. It changed my keyboard to US layout and tried to force me to log in with my Microsoft account instead of the local one. (hint: type nonsense in the username field and it’ll assume you forgot your details and allow you to login using your local account!)

Oh and in the course of tarting up the start menu it managed to lose or reorganize all my custom shortcuts.. (google oblytile if you are interested!)

Overall not best pleased as I’m now staring down the barrel of a clean reinstall of the whole OS in order to clean up the mess it’s left.

Oh and it also created a windows.old folder which it will not let me get rid of…
Grrrr…

Roll on OSX Mavericks next week..!! 🙄

Note: YMMV

Oh god that’s been released into the wild has it.

I’ll see if its available on general release tonight when I get home. Or perhaps I’ll wait a week or two…..

Actually I’ve got a brand new work machine with a clean installation of Win 8. Might try putting 8.1 on that first.

Oh and if you do successfully update I’d recommend going through the new privacy settings with a fine tooth comb (assuming you can find them all) as the way microsoft have set the defaults they can basically show up at your door unannounced and subject you to a colonoscopy without even checking if their hands are warm…! 😯

Someone has dumped a new laptop with windows 8 on my desk and told me to “do your thang”.. At the moment, it’s not even downloading updates! Do you need to sign in to a Microshit account?

Roll on Mint 16 next month 😉

Download tricking down, may not install it on this machine at the moment !

H1ghland3r – Sounds like your having a bot of a nightmare

Installed and running fine here. Have it on my main desktop PC.

Will set up the Start Screen as something akin to an extra big task bar and pin all my frequently used applications there.

If you right click on the ‘Start Button’ you can pretty much do most things you could with the real one.

EDIT – You can also now set the Start Screen background to be the same as your desktop background. Purely psychological I know but makes switching between the two far less jarring…

Cheers

Danny B

I’ll hold off for a couple of days, let server loads drop a little first!

Oh god that’s escaped into the wild has it.

FTFY 🙂

Someone has dumped a new laptop with windows 8 on my desk and told me to “do your thang”.. At the moment, it’s not even downloading updates! Do you need to sign in to a Microshit account?

install

kb 2871839 restart

go to store

install 8.1

I installed it a earlier; the install process was pretty long winded and I can’t say that I’ve noticed much difference over 8 (although it is meant to be a big step forward).

I was amused to find that Windows Update already had a security patch for the brand new Internet Explorer 11.

My sound card has stopped working now!

meh, there are some shiny colours and an extra icon <—-there.

Well….

I downloaded it earlier thinking will download it then and install at a later date…. But no in true ms fashion it auto rebooted and did the install with no user input… Took around a hour or so to do

Yep, same here. It took a while to do its thing, by which time I went to bed.
I compared the installation as a long climb with LOTS of false summits!

Windows 8.1 tip

First go to your c: drive and click ‘View’ ‘Show Hidden Items’ in the menu of file explorer

Then, on the task bar at the bottom of your main desk to (not the Start Screen) right click — Tool bars — New Tool bar and select the start menu folder located in programdata\microsoft\windows\start menu and press ‘Select Folder’ – no need to go into the ‘rograms’ sub folder you will see.

Now at toward the right of your task bar before the system clock etc you will see the word ‘Programs’ with a >> next to it. Click the >> and a list of all you rograms will come u just like the start menu of old…

You donm’t have to enable ‘show hidden files and folders’ by the way – just type c:\ProgramData into the location bar of windows explorer.

Not impressed with Windows 8 on this new laptop.. It took over 5 hours to install 78 updates! 😯 It then took 2 hours to configure them! 😯

Now downloading 8.1 🙄

Thanks Molgrips – makes explaining it to people much easier.

Good tip

Cheers

Danny B

I can’t get to the store – it just hangs on the loading screen

Anyone else experienced this?

just installed it without any problems.

Don’t notice much difference apart from a little more customization. Still the same non-intuitive interface and the same crappy half written “apps”.

Oh and it also created a windows.old folder which it will not let me get rid of…
Grrrr…

Apparently this will vanish after a few days or you can get rid of it by using the disk cleanup utility.

and people keep asking why I haven’t moved from my slightly worn and battered XP laptop yet.

Downloaded and installed it (upgrade from 8) this morning with no problems at all.

Still on XP on Shuttle mini-PC (with a broken PSU, now with a normal PSU sat on the desk next to it with cables oing in thru where the lid is sposed to be).

Win2K in a VM on the other PC (XP onwards has that dumb Windows Genuine Disadvantage, prove your not a copyright thief before using the OS that shipped with the PC)

Does the job.