Windows 8 who's buying/upgrading

PapaLazaru · 21 Jan 2013 at 19:42

How does one make a shut down tile with the proper logo?

*edit* ignore me I have found it.

What a ball ache.

theheyes · 21 Jan 2013 at 20:06

They should just add shutdown to your little user icon menu in the top right of the Start screen.

Cpukid · 21 Jan 2013 at 20:26

I use start8 found it kinda bridges the win7 - win8 gap a little

PapaLazaru · 21 Jan 2013 at 21:05

theheyes said:
They should just add shutdown to your little user icon menu in the top right of the Start screen.

I cannot believe I have just had to 'make' one.

Cpukid · 21 Jan 2013 at 21:49

When I use windows 8 apps I get sound but no video any ideas?

freebooter · 21 Jan 2013 at 22:37

I am probably going to install win8 soon and need to sort out a partition for it. How much space does it take up? I currently have winXP in a 30GB partition with another partition for installing apps to but I guess that win8 will need more than that?

thanks

dasyad · 21 Jan 2013 at 22:38

Okay first bad experience. Activated the free Media Center Pack and now Windows claims it is de-activated and now I apparently have to ring Bill :confused:

Elevon · 21 Jan 2013 at 23:10

dasyad said:
Okay first bad experience. Activated the free Media Center Pack and now Windows claims it is de-activated and now I apparently have to ring Bill

A Few have had that problem,

Had much the same experience. Installed the $14.99 Windows 8 Pro upgrade, got my free Media Center key, installed and rebooted to find Windows was now deactivated. I clicked on the Contact Customer Service link, called the toll-free number, entered my installation code and their activation code, rebooted and now everything is back to normal. Lot of hoops to jump through that shouldn't be there.

Very apparent that there are some major coding bugs here if installing the Media Center feature deactivates Windows. Glad it's not a production machine I'm using it on.

Mark this one "Not Quite Ready for Prime Time".

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/how-do-i-avoid-deactivating-windows-8-when-i/c752dbd8-810b-4952-b3c8-5fb9e9931d9a?page=2

Name · 21 Jan 2013 at 23:50

Went back to win7 today, partially cause of a hell of a lot of issues, feel the OS isn't quite ready yet, finding the metro interface totally redundant as well for a desktop at least. It needs to be able to be "stuck" to a monitor and not disappear when you click your secondary monitor. Dual desktop support is kinda nice but again i had no real way to utilize it.

May re download my copy of win 8 in a couple of months once i see the changes a service pack brings.

George Hincapie · 21 Jan 2013 at 23:51

nightmare99 said:
The product key is in an ACPI table in the BIOS, you just need to install Windows 8 and it should activate automatically.

Except that won't work. The method you describe works only for an OEM W8 reinstall from a recovery partition. I don't have a recovery partition because I nuked the whole drive to install W7. I downloaded the W8 Pro install, but the key is different because it's a different O/S variant.

Samsung won't send me an OEM W8 disc and I can't (AFAIK) download one, so I'm a bit buggered.

vail3r · 21 Jan 2013 at 23:58

I've just gone to upgrade my laptop to windows 8. Payed for the upgrade and it downloaded and started installing then crashed now it won't boot.

What do I do now? I can reinstall win 7 but then how do i upgrade when I've already payed??

Elevon · 22 Jan 2013 at 00:49

vail3r said:
I've just gone to upgrade my laptop to windows 8. Payed for the upgrade and it downloaded and started installing then crashed now it won't boot.

What do I do now? I can reinstall win 7 but then how do i upgrade when I've already payed??

I would redownload it via email link(one that Microsoft give you which has download link for Win8) make an ISO Disk to DVD or USB first via download assistant.

Basically download it from another PC from the email link they give you then once you got a bootable copy on DVD or USB,you can do a clean install upgrade on your crashed PC ,follow this guide for activation http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/windows-8-pro-upgrade-product-key-cant-be-used-to/1726d238-98fb-4634-a468-04645a8ee097

What I did was make both a bootable USB and DVD copy just incase for the future ,never know and saves you redownloading it again.

4GB USB stick is enough for bootable Win8 x64 .

V F · 22 Jan 2013 at 02:48

Halfmad said:
I agree, however there are many who have convinced themselves that Windows 8 is terrible regardless of the improvements and hold Windows 7 up as if were near perfect. Simply put neither is, so I say go for what you like and please can they stop posting the same drivel in every thread. Some people on here are as much a victim of Win7 fanboy-ism as many old Mac fanatics. I really like Win7 but I use Win8, as I've grown to like the GUI and quick search access it provides.

It's even more amusing that some people are even comparing Windows 8 to Windows ME.

kitch9 · 22 Jan 2013 at 08:14

PapaLazaru said:
How does one make a shut down tile with the proper logo?

*edit* ignore me I have found it.

What a ball ache.

It takes like a minute?

[RB] · 22 Jan 2013 at 10:47

dasyad said:
Okay first bad experience. Activated the free Media Center Pack and now Windows claims it is de-activated and now I apparently have to ring Bill

Exactly the same thing happened to me on Sunday.

In the end, I had to reinstall W8 Pro, Do the upgrade straight away then call to activate (because it obviously thought it was still in use - tip to Microsoft, please make a de-activate/revoke key system! :mad:

)

Now working correctly though

kitch9 · 22 Jan 2013 at 11:03

dasyad said:
Okay first bad experience. Activated the free Media Center Pack and now Windows claims it is de-activated and now I apparently have to ring Bill

I got rid of Media Centre as it always wants to wake my PC at 3am in the morning, which is annoying as my office is near my bedroom.

kitch9 · 22 Jan 2013 at 11:18

Owenb said:
Upgraded from Vista at the weekend. Went from bad to worse- it's like using a Linux distro from 10 years ago.

Vista was crap, but at least I had it in a state where it would do what I wanted. I had problems getting my Linksys WMP54Gv4.0 working on Vista and I had the same problems with Windows 8 but was unable to get around it this time.

Not a single keyboard shortcut works. Ctrl+C/Window+E etc. Typing on the Metro window to launch the Run menu worked once, after that it just decided not to work. Having to Google 'How to shutdown Windows 8' just set of alarm bells in my head. Who designed this crap? Ok press 'Start' to shutdown wasn't the most sensible thing either but one knew that nearly everything could be accessed from there so it was a good place to start(no pun intended) looking. Having to move your mouse to the bottom right of the screen for an imaginary button and go to 'Settings' is just daft. Maybe there is a short cut for this, but damn, not 1 of them work for!

Metro is nice to look at, but it didn't add a single thing to my experience other than get in my way while I was trying to access the old menu's which is where all the useful stuff still is.

All in all, another crap desktop experience from Microsoft.

I would be bad design, if you had to Google how to shut down 8 AGAIN as you had forgot, but now you know how to shut it down it shouldn't be a problem unless you have issues..... Pro-tip try pressing alt-f4.

Right click the bottom right corner of desktop for quick access to the under the hood stuff.

Internets full of whiners who can't take 20 minutes to learn something new, you're not one of them are you?

EvilFranky · 22 Jan 2013 at 11:33

Metro is poop as desktop experience.

I was pleased to see additions like built in Hyper-V and improvements to file management, but not at the expense of being forced with that utterly gash front-end.

And the start menu replacements aren't really good enough.

kitch9 · 22 Jan 2013 at 11:51

EvilFranky said:
Metro is poop as desktop experience.

I was pleased to see additions like built in Hyper-V and improvements to file management, but not at the expense of being forced with that utterly gash front-end.

And the start menu replacements aren't really good enough.

How is it poop? Is clicking on a tile that much different from clicking an icon? Is just starting to type to search SO hard? Is spending 10 minutes customising it so it only displays information of interest to you so incredibly difficult?

Shall we ignore that fact that with how Windows 8 is set-up you can choose to ignore it completely if you so desire?

EvilFranky · 22 Jan 2013 at 12:08

Yes, it's separate to the desktop so is an additional step to get to. Regardless of this I don't use desktop icons as I hate clutter, Metro is no different.

Don't try and be patronizing either, nothing about Windows 8 is difficult. If I've forgotten the specific name of an application, using the search box is futile...having a list of installed programs available a click away, that doesn't involve scrolling through screen after screen of tiles (plenty of people have a boat load of applications) is easier.

I don't have to leave the desktop just to find a program, they are listed neatly in a folder called 'All Programs'. And all visible from a small unobtrusive box in the left hand corner of my screen...where I can also perform searches if I so wish.

The real point is Metro adds nothing to the desktop Windows experience, it's change for the sake of change because of Microsoft's view of making the Windows experience uniform across all devices. I understand the need for this, but to not leave the option for people to turn off Metro on the desktop is a joke.