Windows 8 Consumer Preview Thread

I tried Windows 8 first time last night.

now i use OSX/Windows7/LInux everyday and change between at work

Metro confused me at the start, After 30 mins i still didnt know how to get out of full screen mode, Then realised its touch based, lets touch the sides as voila.

One thing that i did think was a bit weird, was my version of Consumer preview, kept crashing constantly. id click an app & the mouse would not move for say 20 seconds then carry on.

now ive found windows update (which was a pain in the ass to find by the way) hopefully thats fixed.

im using an lowish spec manchine but Win7 worked flawlessly on it.
AMD Althon II 2.8
2GB Ram
500GB WD cavair
ATI 3000 (onboard) might trry my 430GT see if that helps

i do like the idea of metro but so far its not made me like it.

I think the biggest pet peeve so far is the Microsoft account wanted to Everything... i dont want a microsoft account. i had one for windows for live games & it was terrible.

Hopefully windowsd update fixes my problems well see :)

also i run windows 7 & mac with no desktop icons, i Guess thats not even possible with metro? (i dont like clutter..) can i just search for what i want?
 
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You can install it without a Microsoft account. I didn't realise that at first either.

I didn't think the Server version has Metro. Are admin has a build that doesn't at least.
 
smogsy said:
I tried Windows 8 first time last night.

now i use OSX/Windows7/LInux everyday and change between at work

Metro confused me at the start, After 30 mins i still didnt know how to get out of full screen mode, Then realised its touch based, lets touch the sides as voila.

One thing that i did think was a bit weird, was my version of Consumer preview, kept crashing constantly. id click an app & the mouse would not move for say 20 seconds then carry on.

now ive found windows update (which was a pain in the ass to find by the way) hopefully thats fixed.

im using an lowish spec manchine but Win7 worked flawlessly on it.
AMD Althon II 2.8
2GB Ram
500GB WD cavair
ATI 3000 (onboard) might trry my 430GT see if that helps

i do like the idea of metro but so far its not made me like it.

I think the biggest pet peeve so far is the Microsoft account wanted to Everything... i dont want a microsoft account. i had one for windows for live games & it was terrible.

Hopefully windowsd update fixes my problems well see :)

also i run windows 7 & mac with no desktop icons, i Guess thats not even possible with metro? (i dont like clutter..) can i just search for what i want?
Click to expand...

Give it more time.

Think of Metro as the desktop for tablets/mobile devices, but for desktop machines think of it as a big in your face start menu. Spend some time pinning the items you want to use to your start menu, just as you would in Win7, but with more flexibility (i.e. more pinned groups).

As said already you can choose to create a Local Account. The MS Account thing won't work properly anyway in the UK, as it's not a supported region.

I'm not sure why you're getting the hangs, have you checked for driver updates? It should certainly run similarly to Win 7 on the same hardware.
 
The thing is, though, do we really want full-screen apps to do the things that normal programmes do? There is a perfectly working app there now that shows .pdf and word files but given that most of us have a .pdf reader already installed and well as office apps it doesn't seem to be much use.

Oh, and I am trying out Classic Shell on my machine at the moment. It does just what it says on the can - a start button and classic menu. It seems to work well and doesn't stop the user using the Metro front end if one wants to - though I ma not sure why one would...
 
I've been using Classic Shell for Windows 7 for years. It puts back in the useful stuff MS took out in that. I'd have no problem using it for W8 aswell lol!
 
That classic shell application looks great thanks for pointing it out. If all my applications and games worked in windows 8 i would consider moving to it, even though the train ui is painfully pointless. Apparently 7taskbar tweaker is going to be updated to work with windows 8. they just need to add an option to disable the train ui and retain all the new explorer features and people will be updating to windows 8 at the same rate they went to windows 7. Until they add the ability to disable train ui then people will not update. Especially when games and applications crash and don't load as well.
 
prescott28 said:
The thing is, though, do we really want full-screen apps to do the things that normal programmes do?
Click to expand...

At the moment no, in the future who knows? Most of the Metro apps are unfinished, and there'll be more of them.

But you're not forced into using them anyway, you've always got the choice and if your desktop based apps do the job, and most likely better, then use them.

Maybe that's part of the problem, a lot of people are feeling obliged to use Metro Apps, and quite honestly I think I've only used 2...solitaire and remote desktop.

If you're on a desktop and machine and want to use Metro Apps exclusively, I can see why it's not enjoyable!
 
Has anyone succesfully used logmein on Windows 8 Consumer Preview? Every time I try to connect to it I just get a black screen on the client screen (tried PC and the iPad app)
 
I had my first BSOD last night. Was trying to login to something over a serial connection but didn't know the password. Thought I'd try 'password' and the PC restarted instantly. I think it was because it despaired over the poor password... :p
 
Computer Sleeping...

Slightly different question here - my machine, if I leave it long enough, goes off to sleep. Whilst this is great as it save electricity etc, it has become a very deep sleeper and I can't wake it up and have, instead, to hold the power button to shut down and reboot. So,

1. Anyone else have the same problem?

2. Is there anywhere to report problems like this to Microsoft? I haven't come across anywhere for problem reporting such as we had during the Windows Server beta period.

Thanks
 
win8 will reset because of bad drivers, etc
consumer is a lot better then developer though

I have Java corrupted within a few days of new windows. Cant install as its already installed. Reinstall fails as java is not installed. hrmm

Whats the option on the disk to refresh that is the least hassle?
 
Not quite sure what yo7u want to do, Silversurfer, but if it is to 'refresh Windows 8', i.e. get a fresh install, you can use the settings menu from, the right-hand charm bar (push mouse to top right corner) and in the full menu choose 'General'. There you can refresh you install whilst saving your setting, data etc. That might sort out your Java problem.
 
windows8-demotivational-posters-history.jpg
 
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