• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Windows 8.1 |OT| There's your start button

Animator

Member
I use it and love it. Only ever go into the metro interface for Mail and music as I like the apps. I have it so the hot corners on the left are disabled and only pressing windows key on the keyboard goes to metro.

I have the same setup as yours.

You know I realized in all the time I used windows 8 (upgraded day one) I used the start button maybe five times. Best thing about start 8 was the ability to disable hot corners on the desktop, but I believe you can do that from windows options now.

--

Also to anyone upgrading to win 8.1 from 7. There is no reason to buy start8 anymore there are a million free alternatives, google for classic shell.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
Oh, I guess I should have asked this here:

Windows 8.1 reverted my start screen icon DPI to normal, and now charms>Change PC Settings>PC & Devices>Display only has smaller and default.

How can I fix this? Larger DPI made Windows 8.1 the superior choice for HTPC OSes.

Enjoying the other changes so far.
 

Eusis

Member
Oh, yeah, what's the word on game performance? I have trouble easily finding anything that says whether it boosts it or not aside from the BF4 beta and impressions from the preview's launch, and the former's only one game and the latter's for a preview in the early stages and can't be taken as reflective of the final product.
 

Cuyejo

Member
Oh, yeah, what's the word on game performance? I have trouble easily finding anything that says whether it boosts it or not aside from the BF4 beta and impressions from the preview's launch, and the former's only one game and the latter's for a preview in the early stages and can't be taken as reflective of the final product.

Well it should only get better as DirectX 11.1 and upwards are 8 exclusive, other stuff such as emulation and older games when compared to 7 though, the difference should be negligible .
 

Reckoner

Member
I'm using an external audio card and sometimes it just lowers the sound on the notification area mixer. Is it some bug of the update?

edit: I turned off Steam and the audio level went back to normal
 

npa189

Member
Updated on my Sony Ultrabook, was kinda pissed I had to re-set up some of my Microsoft account. Going to upgrade the gaming rig after dinner. I had gotten used to no start button. Search is better, but metro is still useless to me.
 

MrBig

Member
Anyone else having issues with things not appearing in search? For example, I can't seem to access any control panel sub-menus (such as sound, network, windows update, etc) as was possible before, or random other things such as the nvidia control panel, or a few programs that didn't become searchable until I manually added a shortcut to the start screen.
 

AnkitT

Member
Man this is the jankiest transition i've had with windows in my time using it. Drivers were fucked up, the system settings didn't stick and the skydrive syncing is doing my head in! I cannot for the life of me figure out how to "uninstall" the metro app which is eating up my connection(skydrive sync engine host) downloading and uploading files which already exist in my skydrive folder. Heck if there were a way to completely get rid of this metro neutered app so that I could get back to the desktop one it would be fine.
 

Vee_One

Member
Rage quit and rolling back to 7
8.1 has done too many things and I have no idea what's going on. I don't want my social life integrated with my desktop and I don't see any benefits with me attempting to learn it.
 

Jzero

Member
I might be missing it, but where is the link in the windows store?

It's huge, you can't miss it.

ibfkvD8Gg9S8dW.png
 
Rage quit and rolling back to 7
8.1 has done too many things and I have no idea what's going on. I don't want my social life integrated with my desktop and I don't see any benefits with me attempting to learn it.

Huh?

Get to the desktop and you see W7 with a new coat of paint. What is there to "learn"?
 
Check if there is any Windows Update thing for you. It won't show up without W8 being up-to date.

I am pretty sure my W8 is up to date. When I goto MS website, it says to type the following into my browser "ms-windows-store:WindowsUpgrade", when I do so and click download, it just restarts the windows store for me.
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man

coldfoot

Banned
Trying to make this work is a pain in the butt, but once I got it working, I absolutely love it. Much improved over 8, they could have called it 9 if they wanted. Still needs some major bug fixing and dare I say it, stability :) I'm getting used to Metro and dare I say it, I enjoy my time in Metro over desktop, except 99% of the stuff I do has to be done on the desktop :(.

Still, I was lukewarm on 8, but 8.1 is excellent. Thumbs up from me.
P.S. does anyone know of a laptop with TWO digital outputs (1 HDMI + 1 DP is acceptable) that can power them both at the same time? Besides the Macbook Pro.
 

mike23

Member
Argh. Lost a ton of my start icons to my TV show folders. All the shortcuts to programs I wrote myself, too.
Start button is ridiculous. I assumed that it'd be an option that could be turned off. Guess I'm an idiot.
Catalyst Control Center won't open and my TV that's hooked up over hdmi had it's overscan reset so it has a black board on all sides. Like any TV in the last 10 years has 2 inches of overscan on every side... Ridiculous.

Not to mention the fact that I had to go into msconfig and disable all the SQL Server services before it would install.

Don't they do any fucking testing before releasing this crap?
 

Vee_One

Member
Huh?

Get to the desktop and you see W7 with a new coat of paint. What is there to "learn"?

Probably not a lot.

I was actually kind of ok with 8 but I don't like 8.1. It resized all of my windows and icons, changed all of my login setup and it took me a fair old while to get back to the desktop (don't know why or how). It also added new tiles, changed my arrangements and broke some programs and drivers.

I know all of those are "nothing" things that I could fix pretty easily within 10 minutes but I shouldn't have to.

How hard was it really to give back the start menu? Getting back to the desktop wasn't easy and to me it seems it's gone further in a direction that I don't like

Like I said, I was relatively ok with 8 but I just can't be bothered fixing things that weren't broke to begin with.

I also don't need windows listing all my email contacts and displaying pictures of ex girlfriends front and centre on my desktop.

Maybe I'm old, cranky and/or irrational but I don't like this.

EDIT: metro is still screwy with two monitors
 

NH Apache

Banned
Did the update.

I had great performance before but now I have many issues

Performance has been horrible! I'll sit and wait for 6-10 seconds for any action to happen. This certainly didn't happen on 8.

This one is great: can't use file explorer be a use it will just restart explorer. Turns out, according to what I've read, is because I have AutoCAD installed. The only fix is to uninstall it. I need a workaround which supposedly was issued for the preview but I've not been able to get yet.

My printer has to be reinstalled to work: Lexmark s600. This is what the os tells me.

This, in addition to having to sign in with my ms account ( or apparently have to), really is not giving me a good taste in my mouth.
 

Jzero

Member
That's why i always clean install instead of upgrade. This has been the only exception.

I also just realized that the metro side finally stays up even when using a different monitor :D
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
I have had Crystal Castles III in my car for literally almost a full year. I have probably heard Kerosene more than any other song.
 

Guri

Member
No, it just won't budge. I tried to cancel the download and start again, but it does nothing.

Can you also try Win Key + R and run "WSReset.exe"? Also, check your C:\ drive (not "Program FIles" or any other, just C:\) for a "Boot" folder and a hidden "$Windows.~BT". Delete them if they exist. Don't worry, they're just installation folders for 8.1, which you will download again.
 

NH Apache

Banned
Turns out it was Inventor 2013 which was stopping explorer from working. Which is a complete mindfuck by the way because I stopped all service and processes related to Autodesk and still I had no explorer.

Hopefully there will be a fix soon because I like to work from home dammit.
 

longdi

Banned
upgrade when pretty smooth, took 40mins to download and got it running. It is basically an in place upgrade, hence the 3gb download. there is a windows.old folder you can delete to save space.

going forward it looks like no more service pack style update. meh.

needed to set up my accounts again, ms is being more tricky to force us to sign in using their live account. i much prefer to log in using a local account.
 

GSG Flash

Nobody ruins my family vacation but me...and maybe the boy!
Upgraded our laptop to 8.1. It has some nice upgrades over 8 but still don't like it. Metro, on non touch screen devices, needs to just go away.
 
Just upgraded and I'm already regretting it. Boot time has increased significantly. Now I'm supposed to sign in with a microsoft account? WTF. Performance is horrible, steam looks like shit, and everything is laggy as hell. HALP
 
Fuck MS trying to force me to register a MS account to finish setup on this. I found a work around though. I went to already have login and use previous login and let me finish install without actually setting up an account.
 
I am so fucking furious right now. Apparently this not-recognizing-mouse thing is a common bug. I've tried plugging in three different peripherals, gotten a driver-install dialog, and then nothing. No cursor. No mouse.

For some reason it's recognizing my Wacom tablet? So I'm going to try and start a backup through that. This is such bullshit though.
 
Top Bottom