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Windows 8 / RT |OT|

Echoplx

Member
Is there any way other then reinstalling 7 and doing an upgrade again to install a fresh install of 8 from an upgrade key? Had to reinstall for ssd and this is a huge pain in the ass
 

kitch9

Banned
Is there any way other then reinstalling 7 and doing an upgrade again to install a fresh install of 8 from an upgrade key? Had to reinstall for ssd and this is a huge pain in the ass

If you have created a Windows 8 disc just use that a do a clean install? The upgrade key becomes a retail key after the first upgrade is done as the old key gets revoked.
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
After a week or so of use, I completely forgot that I'm running Windows 8.

Aside from the quick buttons on W7's Explorer (like Empty Recycling Bin, Eject [disc/USB], Play, which are all most all hidden under Manage), I can't really tell the difference.

I do miss the start menu, but I think it would have been worse if they had completely removed the Task Bar. Thank you pinning.

Edit: I don't use W8 store or apps, so it's easier for me to forget about and ignore that stuff. I'm on Desktop mode 99% of the time.

PS: What good is search if it doesn't even list folders? Is there a way to do that? I'm still using Everything to find files and folders easily.
 
Hey, does anyone know if Windows 8 has the option to enhance scroll speed so that scrolling works the same way as on a mac? Microsoft products have this option, but there's no option for default trackpads or third party mice.
 

Echoplx

Member
If you have created a Windows 8 disc just use that a do a clean install? The upgrade key becomes a retail key after the first upgrade is done as the old key gets revoked.

I did that the first time and activation failed. When you say becomes a retail key does that mean I should have received another key? I used the one that came in my email..

Edit-- ah well too late now anyway, just completed the reupgrade process
 
Fucking Windows.


Right, I'm building a new PC for gaming and I want to install Windows 8 on it. I'm not going to have a disk drive so I'm going to install it from USB. If I run the windows 8 upgrade assistant on my laptop, buy it and create a bootable USB will that be fine? My concern is that with me trying to install it onto a new machine Windows won't active as it isn't an upgrade as such.

What are my options? Will purchasing it through the upgrade assisstant allow me to install and activate it on my new machine or will I have to fork out over 100 quid for the OEM version (which I think would require a disk drive)?
 

remz

Member
if the upgrade key doesn't work you either a.) need to install a previous version of windows first or b.) change a registry key to make it work.

once you activate you won't have any more problems. It just needs to activate properly the first time.

You should probably legally be buying the OEM version though if you are building a new computer. I guess.
 

Kirby102

Member
As much as I wanted to relive my childhood pastime, I tried to install Gunbound but it kept crashing in the lobby after selecting a server. I was so sad.

Unless someone has tried and succeeded in getting it stable, please advise? Surprised it's still alive too.
 
Finally done customizing my start screen and start menu setup using Start8 and Decor8.

Here's the end result (the background is a blurred and slightly darkened version of my desktop wallpaper):

start1.jpg

start2.jpg


Had to come up with a tile approach that I could quickly create new tiles for as new programs are installed.
Sorry but that looks really shitty. Just so...ugh. And that setup goes against the entire Metro Design philosophy. But if that was your intent, then congratulations, you succeeded.
 

Lynn616

Member
Fucking Windows.


Right, I'm building a new PC for gaming and I want to install Windows 8 on it. I'm not going to have a disk drive so I'm going to install it from USB. If I run the windows 8 upgrade assistant on my laptop, buy it and create a bootable USB will that be fine? My concern is that with me trying to install it onto a new machine Windows won't active as it isn't an upgrade as such.

What are my options? Will purchasing it through the upgrade assisstant allow me to install and activate it on my new machine or will I have to fork out over 100 quid for the OEM version (which I think would require a disk drive)?

I used the upgrade to clean install. Use this guide and it will activate.

http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/clean-install-windows-8-upgrade-media-144648
 
Sorry but that looks really shitty. Just so...ugh. And that setup goes against the entire Metro Design philosophy. But if that was your intent, then congratulations, you succeeded.
No need to be sorry, but could you elaborate on a) why you think it looks bad and b) the ways in which it goes against the Metro design philosophy? I'd like to understand your opinions.
 

Totakeke

Member
Horrible background for one. Secondly, a tile with just some words in it is silly, if it was purely Metro it would just be clickable words without tiles if you want to go that way.
 
Horrible background for one. Secondly, a tile with just some words in it is silly, if it was purely Metro it would just be clickable words without tiles if you want to go that way.
Hahaha my fav pic of me and my wife is not horrible! ;)

But in all seriousness - the approach for the background is for it to mimic Launchpad on a Mac. I wanted the Start screen to be a new layer that appears over the standard desktop (rather than a shift to an entirely separate area / screen). The effect blurs the existing desktop image and the tiles appear. Like this on a mac:

mac-launchpad.jpg


As for the tiles, I would love it if I could have uniform image-based tiles (that would be my preferred apprpoach), but after having gone through the trouble of creating a bunch of them, I realized it wouldn't be sustainable to keep creating them, and it would never really be uniform (which I value for this setup). So, I settled for this text-based approach. I don't understand why the concept of simply words on the tile is "silly," though. Care to elaborate on why the concept is non-sensical?
 

Totakeke

Member
Hahaha my fav pic of me and my wife is not horrible! ;)

But in all seriousness - the approach for the background is for it to mimic Launchpad on a Mac. I wanted the Start screen to be a new layer that appears over the standard desktop (rather than a shift to an entirely separate area / screen). The effect blurs the existing desktop image and the tiles appear. Like this on a mac:

mac-launchpad.jpg


As for the tiles, I would love it if I could have uniform image-based tiles (that would be my preferred apprpoach), but after having gone through the trouble of creating a bunch of them, I realized it wouldn't be sustainable to keep creating them, and it would never really be uniform (which I value for this setup). So, I settled for this text-based approach. I don't understand why the concept of simply words on the tile is "silly," though. Care to elaborate on why the concept is non-sensical?

Too bad you can't see your wife.

Mimicking a launchpad is like the most backwards thing you can do. :|

But on the tiles, well text in a static tile itself is okay if you must, but you're not doing the layout properly either. It's not left aligned to create consistency. You're misusing the space too with not enough margin on the sides for most of the tiles. Your usage of space is also not consistent with the Metro design. Why is Valve so far on top of Steam? What does the space in between convey? And there's misuse of font sizes too. What is Video... Repair? Is repair a subfunction of the video app? Why not just call it Video Repair? I'm not a designer, but small things like that are important. When you also include too much unnecessary information like version numbers, you're just adding noise to the interface.
 
Too bad you can't see your wife.

Mimicking a launchpad is like the most backwards thing you can do. :|

But on the tiles, well text in a static tile itself is okay if you must, but you're not doing the layout properly either. It's not left aligned to create consistency. You're misusing the space too with not enough margin on the sides for most of the tiles. Your usage of space is also not consistent with the Metro design. Why is Valve so far on top of Steam? What does the space in between convey? And there's misuse of font sizes too. What is Video... Repair? Is repair a subfunction of the video app? Why not just call it Video Repair? I'm not a designer, but small things like that are important. When you also include too much unnecessary information like version numbers, you're just adding noise to the interface.

Wow, I dislike his version, too. But thats great about windows, right, with some tools you can do whatever you want with it.
 

gcubed

Member
In regards to the number of tiles? Or something else?

some section spacing.

I'm not a huge fan of metro UI everywhere (its nice in certain places, but the force of it on places where it shouldn't be, ugh) or the new start screen, but the benefits of win8 outweigh the few seconds it takes me to get to the desktop.
 

gcubed

Member
Unless my eyes are deceiving me, that appears to be the same space between sections as the default one.

it seems a bit more bunched then mine, although admittedly i don't spend very much time in the actual metro start. It appears most of what i can say can be ignored.
 
Too bad you can't see your wife.

Mimicking a launchpad is like the most backwards thing you can do. :|

But on the tiles, well text in a static tile itself is okay if you must, but you're not doing the layout properly either. It's not left aligned to create consistency. You're misusing the space too with not enough margin on the sides for most of the tiles. Your usage of space is also not consistent with the Metro design. Why is Valve so far on top of Steam? What does the space in between convey? And there's misuse of font sizes too. What is Video... Repair? Is repair a subfunction of the video app? Why not just call it Video Repair? I'm not a designer, but small things like that are important. When you also include too much unnecessary information like version numbers, you're just adding noise to the interface.
I really appreciate the response! I think you're right in most of your criticisms after the "text in a static tile is okay if you must" part. I will retweak as a result.

Can you justify your comment that mimicking a launch pad is the most backwards thing you could do? I interpreted that as, "mimicking Apple's Launchpad look (the desktop background effect) is the most backwards thing to do." What do you mean by this and why?
 

dLMN8R

Member
The "Detonation" daily challenges in Minesweeper are so stupid. So much trial and error that punishes you for bad luck.

Also you have 99 moves to find 93 mines - which means if the number of moves ever falls below mines, you should just lose instantly. Why would it let you continue playing if you have, say, 70 moves left and 71 mines to find? Impossible to win at that point.
 

MCD

Junior Member
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-windows-8-user-experience-metro/posts/366106

The first important news is that a port of VLC to Windows Phone 8 appears to be easier than expected. While the roadmap is about Windows 8 for Intel followed by a version for Windows RT, it appears to be feasible to publish another version with a specific interface for Windows Phone shortly after, since the WP8 APIs are way more similar to Windows 8 than WP7 ones.
Therefore, this fundraiser will help developping a version of VLC for Windows Phone 8. Interestingly, while WP8 offers the same programming interfaces available to Windows 8 & RT apps, it is less restrictive in some regards. Notably our existing networking code is going to run as is.

Then, we've been in touch with Microsoft representatives, who are thrilled about our endeavor and ready to collaborate with us. They are looking into ways of supporting us directly through non-financial matters, notably hardware, technical and design help. This is great news.
Moreover, we've been in touch with several designers and some hardware chip vendors about this project.
 
New version - said what the hell and went with icons instead of text labels. Some were easy to find and edit, others were a bit of a pain, but for now I'm happy.

start8new.jpg
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
New version - said what the hell and went with icons instead of text labels. Some were easy to find and edit, others were a bit of a pain, but for now I'm happy.

start8new.jpg

That looks much better IMO.
 

Exuro

Member
The "Detonation" daily challenges in Minesweeper are so stupid. So much trial and error that punishes you for bad luck.

Also you have 99 moves to find 93 mines - which means if the number of moves ever falls below mines, you should just lose instantly. Why would it let you continue playing if you have, say, 70 moves left and 71 mines to find? Impossible to win at that point.
I got pretty addicted to doing the daily challenges, but whenever I got those "get 9x mines with 9x clicks" I said screw it because of how long it takes just to screw up multiple times.

Also has to do with it being crazy buggy and crashing all the time.
 

leroidys

Member
Does anyone know how to change default settings for apps?

I want to change the pdf reader to default to "single page" view, rather than continuous.
 

MCD

Junior Member
Does anyone know how to change default settings for apps?

I want to change the pdf reader to default to "single page" view, rather than continuous.

Right click or swipe from bottom to top.

Extra settings in any app can be found in the charms bar.
 

leroidys

Member
Right click or swipe from bottom to top.

Extra settings in any app can be found in the charms bar.

Yeah that will allow me to change it one time, I was wondering if I could change it so that whenever it opens a PDF it always has that setting.
 

Visceir

Member
Been using Windows 8 for a day now. Took some time to get adjusted to it, it is still occasionally doing some wonky stuff and I'm not sure how I'm feeling about the whole metro/corners thing.

Is there some essential guide on steps to take or tweaks to do with a new Windows 8?
 

Dynoro

Member
The "Detonation" daily challenges in Minesweeper are so stupid. So much trial and error that punishes you for bad luck.

Also you have 99 moves to find 93 mines - which means if the number of moves ever falls below mines, you should just lose instantly. Why would it let you continue playing if you have, say, 70 moves left and 71 mines to find? Impossible to win at that point.

I don't know; I tend to get the detonation challenges first time every day. The Flags challenge is what gets me as I feel I always have to guess the last flag as there's no definite mine spot left.

The 'moves' challenge can be pain, you are right; it should just fail the challenge if you don't have enough moves to complete.
 

t-ramp

Member
So, I haven't used the Music app extremely heavily, but I'm tempted to say it's complete garbage. I make a playlist and then can't even see what albums are in that playlist? And all the pop-up menus for song lists and such are completely unnecessary.

Also, is there a way to bring up the music controls on the desktop without pausing or changing volume?

New version - said what the hell and went with icons instead of text labels. Some were easy to find and edit, others were a bit of a pain, but for now I'm happy.
Looks nice.
 

JaggedSac

Member
New version - said what the hell and went with icons instead of text labels. Some were easy to find and edit, others were a bit of a pain, but for now I'm happy.

start8new.jpg

Mucho better. Picture looks decent for some reason to me now as well. Not sure why icons would change that.



I really hate those video ads that interrupt you before the challenges. Pretty much keep me from wanting to do them on any of those games. Just throw them up on the side or something.
 

SUPARSTARX

Member
So I put in my new CPU and motherboard and it triggered Windows to deactivate my key.

I was on phone with tech support for like an hour and they couldn't fix it. They kept trying to refresh the product key with new ones and it wouldn't work.

I'm using the Windows 8 Pro w/free Media Center upgrade pack. It kept giving an unknown error.

It's still unresolved right now. Any idea on how I can reactivate my shiznit without reinstall?
 

Bullza2o

Member
Does anyone have problems with the SkyDrive Desktop to start up automatically upon bootup? I reinstalled it a couple of times now, and it won't turn on. I had to make a shortcut to the exe file in my C drive to open it.

That said, I think I recall the desktop software came with Windows 8, and I uninstalled it because I was using Dropbox. I do have the SkyDrive W8 app that's working fine, but I prefer the desktop better.

I wish I don't have to go to Dropbox again. DB is great, but having W8, WP8, and Xbox makes Skydrive the better option despite losing storage space (~12 to 7GB).
 

Echoplx

Member
So I put in my new CPU and motherboard and it triggered Windows to deactivate my key.

I was on phone with tech support for like an hour and they couldn't fix it. They kept trying to refresh the product key with new ones and it wouldn't work.

I'm using the Windows 8 Pro w/free Media Center upgrade pack. It kept giving an unknown error.

It's still unresolved right now. Any idea on how I can reactivate my shiznit without reinstall?



1. Open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE change MediaBootInstall from "1" to "0".

2. Open up elevated command line and type in : slmgr /rearm then hit enter

3. Reboot PC

4. Activate through control panel

This is meant to work for doing clean installs from upgrade media but might work for you.
 
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