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What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster
ander2255:
What melodrama. I got a new notebook with Windows 8, and after my initial panic, was pleased and pacified to find I could make it quite decently Win-7-ish with the free Classic Shell. (If someone's already mentioned that here, sorry; I don't have time to read the whole topic.) As Win 8 is clearly faster and more responsive than 7 (which was already great, IMHO), I really don't see what the problem is.
40hz:
What melodrama.
-ander2255 (May 31, 2014, 09:50 PM)
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Melodrama? Out of curiosity, how so?
superboyac:
The single biggest barrier to redesigning Windows isn't a techncal issue. From my experience working for a Fortune 5 (not 500), the real problem is that any major change of direction in any large corporation will require that somebody (or some cabal) very high up in the hierarchy be called conclusively wrong.
In an era of stock analysts and personality cults in corporate governance that's about as likely to happen as the Catholic Church (my religious background so put down the torches please) renouncing the Doctrine of Infallibility. As in: "that is so NOT gonna happen," as the 7-year old daughter of one of my clients once put it.
To change direction and redo Windows is to admit the current paradigm (and all the silly arguments previously made for it) were wrong.
That doesn't slot well with Wall Street, because they've previously hailed the chief as "a genius" in public.
That doesn't slot well with the alpha-type personalities at the helms of most tech firms either. Because it calls into question just what it is that they (or any human being for that matter) brings to the party that they're worth "billions and billions" to parrot Carl Sagan. These are not the type of persons who want to admit a good portion of their success was far more due to being in the right place at the right time than it ever was to their intellectual brilliance, personal courage, ot their uncanny ability to see the future and make it real. These are gods we're talking about. And gods only exist as long as somebody still believes in them. (Watch the movie August for a great treatment of that topic.)
Nope, I've said it before and I'll say it again (with thanks to Gerry Weinberg). It's not a technical problem - it's a people problem. And any time it clearly isn't a people problem - you'd better look harder and again.
8)
-40hz (March 20, 2014, 03:00 PM)
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damn dude. You keep blowing my mind lately. Nice nice and nice.
Carol Haynes:
What melodrama. I got a new notebook with Windows 8, and after my initial panic, was pleased and pacified to find I could make it quite decently Win-7-ish with the free Classic Shell. (If someone's already mentioned that here, sorry; I don't have time to read the whole topic.) As Win 8 is clearly faster and more responsive than 7 (which was already great, IMHO), I really don't see what the problem is.
-ander2255 (May 31, 2014, 09:50 PM)
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You sure quicker/more responsive isn't just new install syndrome. I am using 8.1 on my laptop and after a few months it has started slowing down like all other versions of Windows??? Plus I have had to disable Fast Startup because it doesn't work properly on my laptop (and I have seen a number of customer machines not booting properly or at all because Fast Startup has screwed itself up).
IainB:
Experiences of using Win8-64, updating to Win8.1, then upgrading to Win8.1 PRO.
Well, I have just upgraded from an HP laptop with Win7-64 to a Toshiba laptop with Win8.
I have to say I don't like the UI.
The system keeps urging me to upgrade to Win8.1 for free, but when I click the Download/Install button, the thing sits for ages trying to download an umpteen GB update file, then hangs at 50% with Error code: 0x80240031. This is consistently repeatable. A search of forums indicates that this is a common problem, with no defined fix/workaround.
The built-in Toshiba utilities updater has just downloaded a Toshiba utilities update which claims to prepare the Win8 OS for update to Win8.1.
We shall see.
-IainB (May 21, 2014, 06:56 AM)
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(This is re Win 8-64.)
Following on from the above:
It was definitely a non-trivial exercise to run the Win 8.1 update. It just wouldn't run past the 50% mark.
After considerable investigative and tweaking effort spanning several days, I eventually established that the OEM installed Norton Antivirus (AnnoyWare) had disabled MS Security Essentials (now built-in to Windows Defender as standard in Win8), and had blocked the Realtime Scan of MBAM (Malwarebytes) that I installed.
Expunging Norton AV with prejudice (using RevoUninstaller and CCleaner registry clean) seemed to do the trick. I could then enable MS Security Essentials, and after reinstalling MBAM, MBAM could perform its realtime scan.
Then after a time-consuming exercise investigating and eliminating the causes of some critical error reports in the Event Viewer, I was able to eventually get:
* sfc /scannow
* Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth- to run to completion 100% with no errors and the component store repaired.
Then the Win 8.1 update was able to run automatically via Windows Update (like it should have). It took 2 or 3 hours to complete. (I was half asleep and didn't make a note of the time.)
One conclusion to this is that the OEM-installed Norton AV seems to have been somehow creating an error in the component store that effectively stopped the Win8.1 update from being able to complete. Expunginging Norton AV enabled the update.
With Win8.1 in place, I then started to migrate/install a lot of stuff from my old laptop onto the stable Win 8.1 platform. Everything went relatively smoothly, with one outcome being that I was singularly impressed with how solid the OS was and how it seemed to be superbly designed to make recovery from problems and errors very simple.
And it was (felt) faster than Win7.
I still disliked the UI, but at least it was a little better/somewhat improved in Win 8.1 from the Win8 incarnation.
To keep the OS and system generally clean and uncluttered, I periodically ran:
* CCEnhancer
* CCleaner
* sfc /scannow
* Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth(as necessary).
Then, a couple of days ago, I decided to try and upgrade from Win 8.1 to Win 8.1 PRO (Professional). I wanted to use an unused licence for a Win8 PRO upgrade that I had previously purchased for about US$40 whilst it was just coming to the end of its "special offer" period, back in January 2014 when I was using Win7-64 Home Premium.
So I did some searching and came up with this very helpful post from October 29, 2013 which covered my case almost exactly: Easily Change Windows 8.1 Edition Without Reinstalling.
I followed the steps in that post, and to my great relief the upgrade was painless - it all took place without hitch in about 15 minutes elapsed time, including download and 2 auto-reboots. I then spent 30 minutes migrating/installing other software from my old Win7 disk, including the latest version of W7FC (Windows 7 Firewall Control) - for which I have a paid licence. The W7FC was a bit tedious, as it had to be taught all the rules for the programs as they were run.
I have come to the tentative conclusion that W7FC could well be redundant on the Win8 OS. (Some people may think it was redundant for Win7 too.)
So far I am very pleased with Win8.1 PRO.
If anything, it is/feels faster than the preceding Win8.1 version.
The UI is a bit different/slightly improved, but I still dislike certain aspects of it. I may set about fixing that to something that suits me better, now that the system has arrived at a stable end-point.
I shall now set about exploring the extra functionality that Win8.1-64 PRO offers, to see what use I can make of it.
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