windows 8

[britfrog 180]

has anyone else installed win8? being a curious type i found that i could download the 64bit version for some £23 so went ahead and put it on a small sata drive that i had lying around.

Having been totally anti win 8 from all that i had seen on the net i did find it to be interesting to some degree the metro or whatever they call it next week interphase, you either like or dont , it doesnt do a lot for me, however if you run your p.c. on 2 screens as i do you almost end up with 2 computers side by side which is cool. the desktop backgrounds are different and while 1 side has the metro ui the other side is windows as we know it.

the one thing that is a balls ache is trying to get your mouse exactly into the corner of the screen to see what is running behind, or to get to other controls, this is much slower and harder than the win 7 idea of control tab or whatever method you use. Also the metro ui is very M.S orientated understandably, however their new music center is quite brill much better than win 7.

downsides?

there are a few, internet speed is slow my 18month old motherboard network connector has along side it on the devices page a debugger so the drivers arent available yet, and what i consider sacriledge, my microsoft life cam which is 18 months old is not supported yet older ones are! my lacie external usb dvd player also isnt supported.

there are many other indications that this was rushed into release whilst i had originally thought it was an upgraded win7 it gives more of a feeling of being n upgraded vista

my hardrive is too small to install fsim as well but i may well download win8 again and put it on a larger drive after having played with it a bit

Has anyone else tried it ? what are your thoughts?

[mutley 4,495]

I've not tried it yet, my understanding is they wanted a mobile OS to complete with the others with touch-screen capability. The Win7 type UI is like an afterthought for PC owners and is far more restrictive than Win 7.

I'm not going to upgrade for the sake of it. Win 7 is very stable for me.

[britfrog 180]

Having now played with it a few days, i can see some small things that are pretty cool but there is no doubt it is not finished , it is nowhere near as fast as win7 so for me it will never replace it

For months i have called it windows for dummies, well it isnt quite that but the sheer work of opening and closing programs isnt natural as it is in the older versions

[britfrog 180]

A major No No!!

if like me you have several hard drives in your p.c. and are used to booting them up independently using the boot menu then win 8 is not for you

eg. i have 5 hard drives in my pc one of which is for fsx so i use the boot menu and fire this hard drive up as and when i want to "fly" as it has a very cut down version of win 7 , however if you put a win 8 drive amongst the others you can boot up the win 8 drive no problem however every time you subsequently want to fire up another drive the new os immediately senses an error and triggers the checkdisk procedure and checks all the hard drives before allowing an os to load. What is more unsettling is the fact that if you allow checkdisk to check the win 8 drive it will find errors and correct them with the result that the win 8 drive will start but will not work as the graphic drivers have been removed, resulting in a re-installation of win8

You have been warned !!

I couldnt believe it was happening but after 3 re-installations of win 8 i have now accepted that i either have to manually disconnect my other hardrive cables in the pc or make another win 8 only pc,

I can now honestly say this is by far a worse operating system than vista

[mutley 4,495]

Wow thanks Britfrog, I am planning on re-installing Windows this weekend as mine is sick and poorly and keeps crashing.

I hadn't purchased Win8 and definitely won't now.

I have 4 drives on my system but only auto booting to the C drive, forgetting Win 8, do you get a noticeable performance boost just booting to your FSX drive?

I can now honestly say this is by far a worse operating system than vista

[dogtrack 346]

Glad I bought an extra W7 retail package, before they disapeared off the shelves. Could it be history repeating its self...ME, Vista, W8, time will surely tell....is it me or is there a pattern to be seen. Mmm, perhaps just me suffering from acute paranoia.

[britfrog 180]

Wow thanks Britfrog, I am planning on re-installing Windows this weekend as mine is sick and poorly and keeps crashing.

I hadn't purchased Win8 and definitely won't now.

I have 4 drives on my system but only auto booting to the C drive, forgetting Win 8, do you get a noticeable performance boost just booting to your FSX drive?

I can now honestly say this is by far a worse operating system than vista

Hi joe, Win 8 has got some interesting ideas and reading between the lines since the head of the win prog has left MS i think there will be a service kit released very quickly to reintroduce the start menu as in win 7. However although it is faster for internet processes than win7 there are no advantages at all for gaming other than if you use xbox stuff as this is now supported by win8 .

I have win 7 64bitOS on all my drives so they can be booted up as an individual drive if needed i had fsx on 3 drives (1 is now win 8) and what I would do is have one fsx setup for trying out new programs or things before then putting them onto the fsx version that i use all the time , the 3rd drive was a backup of the definitive version should it all go t-ts up.

I have a 4th drive which is not used for gaming at all just normal p.c. stuff.

The beauty of this method is that you can paredown windows on the fsx drive so that most of the background ops are not running giving much more memory for fsx all you have to do is hit F12 at boot to select which hardrive you want to use and if you just want it to fire up the windows that you dont use for gaming you simply make that the no1 drive to boot in the bios which is easy.

Can i see a difference in speed? hard to tell windows boots up quicker and i never have memory issues other than when i am using ftx with pmdg and a LOD of 8 or more and i have my fps limited to 30 in any case , i use the fsx limiter not an aftermarket one because it does the job for me, i do find that one can get carried away at times with some tools that people recommend on some sim sites and there are an enormous amount of very respected dev's around the world that write reams about how to setup fsx properly only to find another sage contradicts everything they have said and i find that in a lot of cases they are all talking out of somewhere the sun doesnt shine. and i am not making any reference to them that shall not be mentioned again

[britfrog 180]

Glad I bought an extra W7 retail package, before they disapeared off the shelves. Could it be history repeating its self...ME, Vista, W8, time will surely tell....is it me or is there a pattern to be seen. Mmm, perhaps just me suffering from acute paranoia.

i tend to agree I seem to remember some wise sage saying some years ago that it is always the 3rd iteration of anything that m.s. makes that hits a good note

perhaps after a service pack things will get better but at the moment the interface is nowhere near as quick or natural to use and the changes of things in windows are much slower than win7. and being aimed at the smartphone and touch pad crowd there are an enormous amount of timewasting apps available. yes there are some nice touches but nothing I couldnt live without, i will keep playing with it for a while but it is such a fag having to disconnect physically all the other drive cables in the p.c so that I can play with 8. no doubt its newnwess will pall quickly.

[britfrog 180]

I have just spent the last 24 hours trying to get one of my fsx hardrives to boot up it would hang with the winows in place and then give you the option of normal startup or repair start up (recommended) i tried to repair it about 8 times with no avail, left it overnight, still nothing , eventually i booted up another drive and checkdisked it to repair some faults then copied the windows directory across as well.

It did eventually deign to fireup in some sort of repair mode whilst being partially in windows, after much investigation i discovered that the windows update had updated my graphics drivers (which i didnt need as mine were newer) but because i had the gpu overclocked the new (old) drivers couldnt cope, i got there in the end .

However all this may be tied in to win 8 according to M.S. technet, win 8 puts a file on the boot sector of each hardrive in the p.c which enables a fater boot speed, what you then have to do is start win 8 , disable fast boot (this removes it from the other drives) then disconnect the other drives and use win 8 in isolation.

[mutley 4,495]

I can't cope BF!

I think it's still Win7 for me for the foreseeable future

[britfrog 180]

one of the things that is very obvious with win8 is its abominable file transfer speed, i checked a file yesterday and win 7 is 5 times faster when copying and pasting a 400mb file.

Now this was the biggest criticism of vista as I recall,

would it be possible that when vista bombed that the devs were told to go back and get it right so that it could be dragged out to replace ewin 7 at the appropraite time?

It is clear that win8 is internet/cloud focussed so maybe by being so focussed the slow file transfer speed wasnt considered important who knows?

being cynical i see that m.s. now says win 8 is now out selling win7 , hardly surprising i suppose as they have whizzed all the copies of win 7 from the shelves!!!

[Quickmarch 488]

See: 

Can you handle it?

 in Members General & Announcements

 

I posted a reply by Steve at iFly regarding their (non) support of Win8.

 

Cheers,

March

[Quickmarch 488]

I'm getting wordy on this subject, but it is close to my heart as I've been jerked around at the end of a Windows chain for a lot of years.

 

Here's a URL to an article on Win7 availability and support: http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-skip-windows-8-and-continue-using-windows-7-7000001734/

 

A quote from that article -

 And on top of all that, you and your business have downgrade rights When purchased with a new PC, Windows 8 Pro incorporates license terms similar to those of its predecessors, including the right to downgrade to Windows 7 Professional. When you buy a new PC with Windows 8 Pro installed,  you can legally replace it with a copy of Windows 7 Professional. [end quote]

 

FWIW

 

Cheers,

March

[brett 2,310]

Interesting reading March, never knew all that and it is good to know. Thanks for the link.   

[M31 0]

Heh, was wondering what the guys here thought of Windows 8

 

I swore I'd have nothing to do with it but buckled down a couple of weeks ago and bought the offer for £24 ish that expired end of January for my second I7 2600K rig, there is no way on earth I'd format my main rig in sig for this OS with my FSX install especially that would take weeks to get back like it is, but for that price I thought why not for the other rig, also I got the media centre for it for free by registering it before end of Jan too.

 

Anyway, my first thoughts were not good at all, it was Windows 8 Pro 64 bit I bought as a download from Microsoft and burnt to DVD from the .ISO file ... BTW, it did install quickly I must admit but I'm not joking once installed I had to go Google how to power down the PC cleanly without pulling the plug ... I'm really not joking! and that was with switching to normal desktop view ... suffice to say I don't use the Metro interface at all and once you drop that it starts looking a lot like Windows 7 without the Start menu and I do miss the Start menu in Win 8, there are some good subtle differences though, Explorer seems improved slightly but unless you really want to go touchscreen and Metro interface I'd say Win 7 is a much more appropriate OS for Desktop computers for what we do ... having said that, there is a third party add on to bring a start menu back for Win 8 and I'd not be surprised if Microsoft put that back in a not too distant Win 8 upgrade, it really should have been an option from the beginning IMHO.

 

Other thoughts, Windows 8 comes with DX11.1 and Microsoft have said they wont upgrade Windows 7 from DX11 to DX11.1 ... most modern graphic cards do DX11.1, but thinking about it, this is no biggie, I cant think of any games that support DX11.1 offhand and certainly no Flight Sims so far, some do support DX11 though, really there cant be that much of a difference between DX11 and DX11.1 and I'm sure P3D if and when it gets its DX11 update will not force us to go Windows 8 by being DX11.1 ... at least I hope not.

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/12/old-dog-old-tricks-ms-locks-directx-11-1-to-win-8/

 

In summery, Win 8? mixed bag of thoughts here about it, suffice to say if the offer of getting it so cheaply never existed I'd not have tried it, and I have no plans to go Windows 8 for my main Flight Sim rig, it seems to me every second MS OS has been a mistake for a long time ...

 

Win 95 = Bad, very raw

Win 95 Build 501 (RC1) = Kinda good

Win 98 = Bad

Win98SE = Good

Win ME = Bad

Win XP = Good

Win Vista = Bad

Win 7 = Good

Win 8 = ? We have yet to see.

 

 

[M31 0]

 

 

However all this may be tied in to win 8 according to M.S. technet, win 8 puts a file on the boot sector of each hardrive in the p.c which enables a fater boot speed, what you then have to do is start win 8 , disable fast boot (this removes it from the other drives) then disconnect the other drives and use win 8 in isolation.

 

I had that problem too Brit, both my main PC's have several drives on them and in the end I needed to do two installs of Win 8 to get it installed successfully, what I did the second time was unplug all other drives, install Win 8 onto allocated drive and make sure it was first in boot order in the BIOS then once installed add the other drives back again.

 

But yeah, pretty much agree with everything you have wrote too, with Metro I was finding I had to click twice as often to do the same thing.

 

Also like most users I guess I like to keep my icons size and listing order the same in all folders across the same PC, no problem in Win 7, but for some reason best known to themselves Microsoft have made getting this task done easily far more convoluted and difficult, did get it right by stumbling across the method on my first install but my current one still needs this sorted to my way of liking.

 

Touch screens is not too bad an idea for tablets and suchlike but for desktops who wants to be slouched forward over a desk rubbing your fingers over your nice LCD screens   do they want us to end up with bad backs and sore shoulders !

 

Seriously, the option of losing Metro and keeping start menu should have been part of the install, hopefully they will change things in an upgrade, heard this OS is not selling to well and that was with the heavy discounts that have now expired.

[britfrog 180]

if you have problems when changing from say a win 7 drive to win8 and it wants to defrag and check for errors, I did receive an email from M.S. technet indicating that you must do some manipulation to stop fast boot because win 8 puts something on every drive to make it boot faster. all i have done is pull the plug on the win 8 drive and when i want to play with win 8 i plug in the drive and disconnect the others. not a happy situ but better than losing a drive and having to do a re-installation. as you say for 20 odd pounds it is worth a play, and it has one or two nice bits but i cant see it repalcing win 7 for fsx.

 

As an aside i went into a computer shop where i buy some hardware and I know the boss there, they are a M.S. official shop and intel as well and are very involved with server software he has been informed that m.s. have gone back to the drawing board and are busily creating a replacement for win8, whether it will be a big SP or a whole rewite only time will tell.

[phil white 274]

I have Windows 8 on my laptop and have got to like it. Might be tempted to get this for my new pc build that I have just done and try FSX and X-Plane10 on it.

[M31 0]

Just looking back on this thread again, for what we do ... Flight Simmers, has anyone really found any positive gains in Win 8? FSX, P3D or any other sim as an OS as 8 has had a little time to mature?

 

For IL2 Cliffs of Dover at least we have had to rely on a Win 8 cludge around as official support for that sim is dead now.

 

As I mentioned Win 8 64 is on my second quick I7 2600K  PC and I'm not ashamed to play games on it, the new Bioshock Infinite looks stunning on it (I hope its OK to admit this stuff here   ) But mainly I've found out how to make Win 8 look and behave like Win 7 for what I like to do ... its not that you cant teach old dogs new tricks (and I am an old dog now) but I see no need to reinvent the wheel ... I think the problem is, Microsoft or Steve Balmer saw what Apple did and wanted a chunk of that pie too, Microsoft could have had a larger market share without ramming tablet or mobile market down our throats ... but that's what they seem to have done ... a massive gamble IMHO.

 

What was wrong with giving options of Start or Metro (clunk) at the beginning, they could have easily done that and satisfied twice the fan base immediately IMHO.

 

I just can never understand what Microsoft do any-more (Sorry John) They seem to be on a death wish to alienate their older desk top users whilst desperately trying to grab a part of the honeypot Apple are still doing so well with.

 

This is probably the wrong time to mention again "Microsoft Flight" was a failed venture in the grand scheme of their future thoughts recently, but it was, even the divide and conquer tactics used will eventually be seen as a major failing in current Microsoft's thought process ... and I'm sure most would agree as the years pass by and they look at MS Flight again and what really happened.

 

This may seem political, but at least its Flight Sim Political ... I've seen fall outs with these topics before but when we go to general chat, more real world political topics are OK and we can self moderate.

 

But mention Microsoft Flight again and I can just imagine the iron of at least one mod here coming down on me quickly

 

I'm making a reasonable request here, if we can have highly volatile political discussions about divided politicians like Maggie Thatcher where some of us bite our tongue in respect for other members, some of whom never directly effected your life whatsoever ... what is so wrong about discussing Flight Sim Politics on here (A Flight Simulation site) and most assuredly what ever stance you take Microsoft Flight got political in its own way? What's wrong with that?

 

It will all come out in the wash one day, if not on this site, another ... I'd rather we never buried it here or swept it under the carpet as many sites like Avism seem to do.

 

Rant over, this is not a deliberate Anti MS rant BTW but as I put down thoughts it was inevitable I'd think about MS Flight too and it would be wrong or stifled to not mention it.

 

John, I feel Obama is a fantastic president for you Americans... I really do, compared to Bush Jnr, he is from my perspective a highly articulate young man who does the right thing ... I'm not trying to wind you up, but if I were to post this on the GA topic forum, you must see how this would be a red rag to a bull to Proud Americans like you ... its obvious to me he is not a lot of Americans perfect president ... can you see where I'm coming from here and why I've not posted for two weeks for grinding my teeth?

 

Cheers for letting me get this off my chest.

 

Also, excuse me for being up so late, its been a long day and my feedback from biologics and physio therapy in Aberdeen today on my deteriorating condition is as good as can be expected.

 

 

[allardjd 1,853]

Microsoft prepares rethink on Windows 8 flagship software

 

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/330c8b8e-b66b-11e2-93ba-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Sd1tcV50

 

"Microsoft is preparing to reverse course over key elements of its Windows 8 operating system, marking one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.

 

“Key aspects” of how the software is used will be changed when Microsoft releases an updated version of the operating system this year, Tami Reller, head of marketing and finance for the Windows business, said..."

 

"Ms Reller refused to reveal details of the changes Microsoft would make to Windows 8. However, the clamour from reviewers has become overwhelming for a return to a more familiar PC interface."

 

John

[Gunner 69]

Ok, that provoked me some cold sweat on my back. I have Win8 and  i can say , it's not that horrible. Its working quite well for me. The only odd thing , an occasional message "Fsx has stopped working" AFTER i click exit. Now i only can hope, they don't mess it up with the new "key aspects" and "updated version". Luckily i have the "old" W7 dvd.

[mutley 4,495]

Hi Gunner, I get that shut down FSX message as well on Win7

[Gunner 69]

Ah, nothing strange then , i guess. I was noticing that if i wait a few, maybe 10-15 seconds before click exit, then it exits without problems. But , maybe it was just luck.

 

Eddie

[allardjd 1,853]

Noting the icon in the task bar, it takes several seconds for it to go away after clicking exit and responding to the are-you-sure confirmation when exiting FSX (Win7). I've always assumed that is just FSX updating FSX.cfg before folding its tent.

 

John

[britfrog 180]

from my experience most of the shutdown messages that appear after one has asked fsx to close are caused by the programs one uses to go online flying I found fsinn/fscopilot particularly bad for this i use squawkbox on another drive with no messages at all