Windows 8 FREE Developer Build

[Drone]

Yeah I noticed that, while Windows 7 uses more or less 50% of my RAM, Windows 8 took 30%. But may be because of the 64 / 32 bit difference.

I will wait for 7 SP2, but SP1 didn't brought much news

W8 64 and 86 both eat less ram

Yes, sp1 was just a bunch of updates and nothing more.




Just installed old hp laserjet1018 printer drivers under W8, everything works fine

 

[newtekie1]

@Newtekie: I would guess your main issue is the age of the hardware your using man. I am dual booting with Windows 7 and 8 and it is very solid. My only issue that I have had is the DVD drive not being seen. Everything else is working rock solid as far as I can tell.

Oh yeah, I'm sure it is. And as I said, I don't even know that the hardware is totally stable to begin with. I think it is asking a lot to ask a 10 year old system to run any modern OS, especially when the system doesn't even meet the minimum requirments. I just wanted to see what would happen.

I think a lot of the slowness would be better if I had a proper video card supported by Win7/8 in the machine.

 

[qubit]

Experiences with using a PIII and 512MB to run Win8:

Well, it is slow. Not I want to pull my hair out slow, but slow. Example, I click the close button on a window and it takes about 10 seconds to completely close. Now, I don't know if this is actually the Window taking that long to close, or just how long it takes for Windows to play the stupid animation of the Window fading away. Since there are no proper video card drivers, anything with animation is painfully slow.

At first none of the hardware was really detected, not even the NIC. So I had to connect a USB Wireless adapter that had Win7 drivers to connect to the internet. Once I did that Win8 installs every piece of hardware except the video card without me having to do anything. It just detected the internet connection and immediately started searching for drivers. I like that.

Now, a lot of things seem to crash when I try to open them. IE is a no go, it just keeps crashing. Now I don't know if this is because of Win8 not liking the system, or because of some fault with the system. I only have 2 256MB sticks of PC133 available to me, the rest I have are 128MB, so one of the sticks might be bad. Services.msc wouldn't open either. However, system properties and msconfig work fine.

Metro is totally useless, again propably due to no video card drivers causing extreme lag when doing anything. I just disabled it.

Booting and logging onto a usable desktop takes about 4 minutes from a cold boot, not too bad considering this is a machine that was purchased in Jun 2001, so it is 10 years old at this point.

That sounds painfully slow, but interesting nonetheless. Poorly rendered animations can make the system feel unuseable. You can turn off the animations aka transition effects. Why not try doing that and seeing how snappy it feels?

 

[stinger608]

well while I was looking for a solution to my optical disk issue I ran across the Windows 8 forums. Naturally I joined LOL.

Now, for anyone that wants to have a similar "start" type menu to navigate to your desired program or folder there is a way to accomplish this It is not included in Windows 8 however there is a tutorial on the Windows 8 forum to create this on the task bar. I tried it and it works great!

Create a Start Menu Toolbar on the Desktop Taskbar in Windows 8

I thought I would take a screenshot of the "Start" menu that I linked in the above post. It is pretty easy to include in the taskbar and really is pretty much like the start menu in previous Windows version.

 

[newtekie1]

That sounds painfully slow, but interesting nonetheless. Poorly rendered animations can make the system feel unuseable. You can turn off the animations aka transition effects. Why not try doing that and seeing how snappy it feels?

Yeah, I was going to try that, but I didn't have a lot of time to mess around with it yesterday. I'll play around with getting it running better next week when I'm back in the office.

I thought I would take a screenshot of the "Start" menu that I linked in the above post. It is pretty easy to include in the taskbar and really is pretty much like the start menu in previous Windows version.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a5...dvd issues/Screenshot-9_24_201110_05_58AM.jpg

You can just enable the normal start menu with a reg edit.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RPEnabled

0 = Normal Start Menu
1 = Metro

 

[stinger608]

You can just enable the normal start menu with a reg edit.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RPEnabled

0 = Normal Start Menu
1 = Metro

Right I realize that, however with the regedit isn't the Metro interface shut down? With the above method the Metro interface stays intact.

 

[newtekie1]

Right I realize that, however with the regedit isn't the Metro interface shut down? With the above method the Metro interface stays intact.

Yeah, but on a normal desktop the metro interface is pretty pointless.

 

[Frick]

Would be nice if they had an actual switch in the control panel or something. Not hard to to .reg files for it, but still.

 

[stinger608]

Yeah, but on a normal desktop the metro interface is pretty pointless.

I have to admit, you have a good point there Tekie

 

[newtekie1]

Would be nice if they had an actual switch in the control panel or something. Not hard to to .reg files for it, but still.

Yeah, I'm hoping they add that. Metro would be totally useless in a work environment. Why do I have the feeling that they will add the ability to easily turn off metro as a "feature" of the Professional version of the operating system...

 

[Derek12]

In my case it will take many time to get used to Metro instead of the Start menu but I think that Metro efficiency should be improved, like the restart/shutdown buttons, etc...

 

[Drone]

I use alt+f4 to get restart and shutdown. It's kinda the fastest way, rather than going in to settings charm.

 

[LiveOrDie]

I use alt+f4 to get restart and shutdown. It's kinda the fastest way, rather than going in to settings charm.

or just push the power button on your case

 

[Derek12]

I use alt+f4 to get restart and shutdown. It's kinda the fastest way, rather than going in to settings charm.

I didn't though of that

 

[Drone]

You can also create an icon for reboot or shutdown on your desktop just like in Vista or 7.

On desktop right click and create an icon then in location type

shutdown -s -t 00 and put some icon for your new shutdown shortcut.

And if you want to create restart icon then type

shutdown -r -t 00

 

[Frick]

Ok, I'm running this properly now on system in system specs. And with risk of sounding like an idiot I have to ask: Is there a way to shut down the apps you start in that metro thing? Because it feels like I could like that, but it needs some work.

 

[Derek12]

Ok, I'm running this properly now on system in system specs. And with risk of sounding like an idiot I have to ask: Is there a way to shut down the apps you start in that metro thing? Because it feels like I could like that, but it needs some work.

As far I know, you have to kill them manually with the task manager

You can also create an icon for reboot or shutdown on your desktop just like in Vista or 7.

On desktop right click and create an icon then in location type

shutdown -s -t 00 and put some icon for your new shutdown shortcut.

And if you want to create restart icon then type

shutdown -r -t 00

Many thanks, this will be useful

 

[Drone]

As far I know, you have to kill them manually with the task manager

Idle metro apps just get suspended (still use some ram) and the most unused ones just automatically shut down. However it'd be better if user had more control rather than using ProcessKO or Task Manager to close them.



Btw the new task manager is tm.exe but there's also a classic one taskmgr.exe if someone misses it.

 

[theubersmurf]

would dual booting work fine with vista?, as far as i know vista and 7 use same bootloader so...

i really like windows 8 and i think i might end up taking it out of the virtual machine and using for my day to day use

Yes it does, though the windows 8 bootloader trumps the vista bootloader. I'm going to have to retrieve my vista bootloader somehow. I'm actually going to replace my vista installation with windows 7 soon anyway, so that may not be a big deal.

 

[cheesy999]

Yes it does, though the windows 8 bootloader trumps the vista bootloader. I'm going to have to retrieve my vista bootloader somehow. I'm actually going to replace my vista installation with windows 7 soon anyway, so that may not be a big deal.

oh i installed it the day after posting that, the windows 8 bootloader just has an option to boot into the vista one

 

[DaedalusHelios]

I wonder if this would run alright on a dual P4 server with 16GBs of ECC ram.

I hope it has the needed drivers built in for my extra POS Server.^^

 

[theubersmurf]

oh i installed it the day after posting that, the windows 8 bootloader just has an option to boot into the vista one

Yeah, I know. I have windows eight on an external drive, and if I disconnect the drive, it will offer both and default to windows 8, even though the volume containing that system is missing.

 

[stinger608]

I wonder if this would run alright on a dual P4 server with 16GBs of ECC ram.

I hope it has the needed drivers built in for my extra POS Server.^^

Hey Daed, I would give it a try man

The thing I would like to see is frigging M$ have a normal operating system that actually sees and utilizes more than 2 physical processors like the server OS's!

 

[theubersmurf]

oh i installed it the day after posting that, the windows 8 bootloader just has an option to boot into the vista one

you're going to hate trying to get rid of windows 8....

 

[stinger608]

Yeah, I know. I have windows eight on an external drive, and if I disconnect the drive, it will offer both and default to windows 8, even though the volume containing that system is missing.

If you insert the Windows 7 disk and do a repair it will rid that. It will repair the boot ini and sector I believe.