Windows 8

I'm trying to install Windows 8 in an upgrade from Windows 7, 64 bit, but during the process, it tells me that I have to uninstall ASUS AI Charger Plus. Does anyone have a clue how to do this? Using CCleaner, I was able to find a startup entry for it, which I disabled, but that's apparently not enough. It's not in the program list, it's not in the startup menu, I cannot find it entered anywhere. But I cannot continue with the installation until I get rid of it.

I also found it odd that it had me uninstall Intel's network drivers before upgrading. Doing so killed the network, so I had to reinstall them to get back online to be able to figure out what the heck this AI Charger Plus program is, but I can find no instructions. Maybe I should bing it....

sheared wrote:

I'm trying to install Windows 8 in an upgrade from Windows 7, 64 bit, but during the process, it tells me that I have to uninstall ASUS AI Charger Plus. Does anyone have a clue how to do this? Using CCleaner, I was able to find a startup entry for it, which I disabled, but that's apparently not enough. It's not in the program list, it's not in the startup menu, I cannot find it entered anywhere. But I cannot continue with the installation until I get rid of it.

I also found it odd that it had me uninstall Intel's network drivers before upgrading. Doing so killed the network, so I had to reinstall them to get back online to be able to figure out what the heck this AI Charger Plus program is, but I can find no instructions. Maybe I should bing it....

Check in the BIOS settings perhaps? Maybe you just need to disable it.

Thanks -- I just found it. I decided to uninstall the AI Suite (which one site said wasn't necessary), but when I did, it brought up a list of several things that I could uninstall. One option was the AI Charger Plus. I uninstalled just, and just checked, and it is gone from the list of items needing to be removed. But with it so late, I think I'll wait and pick this back up another day. So far this has taken 3 1/2 hours, and I've not made it out of Windows 7 yet.

Bought and installed on my Toshiba Portege Z830. Core i3 at 1.4 GHz or something ridiculous like that with 6GB of RAM. Upgraded without issues. I told the installer not to save anything, but I've still got my Windows.Old folder. Whatever. Took maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes, altogether?

Anyway, definitely a change but I'm already getting used to it. For me, a big thing will be discovering all the little shortcuts. Googling "Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts" already gave me some nifty ones (Win+PrtScr will drop a screenshot in the Pictures folder), and just poking around Windows forums are showing me more (right-clicking the Start button in the bottom left gives a whole bunch of options).

Anyone else have anything nifty along those lines?

General Crespin wrote:

(right-clicking the Start button in the bottom left gives a whole bunch of options)

That's Win+X as well, which used to just launch the Mobility Center under Windows 7.

Arovin wrote:

My biggest concern with the direction windows 8 and metro is taking us is this:

My company depends on in house developed software that is only run internally but is needed for everyone in the company to do their jobs. Yes we can run these apps on the desktop environment in windows 8, the problem is they integrate with MS software like office. One of the things metro is changing is that desktop apps will not be able to integrate directly with metro apps which is what the new office apps will be.

This means we have two options:
1) Continue with windows 7 and older version of office until MS decides they are no longer supporting and patching them. This maybe a ways away but still is not an acceptable long term solution. PCI and other industry compliance's require us to as be secure as possible which means using an OS that is maintained and patched.

2) Have our developer spend time (a lot of time and money) to build metro versions of all our internal apps and then get them certified by Microsoft to be able to integrate directly with office like they do now. This seems like an overly difficult and extremely expensive solution. Internal software should never have to be certified by another company to be able to use. Any small business like ours is going to be hurt by metro and Microsoft's certification process.

I have Office 2013 and only run it on the desktop just like every old version of Office. Where did you hear that Office is metro only? Even on WinRT version of Office run in the desktop.

You cannot do a clean install with the 30 euro / 40 USD upgrade. Tricky part: the installation goes just fine, but when trying to activate Windows he informs me that 'this key can only be used for an upgrade, not a clean install'. There's no option to enter your old Vista/XP/Win7 key to be found.

Does anyone know of a workaround? The Vista install in my fiancee's laptop is old and unstable by now, I really want to start from a clean sheet. If all else fails I guess I can just reinstall Vista first and then Win8 again (le sigh).

dejanzie wrote:

You cannot do a clean install with the 30 euro / 40 USD upgrade. Tricky part: the installation goes just fine, but when trying to activate Windows he informs me that 'this key can only be used for an upgrade, not a clean install'. There's no option to enter your old Vista/XP/Win7 key to be found.

Does anyone know of a workaround? The Vista install in my fiancee's laptop is old and unstable by now, I really want to start from a clean sheet. If all else fails I guess I can just reinstall Vista first and then Win8 again (le sigh).

I think the critical part is that it needs to see an existing install when you start setup, and when you get to the 'choose a partition' bit you can blow away the old install. I'm not sure if you need the old install to be activated, but it seems like if you were aiming for a new install on a blank hard drive, you could do install win7 (and activate?) and straight away install win8, or just image/restore a partition to pass the test.

Scratched wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

You cannot do a clean install with the 30 euro / 40 USD upgrade. Tricky part: the installation goes just fine, but when trying to activate Windows he informs me that 'this key can only be used for an upgrade, not a clean install'. There's no option to enter your old Vista/XP/Win7 key to be found.

Does anyone know of a workaround? The Vista install in my fiancee's laptop is old and unstable by now, I really want to start from a clean sheet. If all else fails I guess I can just reinstall Vista first and then Win8 again (le sigh).

I think the critical part is that it needs to see an existing install when you start setup, and when you get to the 'choose a partition' bit you can blow away the old install. I'm not sure if you need the old install to be activated, but it seems like if you were aiming for a new install on a blank hard drive, you could do install win7 (and activate?) and straight away install win8, or just image/restore a partition to pass the test.

Yeah, I'm going to install my old Win7 FPP first. I'm a tad frustrated only because:

1. They could have informed me when I first entered my license key during the installation process. I was connected to our Wifi from the getgo.
2. They could have added a little procedure to enter an old XP/Vista/Win7 license key when activating. How is that not proof enough that you're upgrading?

Microsoft could have saved me a couple of hours with a little tweaking.

Or they could slightly reduce their convoluted licensing, although I guess that's a 'careful what you wish for' situation as they would probably make all licenses one size fits all and expensive.

dejanzie wrote:
Scratched wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

You cannot do a clean install with the 30 euro / 40 USD upgrade. Tricky part: the installation goes just fine, but when trying to activate Windows he informs me that 'this key can only be used for an upgrade, not a clean install'. There's no option to enter your old Vista/XP/Win7 key to be found.

Does anyone know of a workaround? The Vista install in my fiancee's laptop is old and unstable by now, I really want to start from a clean sheet. If all else fails I guess I can just reinstall Vista first and then Win8 again (le sigh).

I think the critical part is that it needs to see an existing install when you start setup, and when you get to the 'choose a partition' bit you can blow away the old install. I'm not sure if you need the old install to be activated, but it seems like if you were aiming for a new install on a blank hard drive, you could do install win7 (and activate?) and straight away install win8, or just image/restore a partition to pass the test.

Yeah, I'm going to install my old Win7 FPP first. I'm a tad frustrated only because:

1. They could have informed me when I first entered my license key during the installation process. I was connected to our Wifi from the getgo.
2. They could have added a little procedure to enter an old XP/Vista/Win7 license key when activating. How is that not proof enough that you're upgrading?

Microsoft could have saved me a couple of hours with a little tweaking.

It used to be like how you say. Clean install with an upgrade license and you either put the old disc in (XP?) or you typed your old license key (Vista/7?).

dejanzie wrote:
Scratched wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

You cannot do a clean install with the 30 euro / 40 USD upgrade. Tricky part: the installation goes just fine, but when trying to activate Windows he informs me that 'this key can only be used for an upgrade, not a clean install'. There's no option to enter your old Vista/XP/Win7 key to be found.

Does anyone know of a workaround? The Vista install in my fiancee's laptop is old and unstable by now, I really want to start from a clean sheet. If all else fails I guess I can just reinstall Vista first and then Win8 again (le sigh).

I think the critical part is that it needs to see an existing install when you start setup, and when you get to the 'choose a partition' bit you can blow away the old install. I'm not sure if you need the old install to be activated, but it seems like if you were aiming for a new install on a blank hard drive, you could do install win7 (and activate?) and straight away install win8, or just image/restore a partition to pass the test.

Yeah, I'm going to install my old Win7 FPP first. I'm a tad frustrated only because:

1. They could have informed me when I first entered my license key during the installation process. I was connected to our Wifi from the getgo.
2. They could have added a little procedure to enter an old XP/Vista/Win7 license key when activating. How is that not proof enough that you're upgrading?

Microsoft could have saved me a couple of hours with a little tweaking.

Another option is what I'm doing on my HTPC until I decide for sure if I want to upgrade: install the win 8 consumer preview and then install win 8 over that. Apparently they won't shut down the preview copies until end of January 2013, so I have some time to decide.

Edwin wrote:

I have Office 2013 and only run it on the desktop just like every old version of Office. Where did you hear that Office is metro only? Even on WinRT version of Office run in the desktop.

That was my understanding after a few discussions about it with my co-workers. I may have be misinformed or misinterpreted the discussion.

Yeah, the Office 2013 apps are not Metro apps. There is a version of OneNote that *is* a Metro app but the regular OneNote is not. Everything else in the Office 2013 suite (well except Lync but who cares about that right?) runs in deprecated Windows mode.

tboon wrote:

Yeah, the Office 2013 apps are not Metro apps. There is a version of OneNote that *is* a Metro app but the regular OneNote is not. Everything else in the Office 2013 suite (well except Lync but who cares about that right?) runs in deprecated Windows mode.

uh...Lync is awesome..we have converted all our offices to it and are now converting our companies as well

Scratched wrote:

I think the critical part is that it needs to see an existing install when you start setup, and when you get to the 'choose a partition' bit you can blow away the old install. I'm not sure if you need the old install to be activated, but it seems like if you were aiming for a new install on a blank hard drive, you could do install win7 (and activate?) and straight away install win8, or just image/restore a partition to pass the test.

Just to clarify, you don't. I wanted to make a dual boot of Win7/Win8 so I just made a new partition, installed Windows 7 on it, skipped the activation step and just overwrote it with Windows 8.

Slacker1913 wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I think the critical part is that it needs to see an existing install when you start setup, and when you get to the 'choose a partition' bit you can blow away the old install. I'm not sure if you need the old install to be activated, but it seems like if you were aiming for a new install on a blank hard drive, you could do install win7 (and activate?) and straight away install win8, or just image/restore a partition to pass the test.

Just to clarify, you don't. I wanted to make a dual boot of Win7/Win8 so I just made a new partition, installed Windows 7 on it, skipped the activation step and just overwrote it with Windows 8.

Seconded.

Agreed with Gameguru on Lync. It's awesome!

You only get the Modern UI interface on IE10 if it's the default browser... wtf.

Lync is probably the killer MS productivity app. Seriously, the features make it MS's best product.

TheGameguru wrote:

uh...Lync is awesome..we have converted all our offices to it and are now converting our companies as well

Edwin wrote:

Lync is probably the killer MS productivity app. Seriously, the features make it MS's best product.

Huh. Well, you learn something new everyday.

Just to add to all the install/buying scenarios.

I "found" an RTM DVD of the x64 edition. I ran the Upgrade Assistant on Win7 and bought Win8 for £14.99/$14.99 (Using the discount here - Note: I can't exactly remember the date I purchased my PC, but I'm pretty sure it was after October 1, 2012) then just closed off the Upgrade Assistant download and booted from my DVD. Did a fresh install from the partition manager in there and entered the key I bought and it activates fine.

Bit of a grey way of going about it, but I have a fully activated fresh version of Win8 for £14.99 (and it would have been $14.99 if I lived in the US).

Edwin wrote:

Lync is probably the killer MS productivity app. Seriously, the features make it MS's best product.

I love Lync, just wish I could paste images into it, sometimes I just want to show someone a quick snippit of the error I'm talking about. Sure it does attachments... meh.

Thanks, Crhis. I just bought a dell laptop but it is refurbished. I think it technically qualifies for the upgrade but I'm not certain. I don't believe it will come with Windows 8 on it but might as well upgrade it if I can. Just ordered it on Saturday.

Made the jump to Win8 this morning. I've been editing books on Win8 all summer so I've largely been prepared for a lot of what's here and although there's some definite clunkiness between working in the desktop and working through the Start screen I've only found one problem area I've not been able to work around or find a solution for. I'm guessing I'm SOL here, but will be curious if anyone has a solution. (And there's a lot of stuff I really like, or at least can see the potential in.)

I'm running on a desktop system that has an 80GB SSD and various conventional hard drives. Basically, I want my OS and a few key programs running off the SSD, but nothing else. (Post install and disk clean up, I've got about 40GB free.) Changing Windows to store Library type stuff (documents, downloads, music, etc.) is annoying but simple enough to do. Even changed the location for the TEMP folders, but then there's apps. Unlike desktop applications the Windows Store apps don't let you choose a default install location and I can find nothing in Windows settings to allow this. (I was able to learn how to access the hidden physical apps folder, but that's no good.) Now, I know apps are often small, but it won't always be that way and I'd like them to go where I'd like them to go. Surely there is some way to tell Windows to move that folder to a different drive? Even for Microsoft not being able to do this is... mind-numbingly stupid.

Any ideas?

ubrakto wrote:

Made the jump to Win8 this morning. I've been editing books on Win8 all summer so I've largely been prepared for a lot of what's here and although there's some definite clunkiness between working in the desktop and working through the Start screen I've only found one problem area I've not been able to work around or find a solution for. I'm guessing I'm SOL here, but will be curious if anyone has a solution. (And there's a lot of stuff I really like, or at least can see the potential in.)

I'm running on a desktop system that has an 80GB SSD and various conventional hard drives. Basically, I want my OS and a few key programs running off the SSD, but nothing else. (Post install and disk clean up, I've got about 40GB free.) Changing Windows to store Library type stuff (documents, downloads, music, etc.) is annoying but simple enough to do. Even changed the location for the TEMP folders, but then there's apps. Unlike desktop applications the Windows Store apps don't let you choose a default install location and I can find nothing in Windows settings to allow this. (I was able to learn how to access the hidden physical apps folder, but that's no good.) Now, I know apps are often small, but it won't always be that way and I'd like them to go where I'd like them to go. Surely there is some way to tell Windows to move that folder to a different drive? Even for Microsoft not being able to do this is... mind-numbingly stupid.

Any ideas?

Sounds like a simple junction link would do?

Okay. Really stupid question. On my desktop, I've got an icon that my son uses to launch his Minecraft game. It is a batch file, but I use the icon from the actual Minecraft program so it looks correct to him. How in the heck do I get this shortcut to the Metro desktop?

[edit] Stupid me! All I had to do was this (including the reboot):

1. At the Desktop, create your shortcut as you normally would.
2. Open Windows Explorer.
2a. On the Ribbon interface, select the View tab and place a checkmark in the Hidden Items box.
2b. Navigate to: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.
3. Move (cut and paste), the shortcut to the folder.
3a. Windows will open a message box telling you that access is denied and that you will have to give Administrator permission to do so. Simply click on the Continue button.
3b. Open the Start screen and see if the new shortcut is there. If it is, you're done! If not, continue on...
4. Close it out and restart Windows.
5. If the new shortcut is still not on the Start screen, then right-click on the Start screen and choose All Apps. You should see the new icon listed on the left side of the screen.
6. Right-click on it and choose Pin to Start. It should now be listed on the Start screen!

Note: I don't know why, but creating shortcuts and getting them to appear on the Start screen and in All Apps, is sometimes more difficult than it should be. I've noticed that new shortcuts or folders don't always appear until after a restart. Sometimes they will appear if I log-out, but not always.

After several hours with Windows 8, two things really jump out at me:

1. The "graphic designers" within the company have taken complete control, and they've thrown the folks involved with usability out to the curbside. When MS moved from (I believe) Office 2003 to the new version with the ribbon bar, they made things that took 1-2 steps to do into a arduous process of menu searching. I was able to create and format a graph in Excel in just a few short steps in the old Excel, but in the new one, quick actions (clicking on the graph to add a title or an axis label or any text for that matter) became a 5 step process of me having to remember what menu option I had to select to do the same thing. They've taken this and multiplied it 100 times over within Win8. I spent 4-5 minutes trying to figure out how to search the dang store. Sure that's not that long, but there should just be a search option OBVIOUS on the page. But even now that I know how to do it, it's 3 extra actions more than it should be to actually do it.

2. The integration of MS properties within the Metro interface makes me sick. I realize Windows is a MS product, but it IS different from Apple's OS or Android. Me using it is not because I choose too, it is because I have 22 years of history within the OS, and everything I own is tied up into the OS. When I first log into a freshly upgraded Win8, I should not get a screen full of MS properties. I should be given an option to select from a plethora of things that reflect how I have chosen to setup my work space on my PC. Every MS card on that screen should be part of a selection process of a competitor's equivalent version before reaching that screen. And having to sign into a MS account? I'm okay with that if it is a unique account not specifically tied to a MS property. I hope that MS does not email important information to that throw-away Outlook account I created 2 months ago and never looked at again. Sure I'm using it to control everything about Metro, but I have no plans of ever checking it. I should be allowed to create an account, and include the email that I want them to use to contact me.

That brings me to another thing. When I created the Outlook account, I used LastPass to generate a password. I figured I'd start trying to diversify to help prevent my accounts from being hacked. So I had to enter that stupid unmemorable phrase in half a dozen time while working with Metro for the first time, but I could not alt-tab over to my browser to copy it and alt-tab back into the Metro interface that was requesting it, I had to reopen the program from within Metro after copying from desktop, because the metro program just disappears. It doesn't remain in the same state as I left it after alt-tabbing to the program on the desktop. So something that should have taken 2 steps to complete, became a 5 step process. They've done what many game makers have done -- they made an interface for another device all together, and then forced it onto the PC user. Thanks.

A tip for that are upgrading and want some space back:

1. Press the Windows Key.
2. Start typing "Disk".
3. Open "Disk Cleanup".
4. Select the drive your OS is installed on.
5. Click "Cleanup System Files".
6. Check off system files you don't need anymore and delete them.

When you upgrade it keeps the install files and all the old OS files just in case. These files take up ~20 gigs. So if you need the space, this can clear a bunch up.

ibdoomed wrote:
ubrakto wrote:

Stuff about relocating the apps storage folder...

Sounds like a simple junction link would do?

Not sure what that is or how to do it, but am hoping to find something the OS explicitly supports, like how you can tell it to move the various Users folders to a new location.