Ah the new Windows 8.1

So if you're running the setup of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 it looks EXACTLY the same. With one tiny tiny exception. On the splash screen, the copyright for Windows 8 is 2012, and the copyright for Windows 8.1 is 2013. Otherwise, you cannot tell which of the two you are installing. I still don't understand why it could not be just a service pack.

Here are screen captures to illustrate the case. Note, the colours don't look exactly the same because the setups were on different LCD's with the light hitting it from a different angle. The colour is exactly the same shade of blue.

Windows 8

Windows 8.1

I do love my job somedays

Yesterday I was talking to one of the software engineers that works on some of the problems I find.  In my testing of Windows 8, I also tested Direct X 11 samples. It turns out that the software emulation we do to render some of these samples was causing weird crashes and it was on some of my newer systems with I7 CPU's.  Apparently I seemed to have found an obscure bug in Intels I7 CPU's. If they change the CPU of my system with an I5, the bug miraculously vanish!

I've always said I'm gifted at finding the weirdest problems, this is one of them!!!!  I've found all sorts of bugs in the hardware I test, but this is the find time I find an Intel CPU bug. I've found an Intel chipset bug before.  One of our hardware engineers will be contacting Intel with the particulars of the bug.

I still hate Windows 8 even if it was the source of this cool bug!

Oh UEFI systems, how I do love you. {end sarcasm}

So I've been arguing with a few UEFI systems that came with Windows 8 pre-loaded, and with secure boot.

For instance so far I've been setting up new machines with Windows 7 64 bits, Server 2008 R2, Windows 8 64 bits and Server 2012 on one drive and configuring the system to Boot UEFI for this drive, and the drive is partitioned GPT.  On the Dell 7010, that came with Windows 8 , was never able to install Windows 7 in UEFI mode. It just hangs before even installing. Even with secure boot disabled.

So I figured I'd use the Windows 8 drive it came with and add Server 2012. So I boot the DVD and before I even get to a menu where I can start installing I get the following error "The product key entered does not match any of the Window images available for installation. Please enter another key". I tried again, got the same message. That left me perplexed and discouraged. 

So I moved on from that Dell 7010 and started setting up the Lenovo M92p. I manage to install W7-64, S2008 R2, W8-64 [enterprise] and once I get to Server 2012, I get the same error about the product key.  This is when I went to do research. Turns out that the key it's talking about is embedded somewhere in the UEFI BIOS.   I guess no one ever considered that you might want to install an OS different then the one the system came with.  In the end the solution was simple. Instead of using a 'retail' version of Server 2012, if I used the Volume License version I did not run into this issue. 

I would have ran into the issue with Windows 8 if I had used the Pro version. But because I used Enterprise, I got around the built in serial number.

If you do not have access to Enterprise and Volume License versions, there is a way to by-pass this problem, by adding a .PID file to the install media, this article explains it. 

Wind8w and the corporate world

Windows 8 comes with 15 built in metro applications. Including Mail, which still goes to my hotmail and not the new Web Outlook, though I updated, and Messenger, which uses my MSN messenger contact list.  Aren't they killing Messenger and going with Skype?   That's neither here or there.  The Microsoft store, from which these Metro apps can be bought or updated is not proxy friendly or even proxy aware. As it goes, all 15 of those metro applications need updating already!

So how the heck do they expect these to get updated in a corporate environment? I was asked to test metro apps but I had to use my direct connect. I could not by-pass the proxy. The IT guy spent part of the afternoon in my test lab,  after having configured to open  my sub-net  to all accesses to the Microsoft store. He followed the instructions Microsoft had for IT professionals. It did not work at all.  And they can't open my subnet to everything, that's not secure!

This is really not going to deploy in large companies until it becomes more backwards compatible. Also all those metro apps that all run full screen? In the PC world we don't have just 1 display. Sometimes we even have 16 displays.  Running full screen doesn't seen all that intuitive.  Found an interesting article for running metro apps in windowed mode instead of being full screen all the time.

The Store in Windows 8 is poorly designed. There's no search that I could find. I could hate being on some tablet and have to go through pages and pages of tiles to find the app I want to install? In one category there is already close to 6000 apps. You can sort them by their price or if they are free.  But you can't search. We had to use a browser and then it found the app and launched the store and installed.

Even with open access to internet having metro apps install is slow process and you might have to kill the store over and over, because it seems once an app fails to install, it is in a weird state and until you restart the store app, it is stuck in no man's land.

I'm still not a big fan of Wind8ws

Doesn't Metro look "nice" on a stretched desktop?

Months after it's been out there I'm still not a big fan. Especially not in a stretched desktop, as illustrated. It wouldn't be so bad if you could turn this look off but you cannot. All other versions of windows you could choose to go to a classic or previous look, but not Wind8ws. Microsoft thought they would re-educate us on Windows. Just because someone had a vision doesn't mean we're all going to adopt it like sheep. I never used Windows Me or Vista on a home system. I suspect Wind8ws will also be such OS.

I wonder how many people are waiting in line...

to purchase Wind8ws. I do know that I can't access the Dell site for drivers this morning and I can't help but wonder if it's related to the release of Wind8ws? I can access the HP and Lenovo sites for drivers no problems.

Windows 8 - and PC desktops

Apparently I'm not the only one who sees that Wind8ws might be a nightmare for those who are going to use a desktop computer as opposed to a tablet or a smartphone. 

I've been using versions of Windows since 1992.  I hate the double desktop, makes it non-intuitive for someone who just needs to get email and work on documents. This article is from experts and what they have to say about Wind8ws

I had said that I doubted OEMs would be very keen. It seems HP and Lenovo are going full speed but Dell is not so much. Dell seems to want to stick to windows 7 as its shipping OS on most machines for a little while longer.

UEFI Growing pains

I like the theory of UEFI and it's about time that GPT standard gets more widespread. It was available with windows Vista and server 2008 but the way it was done in those OS does not seem compatible with Windows 8.  I tried setting up a drive several times with Vista 64, server 2008 64, Windows 7 64, Server 2008 R2, Windows 8 64 and Server 2012. In theory it should have worked. In practice it did not.  I could get vista and Windows 7 to play nice together, I can can windows 7 and windows 8 playing nice together. But all 3 was a no go.

Switching booting between legacy and UEFI mode is painful. I'm not sure if it's worse on a Dell because I don't care for Dells, and I've been arguing with dells for several days now. I had setup one Dell T1650 with one drive in UEFI mode for Windows 7 64, Server 2008 R2, Windows 8 64 and server 2012, the other drive had all legacy OS, all 32 bit OS and of course that vista 64 and server 2008 64 that were not compatible in UEFI mode. This second drive was in legacy mode and of course MBR. I use XP to partition the drive.   I had switched back and forth between both drives without any issues, and the system went - when it came back it was no longer booting on the UEFI drive. Kept saying no boot device found.

Then there's the Dell T1600 where I had a drive with all OS between XP and server 2008 R2, in leagcy mode, and I setup Windows 8 and server 2012 in UEFI mode. It was working fabulously until I lent it to a less tech savvy colleague. Now it will boot into it's drive if I'm using the onboard graphics card, but won't boot using an add-in card to a hard disk. It will hang. Since I need to test it with add-in cards it won't be particularly useful to the intern who's supposed to have it as a test machine.

It;s weird too when you switch between UEFI and legacy mode on the T1600, it tends to lose all boot devices and goes to this weird  default legacy mode, and if you want to set it in UEFI you cannot go between you have no options. It's just really weird. It's like no one thought it through.

HP seems to handle the switching between both better.  My Lenovo can be incredibly bitchy as devices appear and disappears as well in 'UEFI" mode. 

Another interesting discovery one of my interns made with build 8441 of Windows 8 is that if you were configured in UEFI mode and ran Worldbench 6, it would trash your hard disk.  I've since confirmed it with Windows 8 RTM. It trashed my hard disk.  I wonder what other software will also trash my hard disk in such a way that I can't reghosted it using the 'partition' method. So far that method has worked really well for me.  You can run worldbench 6 in non UEFI mode and it won't trash your drive but it may not run particularly well.

Something tells me that my near future will be filled with me restoring drives that get trashed in GPT mode. So far it's happened several times on a fairly small sampling.

Windows 8 another Me or Vista?

I've been playing with Wind8ws for a while now and I don't like it. This isn't new.  There isn't a new Microsoft OS that has released that I've ever liked. But some I grew to like. Like Windows 98SE that was good. Windows XP was good, and my last liked OS is Windows 7. 

Usually it takes 6months-1year after release for me to finally start getting used to an OS and liking it.  But I have a sense of whether or not I'm going to like it and if it's going to be a nice OS. This one gives me weird feelings. It's like the only thing they are planning for is tablets and smartphones and things like that. 

The whole Metro look might be pretty on a tablet but let me tell you it looks really tacky on a large 4x4 stretched layout.. Then never mind the fact that there's an 8kx8k limit to the size of surfaces we can do. 

Personally I think Wind8ws is going to end up much hated like Windows ME or Windows Viiiiiiiiista [The 64 bit version of this OS takes up enormous amounts of diskspace - more then Windows 7 64bits!!!!]