Windows 8.1
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@Mcoder said:
Well, I have 1 GB of RAM on my laptop. It works great, Firefox and all.
Or, better, it worked great untill the BIOS battery discharged. Now it works great once you set the clock again after each boot. It's mounted in a way that I simply can not understand how to open it, and it'll probably get replaced just because of that (from another manufacturer's model, of course).
My Chromebook has 2GB of RAM and you can run firefox on it if you dual boot. It also costs $249. For the whole thing.
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@toon said:
Coworker just came up with this series of steps he followed to upgrade:
- Start upgrade from Windows 8 to 8.1
- Have all monitors go black on you
- Decide to wait it out
- After ten minutes, decide the upgrade process has hung, and hard reboot
- Notice the upgrade start to revert itself upon reboot
- Have PC reboot automatically afterwards
- Upon reboot, get BSOD explaining that your registry is corrupt so Windows 8.0 can't start
The way around this? Why, there is none: after all, he's got an upgrade license, not a clean install license! So there's nothing for it but to do a clean install of 8.0.
if you have upgrade media, you do a clean installation--it'll let you--and then you do an upgrade installation over itself. Yes, it's stupid, but it's a supported scenario.
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@Ben L. said:
@Mcoder said:
Well, I have 1 GB of RAM on my laptop. It works great, Firefox and all.
Or, better, it worked great untill the BIOS battery discharged. Now it works great once you set the clock again after each boot. It's mounted in a way that I simply can not understand how to open it, and it'll probably get replaced just because of that (from another manufacturer's model, of course).
My Chromebook has 2GB of RAM and you can run firefox on it if you dual boot. It also costs $249. For the whole thing.I was wondering, is it any use when you don't have access to an internet connection? Or you have to dual boot in a vanilla Linux to work offline?
I'm thinking, why use their OS at all if you are to dual boot anyways.
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@toon said:
Depends on the size of the SSD, doesn't it? We are talking Windows 8 here.
Upgrading Windows 8 to 8.1 freed over 30GB of space on my SSD. I have no idea where that space was used, it's just that before upgrade I had 28GB free, and after it was 61.
@FrostCat said:if you have upgrade media, you do a clean installation--it'll let you--and then you do an upgrade installation over itself. Yes, it's stupid, but it's a supported scenario.
If there's already a Windows directory on the destination disk, the installer will detect that, and mark the installation as properly upgraded, so the activation key will work immediately (and in the case you're installing to a completely clean HDD, it's possible to just set a key in the registry, and then activate).
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@bullrider718 said:
In Windows 7, redirecting the users folder to another partition could be done seemlessly and flawlessly by symlinking C:\Users to the location you actually wanted the Users folder.
This was never supported in Windows 7. You're complaining about something breaking things while Microsoft explicitly says it's unsupported1.
The right way is to change the location of your "Documents", "Videos" etc. folders in their property menu.Of course you can make the case that this should be supported (and I agree with you), but now you're just making yourself look like an idiot.
1 quote: This setting should be used only in a test environment. By changing the default location of the user profile directories or program data folders to a volume other than the System volume, you will not be able to service your Windows installation. Any updates, fixes, or service packs will fail to be applied to the installation. Microsoft does not recommend that you change the location of the user profile directories or program data folders.
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@dtech said:
@bullrider718 said:
In Windows 7, redirecting the users folder to another partition could be done seemlessly and flawlessly by symlinking C:\Users to the location you actually wanted the Users folder.
This was never supported in Windows 7. You're complaining about something breaking things while Microsoft explicitly says it's unsupported
I like that they do provide a sensible explanation: "The servicing stack does not handle cross-volume transactions..."
So the problem is that they can't guarantee atomicity of operations across volumes.
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Just upgraded from 8 to 8.1 this weekend. The Metro search screen is odd now...I seem to have trouble getting it to work as expected. Also they got rid of the build-in backup center, now there's something called File History and you have very little control over it. Not to mention I had to Google search to find it, File History is not nearly as intuitive as Backup and Restore Center. At least it still saves backups to my other hard drive...I think.
Overall it seems to be a minor step backwards.
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@mott555 said:
...
A user complained that our web app didn't work well on their system because it didn't fit on his screen. We had him send us a screenshot, and lo and behold he was running at 640x480 resolution--in 2012! We asked him if he could increase the resolution and he could not. At that point we dropped the issue, either he had no VGA drivers installed or he was using a 13" CRT from 1991.
...
Or, you know, an Asus EeePC 701, from 2007.
I have enough problems with the 904 model from a couple of years later. 1024x600 pixels (widescreen). I can't change my 3G settings without attaching an external higher-definition screen, since the OK button is below the lower edge of the screen in a settings window that has no scrolling (on Debian AND Ubuntu).
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@OldCrow said:
Or, you know, an Asus EeePC 701, from 2007.
I used to have an HP Mini with that same problem, only 1024x600 resolution. I mostly used it to play 1990's video games in class when I was in college since it really couldn't handle anything newer than about 1999. And many of those games just crashed when they tried to render 1024x768 and it would take some game .ini/.cfg hacking to drop it to 800x600.I have enough problems with the 904 model from a couple of years later. 1024x600 pixels (widescreen). I can't change my 3G settings without attaching an external higher-definition screen, since the OK button is below the lower edge of the screen in a settings window that has no scrolling (on Debian AND Ubuntu).
I also used a 16 GB SD card as primary storage. It had a built-in 8 GB SSD which was completely filled up by the Windows/Office installation. Talk about slow!
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@OldCrow said:
Or, you know, an Asus EeePC 701, from 2007.
Wasn't that 1024x576?
@OldCrow said:I can't change my 3G settings without attaching an external higher-definition screen, since the OK button is below the lower edge of the screen in a settings window that has no scrolling (on Debian AND Ubuntu).
Alt+Drag doesn't work?
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@ender said:
@OldCrow said:
Or, you know, an Asus EeePC 701, from 2007.
Wasn't that 1024x576?800x480. Or you could switch to virtual 800x600 mode which would scroll up and down with the mouse cursor. Good times. That and the 4 GB SSD made running XP... challenging, but not without merit. I had to put an internal USB port + 16 GB flash drive in mine.
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@aapis said:
So.. Windows 8.1 deprecated symlinks? Can Microsoft do that?
Fortunately for you, future Microsoft OS upgrades are going to be horrible so you won't be missing anything. If Windows 8 is any indication, anyways. On a somewhat related note, I've been having a hell of a time tracking down a website/store that still sells Windows 7 (Microsoft decided my perfectly valid key was not anymore, so I'm in search of a new one).
No way. I'd get the poor jerk on the phone in Hyderabad to fix it. Kind of an easy scam for them to just start claiming keys are invalid to rustle up a few hundred grand every month.
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@dkf said:
@Ben L. said:
Why are you running a web browser in a VM? Just run the goddamn web browser.
One of my colleagues runs browsers in a VM. Actually, he runs lots of VMs with different versions of lots of browsers so he can check that the sites he develops run the same in all of them. (The poor man still has to support IE6 because of downstream customers…)Heh... if the end of the line is ever going to come, it's when XP goes entirely out of support next year and takes IE 6 with it.
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@operagost said:
@dkf said:
@Ben L. said:
Why are you running a web browser in a VM? Just run the goddamn web browser.
One of my colleagues runs browsers in a VM. Actually, he runs lots of VMs with different versions of lots of browsers so he can check that the sites he develops run the same in all of them. (The poor man still has to support IE6 because of downstream customers…)Heh... if the end of the line is ever going to come, it's when XP goes entirely out of support next year and takes IE 6 with it.
Unlikely. XP is not going anywhere and isn't taking anything with it. It won't be supported but it'll still be out there.
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@anotherusername said:
@operagost said:
Agreed. I just know that 25 years from now I'll be griping about IE 6 compatibility while doing website work.@dkf said:
Unlikely. XP is not going anywhere and isn't taking anything with it. It won't be supported but it'll still be out there.@Ben L. said:
Heh... if the end of the line is ever going to come, it's when XP goes entirely out of support next year and takes IE 6 with it.Why are you running a web browser in a VM? Just run the goddamn web browser.
One of my colleagues runs browsers in a VM. Actually, he runs lots of VMs with different versions of lots of browsers so he can check that the sites he develops run the same in all of them. (The poor man still has to support IE6 because of downstream customers…)
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@anotherusername said:
Unlikely. XP is not going anywhere and isn't taking anything with it. It won't be supported but it'll still be out there.
Exactly right. It's not like XP is suddenly going to evaporate off of everyone's hard drive at midnight on April 8, 2014. I recently read an article that brought up an interesting point -- even after Microsoft stops releasing patches for XP, if antivirus vendors are smart** they will keep updating their software to detect any new exploits that may arise and it could possibly be quite profitable targeting companies still using XP.** Is "smart antivirus vendor" an oxymoron?
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@El_Heffe said:
@anotherusername said:
Unlikely. XP is not going anywhere and isn't taking anything with it. It won't be supported but it'll still be out there.
Exactly right. It's not like XP is suddenly going to evaporate off of everyone's hard drive at midnight on April 8, 2014. I recently read an article that brought up an interesting point -- even after Microsoft stops releasing patches for XP, if antivirus vendors are smart** they will keep updating their software to detect any new exploits that may arise and it could possibly be quite profitable targeting companies still using XP.
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@Arnavion said:
@El_Heffe said:
@anotherusername said:
Unlikely. XP is not going anywhere and isn't taking anything with it. It won't be supported but it'll still be out there.
Exactly right. It's not like XP is suddenly going to evaporate off of everyone's hard drive at midnight on April 8, 2014. I recently read an article that brought up an interesting point -- even after Microsoft stops releasing patches for XP, if antivirus vendors are smart** they will keep updating their software to detect any new exploits that may arise and it could possibly be quite profitable targeting companies still using XP.
Those two uses of the phrase "support XP" aren't actually related to each other, though.
Microsoft will stop developing XP; Google will continue developing on XP.
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@Arnavion said:
Chrome will support XP till (at least) April 2015.
Chrome runs on XP now, why would it no longer work in 2015? What they are really saying is "after April 2015 we may deliberately break Chrome so that it no longer runs on XP".
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@El_Heffe said:
What they are really saying is "after April 2015 we may deliberately break Chrome so that it no longer runs on XP".
As opposed to Mozilla, who deliberately break Firefox every release.
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@El_Heffe said:
@anotherusername said:
Unlikely. XP is not going anywhere and isn't taking anything with it. It won't be supported but it'll still be out there.
Exactly right. It's not like XP is suddenly going to evaporate off of everyone's hard drive at midnight on April 8, 2014. I recently read an article that brought up an interesting point -- even after Microsoft stops releasing patches for XP, if antivirus vendors are smart** they will keep updating their software to detect any new exploits that may arise and it could possibly be quite profitable targeting companies still using XP.** Is "smart antivirus vendor" an oxymoron?
One of my clients has a roadmap where it is clearly indicated that they will keep using Windows XP (32 bits) on desktops until 2019. There is already a problem with a few specialized applications that require more RAM than XP can support but they use Citrix for those. They also use a very specific version of Firefox (16 I think) and almost everything they build in-house is done with XUL (*shivers*).
I'm not sure what antivirus they use. Probably something like F-Prot and a cocktail of old crap like ZoneAlarm or Norton Utilities. This should run "smoothly" until 2019.
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@El_Heffe said:
@Arnavion said:
Chrome will support XP till (at least) April 2015.
Chrome runs on XP now, why would it no longer work in 2015?Because Chrome auto-updates to the latest version. Before reading that post, you couldn't have known if some update before April 2015 would make it unusable on XP.
@El_Heffe said:
What they are really saying is "after April 2015 we may deliberately break Chrome so that it no longer runs on XP".
Indeed. Or they may make a separate branch for XP that only gets security updates. The bottom line is that XP will continue to get a decent browser for at least another year, which is not something I'm happy about.
Then again it's not like leaving XP users in the dark ages of the internet will make them stop using it. They're already used to living in the dark ages of everything else...
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@ender said:
Alt+Drag doesn't work?
Many thanks. So it's a permanently solved problem then.
I'd been wondering why that issue always got closed despite the myriad of people who keep opening it every few months. Perhaps these handy little shortcuts should be made a bit more conspicuous. Say, by printing them on the default background.
