How did YOU get on with Windows 8 Installation?

Might be a good idea to list problems...

I downloaded the 'bargain' upgrade version (£14.99 with recent Win 7 purchase).
Took nearly 6 hours to download.'
Once complete was given 2 choices, install now or later from Desktop. (Tried both by cancelling 'now' install as it gave me no choice as to where I wanted to install) and then from Desktop. Stil no choice of where to install.
So I let it get on with it. I had also selected 'keep nothing' as there was nothing on the drive of value, especially the XP install I'd upgraded.
I now have a working installation of Windows 8 on the drive I'd planned to use for Data instead of the SSD I'd installed for my OS. Great. Fortunately I have the full version on DVD to install on this machine, otherwise I'd be looking at another 6 hours of download and no choice but to install XP on the SSD. Not impressed...
And it didn't 'clean up', everything that was on the drive is still there...
Worse, it's only 32bit...
Not much of a bargain after all!!
 

voiidwulf

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Don't even get me started, lol. First I had trouble actually purchasing it. The payment wouldn't go through. It turned out to be Microsoft's payment servers overloaded or something, but still annoying.
Now I can't get it installed. I tried everything, and then I was on the phone with Microsoft's tech support for over 3 hours. Apparently they gave me something worth over $100 for the inconvenience, but I couldn't understand what they said as the phone was muffled and their voice was a little odd. From what I could make out it was something to do with advanced tech support or something. It's still not resolved. They are going to call me again today to sort things out, but at this point I'd rather just have a refund or something. I don't want to spend another 3 hours on something I payed $15 for.

Overall, not a good experience. I should of threatened going to apple. Lol.
 
Full retail Pro version going like a dream so far, that's 24 minutes since I made that post and it's at the desktop already, and that included formatting drives and unwrapping the box... guess we only gets what we pays for, (£49.99)
 
G

Guest

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Uhm not very many people I know even care about Win 8 and I know alot of techies. Keeping Win 7 for as long as it takes. I wont even torrent 8 not interested. I already have 2 SSD drives and the latest hardware specs so 8 isnt going to make it any better or faster.
 

azathoth

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Then if you haven't bothered installing windows 8, please leave this thread. This is for those who are undergoing or have finished installation of Windows 8.

 

azathoth

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Downloaded Windows 8 Professional from the Microsoft Academic Alliance program. Free so why the heck not.

Downloading went fine, was even able to network hop mid-download without restarting.

The installer has an option to create a USB bootable installer, my USB drive shows up and can be selected but the option to continue is non-existent. Having no disc-drive eliminates the ability to take that path.
 

blackhawk1928

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How did you have these problems?. I bought the upgrade digital download for $39.99.

-It downloads a small application.
-You pay through paypal/credit card, works smoothly and easy
-Its a 5minute 2GB download.
-You finish the process, download the ISO
-Burn the ISO to a disc
-Restart, boot from CD and go through regular installation which is almost identical to Windows 7.
-Installs and works easy.
 

azathoth

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After I manually created the USB bootable drive it is working fine for me now.
Guess they need to refine their USB bootable drive option. But on the other hand I was using a 64GB Patriot Supersonic Magnum drive (USB3.0), so maybe the size cause some kind of error.

Installing windows 8 from this Drive is wonderfully fast though with it's 220MB/sec read speed :)
 
It would appear that it's the download version of the 'Bargain' upgrade that's the limiting factor. Because I have disks from the Retail version I am installing on a laptop using the licence key from the downloaded upgrade version and it seems quite happy so far...
 

voiidwulf

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According to MSFT tech support if I can't get it to install with a DVD, I can have a refund. I need a DVD though, lol. I've never had a need for one before.
 
Got Windows 8 upgrade for my 2 month old Asus laptop. Download took about 30 minutes and after another 30 minutes or so I was sitting at the Windows 8 desktop re installing my games and apps. Having used the Preview editions I already new it was going to be faster than Windows 7 so there was no real surprise there. And yes it is faster booting up shutting down loading games better fps in most games. Over all it is more responsive than Windows 7 ever was. Plus getting to any of my apps or games from the Metro Menu is much faster with less mouse clicks that Windows 7.
 



Exactly, it's incredibly painless process; I used USB instead of a DVD and it worked perfect.

@dodger46 You can't upgrade to 64bit from 32bit operating system, your upgrade installation was 32bit because you were running a 32bit operating system during the upgrade assistant.

You can even do clean installs.
 

bwrlane

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I'd say techies are among the least likely to understand the significance of W8. Its raison d'etre is not what it can do, but how it brings a common framework to multiple devices and form factors.

I say we should welcome it. Today, Android and Apple own the tablet market with "broken by design" architectures. The prospect of them moving up into and ultimately taking over the productivity space, is a very scary one indeed. The industry certainly needs a strong competitor with real economies of scale to roar into action and take the fight to them.

That said, my experience has been mixed. The installation process seems buggy and inconsistent to say the least. My laptop worked fine but my desktop flat out refuses to install it, giving out the hilariously helpful and informative message "Something happened. Try running Setup again". Sure, I could go with a clean install but that will require several days of preparation and is not something I have the stomach for just at the moment.

Windows 8 won't be another Vista. It's really fast and there seem to be fewer of the show stopping bugs and incompatibilities that consigned Vista to the scrapheap of history. Some things are a little jarring, no question and some things seem plain wrong. But it's undoubtedly set the industry off on much needed category busting road, which will probably only achieve a semblance of polish with Windows 9 or 10.
 


My main complaint with the 'Bargain' £14.99 download was the fact that at no time was I given the opportunity to choose 32/64, upgrade/clean install or even where I wanted to install to. There must be a difference in the 'Upgrade Assistants' depending on how much you paid for the package, that's all I can think of...
EDIT
I can confirm I was able to shift the installation to another PC using a disk from another package, and it activated successfully, only difference was 9 groups of 7 numbers to enter initially as opposed to the groups of 6 we were used to with Win 7... so advice would be, if you qualify for the 'cheap' package, opt for the disk rather than the download...
 


The reason for this is that you cannot upgrade from a 32 bit copy to a 64 bit copy and vice versa. In order to move from 32 to 64 bit, you must use purchased physical media (as in go out and buy an OEM/System Builder copy and install it like you would normally run a clean install on any other PC). The upgrade assistant detects what OS architecture you are running (32 or 64 bit) and upgrades you based on that. You also cannot make it create a setup disk or ISO image for the other architecture from the Upgrade Assistant, if you want to burn a DVD, make a bootable flash drive, or write the ISO image to install Windows later on at a more convenient time.



This choice is present, although it is not specifically called Upgrade Install, and Clean Install. The first two options in the image below perform an Upgrade install, they just preserve different pieces of data present in your existing install. The last (obviously) keeps nothing, as is essentially a clean install of Windows 8.

choose.jpg;pv70d8cd8774311af3


^ Image credit: Paul Thurrott - Winsupersite.com



There is no difference. Everyone is presented with the same Upgrade Assistant program when they download it.
 
Well, I can only go on my experience! I chose 'Nothing' from that screen, and was only given the choice of 'Install now' or 'Later from the Desktop once download completed.. I chose 'Install Now' then aborted it beause I was given no choice as to where I wanted it to go. I then tried 'Install' from desktop' and it went ahead, and as you say, upgraded based on installed architecture. It didn't even clean install, which is what I would have expected having chosen 'Nothing'...
 
Choosing Nothing should be a clean install... my curiosity has certainly been piqued here. Will set up a VM with a few test programs in place and run the upgrade. I'd like to see if this was actually intended behavior in the Upgrade Assistant or not.
 

Choice of Media presented 'Before' the download and after payment if you paid $40, not presented with that choice on the cheapo £14.99 in UK..
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/windows-8-upgrade-assistant-this-platform-is-not/ba6478b0-9f3c-4ce8-b82f-4b02ac3b3e68

If you want a copy of the 'Special Offer' email to compare links to the Upgrade Assistant PM me your email...
 

Bosh_60

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On topic....I had no problems with the download nor installation. Just lucky I guess. Was able to put copy on USB drive with no problem; a copy was retained on the desktop so I did a "keep nothing" install. Only problem will be my wife when she sees to bill !
 

Which copy? ie. how much? Interested to hear from another who downloaded the 'bargain' version with recent Win 7 purchase...
 

Technoprobe

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I did a clean install with the £24.99 iso from bios which went smoothly, only to be told you can't activate a clean install :(
I reinstalled and activated vista(my only ligit copy) and tried again but then my usb decided to not show up as bootable :pfff:
So I ran the setup file in the iso from vista desktop (is that correct?), chose "keep nothing" (there were more setup questions this time(phone number etc)) and was gutted to find it uses 32GB of my 119GB SSD space.
I gathered it should use 20GB.
It said "transferring settings" during install and I've got a windows old file on C drive with program files etc.!

Has anyone actually activated a clean install with the upgrade version?
 

Bosh_60

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I downloaded from M$ the $40 version.
 


Having done a clean install from a disk and employed all the tips for optimising SSD, I have 11.9 Gb used on my SSD, so you should be able to achieve the same, theoretically...
http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/