Fuck Win 8, Win 8.1, MS, MCD, and Prole

[Rufus]

Actually, Win7 inexplicably deleted all the contents of my desktop and my restore points. I almost lost a week's worth of research. Having the stuff saved in google drive saved me.

Desktop PC or desktop folder?

[Howard Alan Treesong]

the moral of the story is BACKUP YOUR SHIT
1) back everything up to an external drive
2) back the most critical items up to a remote server as well

It's 2013, we all have broadband and the cloud, there are infinite solutions.

[Human Snorenado]

I back all schoolwork up to my sky drive AND a USB drive.  Because fuck that shit.

[Rufus]

Folder.

Oh, I didn't ask to offer help.

[Shaka Khan]

the moral of the story is BACKUP YOUR SHIT
1) back everything up to an external drive
2) back the most critical items up to a remote server as well

It's 2013, we all have broadband and the cloud, there are infinite solutions.

Yup. If it wasn't for Google Drive I would have lost years worth of work. But I was still foolish for having that much faith.

I still recovered all files in the end, but I lost the headstart I had on my midterms thanks to waiting an entire day to solve this problem. And that's something that can't be recovered in a critical time.

[thisismyusername]

Here, try this. Kind of involved, but it's either this or pulling your drive and putting it in another computer temporarily.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2083-system-repair-disc-create.html

There's a link at the end of the tutorial to create a bootable USB drive instead. You can do CD or a DVD or USB.

Optionally, couldn't he use a USB flashdrive or CD-R with Knoppix on it to access the harddrive and then go through installing Windows as a complete wipe after that? Or would Knoppix/Linux read the drive and freak out like Win8 did? AFAIK that's a solution that some people have used to access inaccessible drives without having to get an external closure.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Here, try this. Kind of involved, but it's either this or pulling your drive and putting it in another computer temporarily.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2083-system-repair-disc-create.html

There's a link at the end of the tutorial to create a bootable USB drive instead. You can do CD or a DVD or USB.

Optionally, couldn't he use a USB flashdrive or CD-R with Knoppix on it to access the harddrive and then go through installing Windows as a complete wipe after that? Or would Knoppix/Linux read the drive and freak out like Win8 did? AFAIK that's a solution that some people have used to access inaccessible drives without having to get an external closure.

Oh, definitely. You could use any of the Live CD distros. I think you could even use GParted. They all mount NTFS volumes just fine. I was just trying to think of solutions that would stick with Windows.

[recursivelyenumerable]

If it makes you feel any better, I've been stuck here at work for the past 3 hours trying to get Hyper-V to install on Win8.1 so I can set up a Server 2012 VM and enlist in Office's dumb build system. 

Also, the developers in Windows supposedly have to install a new build of Windows on their main dev machine every day ... just sayin' 

[bork]

Since upgrading to 8.1, one of my external hard drives randomly disconnects and reconnects itself.  Seeing others reporting the same thing so I know that it's not the drive failing.  Also finding that Steam fucks up if I plug my 360 controller into certain USB ports now.  Guess it's fine with the USB 2.0 ports but has issues with USB 3.0?  Fucking weird.

[Shaka Khan]

To be completely honest, had I owned a surface or a Lumia phone, and my laptop been built/designed for 8.1 (i.e. no driver compatibility issues), I would've be absolutely content with it. Frankly, there's a lot of things I like about it. It's just these issues that bogged the whole experience that made me loathe it. And to be fair, the blame the issues I had is even split between MS, Asus, AMD, and myself for being stupid.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Since upgrading to 8.1, one of my external hard drives randomly disconnects and reconnects itself.  Seeing others reporting the same thing so I know that it's not the drive failing.  Also finding that Steam fucks up if I plug my 360 controller into certain USB ports now.  Guess it's fine with the USB 2.0 ports but has issues with USB 3.0?  Fucking weird.

I've heard (not 100% on this) that it has to do with the APM settings on the external hard drive. Try using CrystalDiskTools and turn off APM with it.

You might also try telling Windows (via Device Manager) to not shut down the USB ports to save power. W8 is very aggressive on power management, even with desktops.

[Purple Filth]

If you had a Linux Distro CD you could have ran that in Live mode and get access to the HDD to move off your shit.

Providing it wasn't crapping out after you started it

Windows 8 seems to be breaking a lot of otherwise working computers. Jesus, remember Vista? That thing broke all sorts of hardware. Seems to be a running gag with new MS operating systems.

Windows Millennium Edition motherfucker.

that shit was like the fucking antichrist

[Rusty Shackleford]

Oh man that's a repressed memory! That OS was turrrrrible. My grandparents had ME on their comp. Crashy, buggy and I'm pretty sure that early version of System Restore that came with ME would also restore viruses alongside the files 

[bork]

Since upgrading to 8.1, one of my external hard drives randomly disconnects and reconnects itself.  Seeing others reporting the same thing so I know that it's not the drive failing.  Also finding that Steam fucks up if I plug my 360 controller into certain USB ports now.  Guess it's fine with the USB 2.0 ports but has issues with USB 3.0?  Fucking weird.

I've heard (not 100% on this) that it has to do with the APM settings on the external hard drive. Try using CrystalDiskTools and turn off APM with it.

You might also try telling Windows (via Device Manager) to not shut down the USB ports to save power. W8 is very aggressive on power management, even with desktops.

Thanks, will check into that.  I already tried adjusting the USB power settings, but it made no difference.

[G The Resurrected]

Well I'm gonna chime in with a few of my issues that I've noticed since upgrading to 8.1. Any and all games seem to launch regardless of settings in 3d vision mode which didn't happen previously. As well when going to the Nividea settings it's turned off, so thats a mystery to me even after a fresh install of drivers. Another issue I've noticed is that I'm seeing more blue screens than I ever did with 8. Sometimes my computer won't even load up and even though it has options for booting into a safe mode they are not selectable.

The changes are few in my eyes and wasn't as big of an update as I thought it would be. Some of the changes to metro are nice though but I still don't use metro that much and don't see that changing anytime soon.

[bork]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/10-coolest-new-features-windows-81

[Himu]

I still haven't had much of an issue with Win 8, but I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. Glad I haven't upgraded to 8.1. Or have I? Is it automatic? I don't know.

[Rusty Shackleford]

No, 8.1 is a 3.5 GB download from the Windows Store only. There are apparently no ISOs for it outside of the store unless you have a volume licensing arrangement with MS (i.e., corporate consumers only).

[Brehvolution]

Or a Technet sub.

[MCD]

Retail and OEM discs are available at Amazon.

And the ISOs from MSDN/TechNet are leaked from day one but you need 8.1 key to use them. Several websites posted how you can bypass that and use your original 8 key once you done reformatting.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Right, sorry. I should have clarified "update only." Through the store is how non-pro consumers are getting the upgrade if they already have 8 installed.

EDIT: Wait, can home users get a copy of the 8.1 upgrade via DVD from MS directly if they have W8 installed already? 3.5 might be a little big for some users with capped/limited bandwidth.

[MCD]

I don't remember reading anything on that so nope.

8.1 discs are also dumb. No upgrade and no promotion like last year whatsoever. Full price.

[Rusty Shackleford]

They're phasing out TechNet now? Just found out about that.

[thisismyusername]

And the ISOs from MSDN/TechNet are leaked from day one but you need 8.1 key to use them. Several websites posted how you can bypass that and use your original 8 key once you done reformatting.

Wait, you can't use your 8 CD-key with 8.1 fresh-install? I mean, I get the DRM but if you remove the CD-key from any hardware tied to it, why would MS stop you from using that key as an upgrade?

[MCD]

You can use it after the initial setup screen.


Here:

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-81-tip-download-windows-81-iso-windows-8-product-key
http://www.neowin.net/news/here-is-how-to-get-the-windows-81-iso-and-create-a-usb-install-stick

http://www.jmedved.com/2013/09/installing-windows-8-1-or-8-without-a-product-key/

[Brehvolution]

They're phasing out TechNet now? Just found out about that.

Yup

[bork]

Bump to say that I finally got my external hard drive constant disconnecting/reconnecting issue resolved.  Here's the link if anyone else experiences this problem.  Was an easy registry fix.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usbcoreblog/archive/2013/11/01/help-after-installing-windows-8-1-my-usb-drive-disappears-or-file-transfers-stop-unexpectedly-r-a-post-title.aspx