Windows 8.1 mess

2»

Comments

  • adzanadzan Posts: 268
    edited December 1969

    Sorry you're update was a nightmare RAMWolff but glad your getting up and running again.


    I'm not impressed with the update. It seems mostly cosmetic to make the modern interface prettier.
    The updated search 'everywhere' function is truly awful, at least the older version found what I was looking for. lol
    I'm sorely tempted to roll it back to 8

  • adzanadzan Posts: 268
    edited December 1969

    araneldon said:
    Is it true that the search feature in Windows 8.1 will show ads even when searching the local computer?

    If so, that's reason enough to stay away from it.

    I didn't see ads but i'm in the UK and we don't see as many ads as the US version.
    I did find it almost chokes the cpu on occasions

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,945
    edited December 1969

    RAMWolff said:
    I'm BACK. I know "OH NO" :P

    Got most of the programs and settings back in place at this point. Finally got DIM installed and am getting DAZ Studio (Public Beta that fixes most of the errors I was getting with the Public final that was buggy). It's always a PITA to go through this but the system is fast and clean so there is the silver lining I guess!

    Good to see you back!

    So glad I opted to stick with Win 7 when I ordered my latest laptop; and Win 7 it's gonna stay ....! :)

  • SiscaSisca Posts: 875
    edited December 1969

    araneldon said:
    Is it true that the search feature in Windows 8.1 will show ads even when searching the local computer?

    If so, that's reason enough to stay away from it.

    I've not heard of this and I've not seen any ads when using the search feature for my local system since that's all I use it for anyway. If I wanted to search for something on the web I'd type it into the search box on my browser not run a Windows search.

    I believe there's an option in the settings somewhere to force the search feature to only search the local drive, I'd have to dig around to find it but I'm sure I saw that when I was doing the install.

    My only issue with the install was that for some reason it would only allow me to set "TV" resolutions on my second monitor and defaulted to 1920x1080. Since the native resolution of that monitor is 1680x1050 that made it basically unusable for me. For some reason I couldn't un-check the "Show TV Resolutions Only" box. I was also having problems with one of the games I play where every time it launched it would be in Stereoscopic 3D mode which the game, my monitor and nVidia card all support but I have never used. While digging through the nVidia settings I found that there was a new driver so I installed that and it fixed all of my monitor issues.

  • Miss BMiss B Posts: 3,071
    edited December 1969

    SimonJM said:
    So glad I opted to stick with Win 7 when I ordered my latest laptop; and Win 7 it's gonna stay ....! :)

    I'm with you Simon. I was disappointed I couldn't stick with WinXP Pro when my old laptop died almost 2 years ago, but after 2 weeks of configuring Win7 Pro's Start Menu the way I was used to working in WinXP, I'm pretty happy with it. I wouldn't upgrade to Win8 if my life depended on it, I'd rather switch to Linux if that were the case.

    As for Internet Explorer, I haven't used it since version 3. I've tried Chrome, Opera and several others, but Firefox has been my browser of choice since version 4, and I think I'll stick with it. :coolsmirk:

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146
    edited December 1969

    One of the main issues I had with Win 7 Pro was the Explorer would crash out and close all my windows. I also had issues with mysterious invisible files being rooted in the last folder that "caused" the crash so when I would go to that folder Explorer would crash again. That's when I discovered Cubic Explorer (a replacement application for Explorer) and was able to delete these files that were causing the crashes. With 8, for me, it's a thing of the past.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,731
    edited December 1969

    araneldon said:
    Is it true that the search feature in Windows 8.1 will show ads even when searching the local computer?

    If so, that's reason enough to stay away from it.

    It should be possible to turn off the ads (haven't tried it though, as I haven't upgraded yet):

    "To turn off Smart Search, from the Settings Charm, choose Change PC Settings, then Search and Apps, and Search, and move the "Get search suggestions and Web results from Bing" slider to Off."

    http://www.infoworld.com/print/226510

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,846
    edited December 1969

    Taozen said:
    acanthis said:
    The other thing to watch out for with Windows 8.1 is what Micro$oft has done to the USB driver.

    Micro$oft decided that you wouldn't want your USB hard drives powered up for more than 37 seconds after the last access, so they just switch them off for you - and any other USB devices that Micro$oft have decided you shouldn't be wasting power on. Oh, and while they were at it, they didn't provide an option to turn that behavior off.

    I had the same problem with some WD USB drives that were hardcoded to power off after 10 minutes of inactivity. So I wrote a small utility that would write a textfile to the drives every x seconds, to keep them running. Not a perfect solution, but it works. Can be downloaded here if anyone wants a copy:

    http://taosoft.dk/software/freeware/drivealive

    Remember to stop if before you dismount any drives, otherwise it will crash (should'nt cause any problems if it does, but anyway).

    A better alternative is No Sleep HD v2.0. I used to use this even with external eSata drives that had a mind of their own and didn't adhere to my custom power settings of never turning off. No need to worry about turning it off or it crashing.

Sign In or Register to comment.