In my previous post I described the process I went through in order to upgrade both my laptop and desktop computers from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Both apparent success stories, except that it really was not on my laptop. After using it for some hours and few days I discovered a bug related to the desktop version of MetroTwit. When I tried to open up the application the process would start up, consuming up to anywhere between 15 and 20 MBs of RAM, and then just freeze up. There was no splash screen, and the application itself never showed up on the desktop. I tried uninstalling both the desktop and Metro-version, then reinstalling the desktop application to no avail. I searched online to see whether anyone else had encountered similar problems, without finding anything. The problem probably had nothing to do with MetroTwit itself, as it ran just fine on my upgraded desktop PC.

I took a hard look at what I had on my laptop, and contemplated formatting the C drive and doing a clean install, but decided against it since I have too much data on that drive that then needed to be moved off it before proceeding (I have back-ups of everything – both on and off site). Lets just say that the sheer size of the workload put me off. I know that Windows 8 comes with some new features allowing you to refresh your operating system, while keeping your files and settings. This meant blowing away all applications, but still not as daunting a task as a complete reinstall would entail. So, as I mentioned in the previous post, after some short contemplation I decided to try this out on the laptop.

In order to start this process you navigate to the Charms bar by either moving the mouse to the lower right corner of the start screen, or by hitting Winkey + C.

You choose Settings which brings up the following;

Here you choose Change PC settings, which brings you onto this full-screen environment

Click on General and scroll down until you see these options:

As you can see, you can choose between refreshing your PC without affecting your files or reinstall Windows while removing everything. I chose the first of the two.

The screen then dims down and you are presented with the consequences of your actions. What to do…

The OS then starts preparing for the operation

As it found it my case, it needed some of the files I have on my Windows 8 USB key

After popping in the USB-key and restarting the preparation face, I was notified that it was now ready to refresh my PC

Then it is just to sit back and relax while the system refreshes itself. It will reboot the system, and you will eventually have to go through the intro and setup of your fresh Windows 8 install (as described in my previous post).

The outcome? A fresh copy of Windows 8 on your machine, with no other applications other than your Metro-style apps (eh Windows 8 modern UI apps – whatever). But, all my files and settings were still there. To give an example: After installing a fresh copy of iTunes onto the laptop, my whole library was there, and I was able to sync both my iPhone and iPad without having to wipe them and start over, which I would have had to had I done a complete reinstall of my system. Sweet!

And Windows 8 had also done me the service of putting an html file on my desktop with a list of all the applications I had installed previously. Let’s just say that I have not reinstalled every single one of them, neither will I. But what about MetroTwit you ask? I headed over to the website, downloaded the desktop version, installed it and it is just running as beautiful as it always has. Success!

All in all a perfect way of making sure your system is running like its new, without loosing any of your data. A total win for Windows 8. Killer feature!

As most of you probably know Windows 8 RTM was released to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on 15 August. As could be expected I immediately downloaded the bits (Windows 8 Pro (x64)). Normally I would go for a fresh install, backing up my data, formatting the C drive and reinstalling from scratch, but decided on trying out the upgrade path this time around. In this post I will detail that process, as well as sharing my experiences with you – and give you some advice if you are contemplating doing the same thing. I did this on both my aging laptop (HP Pavilion dv7-2114eo) and my aging homebuilt desktop based on the Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 CPU. The results of the upgrade process varied, and turned out slightly different, but I will come back to that later in the post.

Upgrading the laptop

After having downloaded the iso-image file, I copied it over to a USB stick using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. I started with my laptop and inserted the USB key, opened Windows Explorer and double-clicked the setup.exe file. The following splash screen emerged, changing into the next one informing me that it was preparing. The old familiar process known from Windows 7 and previous version has obviously been revamped.

After the preparations were done, I was asked to type in my product key. In Windows 7 you could skip that step, and was thus granted a 30 day trial period before having to activate the product. That option is no longer there, and you have to input a valid key in order to install Windows 8.

Once the product key in typed in and you have clicked Next, you are presented with the License terms, as most people usually do, I just accepted the terms without reading them…

You are then presented with three options; (1) Keep Windows settings, personal files, and apps (2) Keep personal files only or (3) Nothing. I decided on option (1) and continued.

The process is then making sure you are ready to install Windows 8.

Which it turned out that I was not. I first had to uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, as well as confirming that I had to reinstall my languages after upgrading. I clicked the appropriate buttons in order to uninstall the applications in question.

After that, I had to restart the PC in order to continue the process. If you have the same two programs on your computer I recommend uninstalling them before starting to install Windows 8, although no guaranties from me on that; you might have other programs that the installation program might react to.

After rebooting I was given the choice of starting over, or to continue from where I left off. No price money for guessing what I did.

The installation process then had to make sure once more that I was truly ready

Which I was. Just to make sure, I was informed of what was going to happen. Finally time to hit the Install button.

The screen then was completely occupied with this;

Nice of them to inform me that this might take a while. Must be the understatement of the year. First it showed the progress in percentages on the preparation face. This took the close to 40 minutes. The it said that it was going to restart in a moment. According to Microsoft a moment can be anything up till say around 10 minutes… Then the machine rebooted, and I was presented with a black screen with the Windows 8 logo on and the installation progress continued. And continued, and continued… After a total time of around 2 1/2 hours I was finally presented with the new intro animation – informing new users of how to get to the charms bar. Then the machine did some last minute tinkering, which included installing the metro apps I had already installed in the Windows 8 Release Preview, and finally I was looking at the start screen. Everything seemed to work just fine. All my files and settings were there, and the machine apparently ran just smooth.

Comparing the Windows Experience Index on the laptop before and after upgrading gave me this result:

The score systems as been upped to a maximum of 9.9 as opposed to the 7.9 max on Windows 7. Although my base score is the same, the subscores for memory, and gaming graphics went slightly down(from respectively 6,2 to 6,0 and from 6,7 to 6,5), while desktop graphics performance took a serious hit (from 6,7 to 5,6). I can only speculate that this is caused by immature graphics drivers, and I will see if this improves over time as those are updated.

Upgrading the desktop

Upgrading the desktop computer followed the path of the laptop down to one thing. It took considerable shorter time to accomplish than on the laptop. The complete process was finished within an hour.

The Windows Experience Index for this machine reads exactly the same as before;

And although the system is getting old (the current system was built 4 years ago, just upgrading the storage since), it still is more than fast enough for me (just trying to soothe myself – the need to buy newer and shinier toys is always present )

Conclusion

Yes, I spent a long time doing the upgrade, especially on the laptop, but was in the end presented with a seemingly perfectly working computer(s). The laptop booted a lot faster after the upgrade; From Windows logo to login it now takes 20 seconds compared to the several minutes long process that Windows 7 took lately. Wake up from sleep takes a couple of seconds, compared to a process that sometimes would freeze for so long that it actually took shorter time to just hard reset the machine and start over. Time will tell if this will continue, or whether this system also will degrade over time.

When contemplating an upgrade, the big plus is that you will most probably have all your programs and settings carried over and working once the install process is finished, but do also consider the fact that you – like me – probably have accumulated a lot of programs and settings that you no longer are using, as well as remains over previously not to successful uninstalls. All that is carried over as well.

A fresh install is thus exactly that a fresh start, which I recommend every so often.

After using the laptop for a couple of days, I ran into problems with starting my favorite twitter application; the desktop version of MetroTwit. It just would not start. Uninstalling and reinstalling did not help. On the desktop the program ran just fine, so I concluded that the problems had something to do with some of the myriad of settings and programs I carried over to Windows 8 in the upgrade process, and after bending my mind (for approximately 10 minutes) I decided that I would try to refresh the Windows 8 installation, which means scrapping all applications and programs, but keeping the files and settings. But that is the story for my next post.

What are your experiences with upgrading to Windows 8? Will you recommend or advice against it? Any questions to the process? Post it in the comments below and I will respond.

		Office 365 HP Install VIS LYSBILDEFREMVISNING LAST NED ALLE

In my previous post, Preview of Office 2013 Public Preview, I showed off many screenshots of Office 2013 Public Preview. I installed that suite using the old-fashioned MSI installer, getting the file via TechNet. But one of the really revolutionary ways that the next version of Office 2013 is going to distributed as, is as Software as a Service. Office 365 Home Premium has little, if nothing to do with the web-based service that Office 365 is today. Instead it is the full Office suite for consumers delivered as a service over the net. Pricing is as of now not clear, but for a monthly/yearly fee you will have access to the Office suite linked to your Windows ID. This suite is delivered over the net to the device you are working on (the files are installed locally through one-click installs) and 1 license equals 5 installs.

In the latest episode of Windows Weekly, Paul Thurrott speculated that the price for this service will probably be around $10 dollars or less a month, which in case it happens will be a really compelling offer. Not only do you get 5 installs (which you yourself will be able to manage) for this price, but the software suite will always be up to date – courtesy of Microsoft.

Today I installed the Office 365 Home Premium Public Preview on my laptop, and the install process is easy and fast. From the time you hit install and until you are ready to start exploring it takes around 90 seconds. Everything is not installed in that timeframe though, but the rest of the software is being installed in the background as you are looking into the first application that is presented. Total time is still a lot less than a traditional MSI install. If you try this version out, you are also able to have it installed alongside your previous version of Office.

I recommend that you try it out. This really is the new way of Office being delivered to you going forward, and I really, really like it!

Take a look at the screenshots from the install process, try it out yourself (you can get the bits here) and let me know what you think in the comments section below. Bon appetite