Updating Windows XP to Windows 8 Pro

Just got done updating my old home PC that was running a very trim Windows XP SP3. The machine worked great. And I was weary of updating because I knew I would not be able to run game like Trackmania on Windows 8 among other things. But having gone through the numerous Previews of Windows 8 and actually liking the evolution, I decided to finally take the plunge and update the XP side once the installation of the Windows 8 Release Preview expired.

So I thought I'd give it a shot from a normal user point of view. I put the 32bit DVD of the Windows 8 Pro Update package and waited. (in retrospect, I should have put the 64 bit version, as this is an AMD64 Semprom. Yes, its a low line Pc, but since I don't play top of the line games on it (that's hat the Xbox is for), it works at home fine.)

Anyway, the preparation stages went smoothly. Even the reboot went down without a hitch, but once the final setup was up, problems started arising.

The first one, it wanted to connect to MS servers to activate, and log me in to my "Microsoft Account". However the installation failed to recognize my wireless card. So it could not do that, I had to skip that part, and setup a local account. Once Windows started and was usable, I noticed, I was missing a few things from the Start screen. Namely, the Desktop tile. No biggie, I'll simply go to search and run Explorer to get at it, see if I can get the tile back later. I move the mouse to the side to get the charm bar, and nothing happens.

O.k I'll reboot, see if that helps things. The Pc rebooted rather quickly, and lo and behold still no Desktop Tile. Fortunately the charm bar did come back. So I was able to get into Desktop mode by running explorer, and into control Panel all was looking good, until I tried clicking on Administrative Tools, I got a message saying the location was unavailable. Fine, I'll have to install my wireless card from the driver CD and do a bit of Googling to figure out what happened. So I go to install the drivers, and they appear to install o.k. However the card would connect and disconnect from my network every few seconds. Which made browsing, quite difficult to say the least.

After wrangling for a couple of hours with the network card, I gave in, drove to BestBuy, and bought a cheap USB Wifi card. This one was detected immediately, and required no drivers, Windows picked it up immediately. However, since all my Applications had not been carried over, I had to open IE and get to a suitable browser download.

So I wandered the forums, looking for solutions to problems I was having, and it all boiled down to either a Refresh, and a Reinstall. I really wasn't looking forward to a complete reinstall, but after the refresh did nothing to alleviate the issues, I gave in, having backed up before updating, I had everything on my external, so I just rebooted the machine with the DVD inside and proceeded to wipe out the partition. Windows again went through the setup process without a hitch, and when it booted into the final setup, the USB wifi card was picked up, and I was able to setup the Microsoft Account o.k. Once at the Start Screen,the Desktop Tile was back and functional, and yes Administrative tools was working again.

Hopefully its not something very common among updates. But if it is, I suggest just biting the bullet, and performing a complete clean reinstall.

Windows 8 Metro Diary: Day Two

The following few posts will chronicle my experience with the newly released Microsoft Windows 8 Developer's Preview, made available as a free download from Microsoft themselves.

Sunday September 25th 2011

Sunday Morning rolls along and I'm thinking great time to see what this puppy can do. I was all set to start delving into the world of Metro Apps when I realized the 32bit version of the Windows Preview I downloaded does not contain the adequate development packages. So off to Microsoft's site to download the Visual Studio 11 Preview package. Well The download is a Smart Installer, though there is a 3 part download you can opt for as well. The complete setup is close to 2GB. So again Another hour or so waiting for it to download.

Once completed it begins to install, it took about another 30 to 40 minutes to finish configuring everything. It was finally done, I could start checking this out, and start getting up to speed in how the Metro Apps work. So Move out to the Start Screen with all the Metro tiles and *whoah!!* 20 Tiles where added to the screen. I realized then and there that the screen simply takes anything and everything from our old trusty Start Menu location and plops it as 150 by 150 pixel tiles.

Anyway, so I run Visual Studio, and all is o.k. It looks interesting. Lets try creating a new project, something simple, a Hello World tile as is customary to do. So I add a single div to the project, (this is a HTML 5 and Javascript Metro App project), configure a few things and try to run and execute to see what it looks like. Well a couple seconds go by, and bam, 2 errors crop up. makepri.exe cannot be found, and the Modern SDK is not there. Well after a lot of digging it turns up, that Microsoft in all its unparalleled wisdom decided to issue only one of the Developer Preview downloads with all the files required to develop Metro Style apps.

The 64bit 4.8GB full download.

Now, I know what you are thinking, how is that a problem, just download that. Well I can't, and many other people can't either. Why You ask? Well I don't have a 64bt computer, so I can't run that. Many people don't have dual layer DVD's to burn, or their drives can't actually burn them. So we choose the alternative: Download the 32bit Windows OS preview, and then install the Visual Studio Preview separately.

However this method leaves you without the essential Metro App development files which is the entire purpose of these previews. I don't understand the logic behind only providing the tools in one of the packages? What's to gain here? I really don't understand. Its like having rollercoaster with a sign that says come all and try it, but once you are inside you can only get the full ride if you have a $20,000 Rolex watch and have been lugging around a very large duffle bag. Everybody else gets just the shortened route.

So that's It for day 2, hopefully day 3 will bring some much needed solutions..

Any comments or questions, feel free to post below.