Windows 8.1 upgrade - stay away

[ATCclears]

On Thursday I upgraded my employer-provider laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. Observations:

• I couldn't find the free upgrade on MicrosoftStore.com and instead only found it on WindowsStore.com. Gee, thanks Microsoft. I wonder how many people assumed the upgrade wasn't free for existing Windows 8 customers and paid you for the upgrade.
• The upgrade took multiple passes (3?) after the download, and probably took 2+ hours in total. Note that this is a newer laptop and so the internal components are fast.
• After the upgrade I was peeking around. Everything was intact. A few nagging things were fixed.
• Then the trouble started... I noticed the laptop got slow, looked at Task Manager, and noticed Disk utilization was at 100%. "Huh?" I rebooted and assumed the problem would eventually go away.
• On Friday morning the Disk utilization was still a problem, so I started to research on Google. Multiple people were reporting similar issues, and one fellow made a weird observation that if you started Skype and went through the registration process the Disk-utilization problem would go away. Right away I get a creepy feeling and start thinking of gov agencies with three-letter acronyms. So I go into Skype and go through the dialogs. Sure enough, the Disk utilization starts to subside. McAfee still had a bunch of stuff to catch up on scanning, but after that it was OK.

So, why would Skype cause the problem? No idea. I've been in IT/tech for a long time and that is just strange.

I've since read that Microsoft yanked the 8.1 upgrade off the website due to many other tech issues. I'm still shaking my head. Microsoft pooched it with Windows 8 and the 8.1 upgrade was supposed to make people happier with Windows 8.x. Are you even testing your software anymore, Microsoft? Cripes...

Anyway, stay away from Windows 8.1 for a while. It is not ready for prime time - even after a ton of promises from Microsoft.

Peter

PS: I now have a piece of masking tape over the camera on this laptop...

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[Redcap]

Windows sucks. Windows 8/8.1 REALLY sucks...on the same level as Vista or ME.

 

[Stomper]

Windows 7 is just about as far as I care to go.

 

[deen_ad]

I bought a new PC (actually two) a few months ago. They came with Win 8 64 bit. Did the upgrade to the 8.1 preview with no problems. Did the upgrade to the 8.1 version the day it came out through the upgrade icon.
Have had no problems with it and have no high utilization of disk or memory. So far everything works and I didn't have to reinstall anything but a shortcut or two to text files.
I've never used Skype so I can't comment on it, my grandson does and he has the other new PC but hasn't gone to 8.1 yet.
I used to be an IT manager and tested for Microsoft and yes, I've got the arrows in my back and the T-shirt!

 

[FZRider]

My mom got a new desktop and it came with Windows 8...I can't stand it. Definitely not getting rid of Win 7 on my laptops!

 

[mancat]

Windows 7 is just about as far as I care to go.

Many large organizations feel the same. Those that I work with are probably going to run all the way to EOL with Windows 7, just like we did with XP.

Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. I'm not even sure what Windows 8 is supposed to be.

Windows 8 would not have been that bad were it not for the ridiculous Metro UI. Sorry but I absolutely refuse to work with my PCs as if they're tablets. Why MS thought it was a great idea to destroy the Start Menu and do away with the Desktop paradigm is beyond me. It's been more or less the same for 20 years. Even Mac OS X more or less still emulates Mac System, but I guess MS decided that the same paradigm and operational methods that billions of corporate and home users have learned ever since the release of Windows 95, were just not trendy enough any more.

Even with Windows 8.1, MS still insists that Metro is AWESOME, even after more or less firing the man behind the whole idea.

That being said, MS service packs are notoriously sketchy. Best to never apply a large service pack without doing it first on a test machine. Unfortunately that is just out of the question for many home users.

The disk utilization would be interesting to check out - lots of diagnostic tools out there to look into what files and data are being written in real-time.

I truly feel sorry for anyone still holding onto MS stock.. As a company they are bubblegumed. Anyone poised to step in is even worse. Apple? Google? Seriously?

Any one that wants to tell me that the world will switch over to free Linux is just as much delusional.

( well I loved the stability of win2000 but we will never see that from M$ again )

Win2k was great, probably the last OS from MS that was rock solid stable and didn't treat the user like a complete idiot. I never understood why MS only pushed it on the corporate market, but apparently they thought that it wasn't ready for the home user without all of the cartoony XP additions onto it.