As my wife's PC was recently attacked by a virus, I decided to upgrade it from the OEM XP to retail Win 8 Pro and then 8.1 Pro. To avoid any risks with viral remnants, I purchased a new 500GB hard drive with the aim of doing a clean install - all essential data being backed up on an external HD.
The Win 8 retail pack contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions so I started by installing the 64-bit version. This worked perfectly until it came to the online upgrade to 8.1, which was refused. A bit of research showed that the Dimension 3100 does work fine with the 64-bit version of Win 8 but not 8.1. However, the 32-bit version is upgradable and that is what I did next.
So, I now have the 32-bit version of Win 8.1 Pro working perfectly, apart from one-thing - the sleep option is missing from the shutdown selection. A bit more research and I discover that the display driver provided in 8.1 is the MS Basic Display Adapter (Adaptor) and that this driver does not include the sleep option. On the other hand, the hibernate function seems to work in the same way as the sleep function on my other 8.1 system.
My question, therefore, is - am I likely to encounter any other display limitations? The display tests that I have run (dxdiag ad DirectX 9) all pass perfectly and the overall performance of the system is excellent.
I suppose a new graphics card would be an option if difficulties occur at a later date but this is a basic browsing machine with no games requirements or other intense graphics demands.
The Win 8 retail pack contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions so I started by installing the 64-bit version. This worked perfectly until it came to the online upgrade to 8.1, which was refused. A bit of research showed that the Dimension 3100 does work fine with the 64-bit version of Win 8 but not 8.1. However, the 32-bit version is upgradable and that is what I did next.
So, I now have the 32-bit version of Win 8.1 Pro working perfectly, apart from one-thing - the sleep option is missing from the shutdown selection. A bit more research and I discover that the display driver provided in 8.1 is the MS Basic Display Adapter (Adaptor) and that this driver does not include the sleep option. On the other hand, the hibernate function seems to work in the same way as the sleep function on my other 8.1 system.
My question, therefore, is - am I likely to encounter any other display limitations? The display tests that I have run (dxdiag ad DirectX 9) all pass perfectly and the overall performance of the system is excellent.
I suppose a new graphics card would be an option if difficulties occur at a later date but this is a basic browsing machine with no games requirements or other intense graphics demands.
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My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Win 8.1
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- Asus ACPI x64
- CPU
- Pentium E5200 @ 3.25Ghz
- Motherboard
- ASUS P5KPL-CM
- Memory
- 4GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- NVIDIA
- Browser
- Firefox 31.0
- Antivirus
- Avast Free