Windows 8 "Release Preview" Released

[video=youtube;eM5pFkNQ7no]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM5pFkNQ7no&feature=player_embedded[/video]
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Windows 8 Downloads - Windows 8 Release Preview ISO formats

Key - TK8TP-9JN6P-7X7WW-RFFTV-B7QPF


See also: Windows 8 Release Preview and http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/3997-windows-8-release-preview-download.html



Windows 2012 Server RC - Download Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC) Datacenter

 

[Ex_Brit]

Yes you can upgrade but all the documents, files etc from your current installation will be transferred to the windows.old folder and you will then have to transfer them back out of there.

Per the Microsoft website:

 

[Night Hawk]

The best option is to simply perform a clean install and worry less about running into any installation errors you could end up seeing trying to upgrade over. Even the Refrexh PC option offers the save data and files or not save anything options. If you select the save data option the Windows.old folder is again where you would look for things including program folders.

The Refresh PC option just like an upgrade with 8 will require all programs and drivers be installed all over again. The repair install Windows option seen with 8 won't preserve existing program installs as seen with the previous versions when going to replace all of the main Windows/system files.

As for the older game titles and some 98-XP compatible one survives on 8 while other old titles just like seen with any newer ATI CCC newer then the 10.4 version run into the exact same thing on 8 OpenGL errors and crash when tried out on more then one occastion with the compatibilty mode set as well as using the compatibility troubleshooter.

For old titles like Soldier of Fortune I+II as well as other titles their time simply came and went only seeing continued life with 7 without the need for the compatibility anything. They simply install and run on 7 but won't in any form on 8.

The same could be said for Vista when moving up from XP where the 32bit 7 on the other hand offered far more backward compatibility without any compatibility mode or troubleshooter. 7 was made from the start to be far more flexible for the older programs then it seems 8 is as it would be expected. Things simply install and run on 7 without any workarounds!

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,

You can even upgrade from within W8 CP running Windows8-ReleasePreview-UpgradeAssistant.exe which you can download from MS.
It will aslo create the Windos.old directory where it moves all of old files to.
Just make sure you have enough disk space as it uses the local partition to copy the files to install the OS from.

Cheers,

 

[Night Hawk]

You can also opt to run 8 on a VM with VirtualBox if you are not interested in upgrading over anything. http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2241-virtualbox-install-windows-8-a.html

The Windows.old is the norm for upgrade installs since Vista. Program files, folders as well as user files are placed there when going to use that option over simply performing a full clean install. The link for the UpgradeAssistant.exe is included in the gude for download and install of the Release Preview. http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/3997-windows-8-release-preview-download.html

Here I simply dropped a clean install for each on the second OS drive and called it day! I generally do that for any OS install whether to drive or onto a VM.

 

[vrosa]

Ops... I missed this. Downloading now !

 

[CB]

Ops... I missed this. Downloading now !

Hi Vlad.

Where have you been?

 

[Night Hawk]

I hope you have two separate drives to work with! You won't want 8 to add 7 into it's own boot options and then boot 7 from there! The process is problematic and buggy! I've been running into various issues thinking the recent clean install of both 7 and 8 saw bad installs but found the loading of 7 from the 8 boot loader was corrupting files on the 7 host drive!

Then I decided one other move of changing a bios setting from Native ide to AHCI after the clean install of 7 lately and using the Refresh PC option in 8 to clean up the desktop freeze ups problem. Well things go better with 7! Once at the desktop the restart prompt for 7 to finish installing the two OS drives as well as add in the two storage backup drives went well. Then when going to boot into 8 selecting that drive from the boot device menu 8 refused to load!

The sudden restart was then seen automatically booting back into 7 since I had since reset the 7 drive as the default. 8 will now need another clean install while everything went well for 7! The extra splash screen at startup for 7 now sees two SCSI drives listed being both the 7 and 8 OS drives. 8 on the other hand has been proving itself "buggy" when having the two Windows meshed together in a dual boot.

"buggy, buggy, buggy" has now become the operative word for 8! Reliability and stability still found in 7! When choosing 7 actually having that set as the default OS in the 8 boot options the resulting memory dump revealed the dual boot brought about the "ntoskmi.exe" error. A stand alone install for each is the recommendation.

 

[crawfish]

I hope you have two separate drives to work with! You won't want 8 to add 7 into it's own boot options and then boot 7 from there! The process is problematic and buggy! I've been running into various issues thinking the recent clean install of both 7 and 8 saw bad installs but found the loading of 7 from the 8 boot loader was corrupting files on the 7 host drive!

I wrote this yesterday in another thread concerning installing Windows on system with multiple hard drives, and I would be interested to hear if Microsoft has finally fixed this bug in Windows HE.

Since you are using multiple drives, it's worth mentioning that installing Windows has been dangerous in the presence of multiple drives ever since Vista with integrated SP1 came out, and I don't know if Microsoft has fixed this in Windows HE. I reported the bug using the channels available to me at the time and also early in the Windows 7 beta. Many months after Windows 7 was released, and a couple of years after I reported the bug, Microsoft finally documented things in this KB article:

The disk drive numbers may not correspond as expected to the SATA channel numbers when you set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 on a computer that has multiple SATA or RAID disks
When you set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 on a computer that has multiple hard disks, you may experience this problem. Because you expect the disk assignment numbers to match the corresponding SATA or RAID channel numbers, you may set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 on the wrong drive, or you may even try to format the incorrect drive partition. Therefore, you may lose important data.

Of course, Microsoft's "resolution" is crap. To be safe, you should disconnect all but the target drive when you install Windows. I thought that was beyond ridiculous. Microsoft did not. They said it would require a "design change" to fix, and so would not be fixed. The funny thing is, the same computer using the same drives connected in the same way had no problems with the original Vista or Windows XP before it, so clearly Microsoft broke something.

And about multibooting in general:

Multiple booting is for the birds. I used to be into it heavily, ultimately becoming very familiar with Terabyte's products, but I'll never do it again. Part of the reason is that I now Truecrypt everything, which isn't compatible with it, but if I want to test something, I'll just use a VM. If I really need a real computer running a different OS, I'll use a different computer.

 

[Night Hawk]

I hear you on that! when going to test 7 I still had Vista and XP in a dual boot since I still needed XP for those things that simply would not even install on Vista. The 32bit 7 however solved that issue faster then you could believe when a temp install went onto an XP case with only XP drivers to work with for chipset, onboard sound, and a 128mb AGP card. Everything worked!

By the time the RC was out and run for a bit Vista and XP Mode were both VMs! despite seeing the 64bit 7 made the host OS. As for going to install 7 when 5 drives are present(one external) I've never had one problem. The only bad install of 7 was seen with one RC install onto a WD Green Power model drive removed from the external casing it came in for internal use. The programs all ran buggy ruling that drive out for testing 7 back then.

For 8 when 7 was alrighty on the 7 host was unplugged for both CP and RP clean installs. For the Refresh however the 7 host remained plugged in to allow the 8 installer to automatically detect and add 7 in as a boot option without trashing the 7 drive's mbr. When selecting 7 from 8's boot options you see a full restart and then 7 loads being another issue someone else mentioned.

I never ran into any of this when trying out the EasyBCD between the old Vista install with the 7 beta and RC builds. Both Vista and 7 each went on when 2 to 4 hard drives were present without a hitch. The problem here seems to be when adding another OS into the 8 boot loader.

Oh well maybe I'll just slap that latest Linux Mint release on the second drive and look at the 8 VM on VBox! since the RP would not go onto the last release of VM Player for some reason.

 

[Mustang]

Prior to Win8 I had XP, Vista and Win7 all on the same HD plus a storage partition. When Win8 came out I changed this to having only Win7 plus XP virtual on one partition, plus one storage partition. And installed Vista by itself on a separate computer. When I installed Win8 on a third primary partition on top of Win7/XPV, I kept getting BSODs and Win7 appeared to be corrupted. Then when I removed Win8, Win7 would not boot and the installation disk could not repair the start menu. Had to reload in the end. Since then installed Win8 on a separate HD with normal HD disconnected during installation. I now have both HDs running on the one machine, but there's no connected boot menu, and can select which one to boot from BIOS at startup.

If I eventually decide to use Win8 as my primary OS, will put Win7 on separate machine, and probably ditch Vista. I have kept Vista until now, as I felt I had not got my money's worth out of it, and there were a few features I wanted to keep. For example, in Windows Mail in Vista, you can format the background with sound, color or picture, which you can't do in WinLiveMail. I only use XP virtual for legacy games.

Update:

Discovered I could hot connect Win8 West Digital Caviar on external SATA2 port. If Win8 HD was connected prior to boot it would always boot to Win8, without any boot options to 7 showing. If Win8 HD not connected would boot to 7 and then connect Win8 HD to SATAe port, no problem.

Then for no apparent reason 7 became buggy. First XP Virtual wouldn't boot. Then 7 became corrupted. And finally 7 wouldn't boot and wouldn't repair boot menu off installation disk.

That's it for me. Enough is enough. I will only run 8 on separate machine by itself. And that's OK since when the RTM is available plan to run it as upgrade on XP Pro retail as clean install on other machine anyway.

 

[Night Hawk]

Yuo can still see Windows Mail added in 7! There's a guide over at SF for that since you have Vista on you simply copy the WM folder over to the 7 primary. Windows Mail - Windows 7 Forums

Here since I changed ISPs back in early 2009 the Windows Mail part was simply dropped for the Windows Live Hotmail you can see installed locally on the drive since WM was no longer an option. That was needed for the old dsl setup for the ISP email account before the change.

With the WLM installed locally however you can import mail from a good number of email clients besides the default Windows Live simplifying things a good deal. 8 won't be seeing the Live Esentials package however.

As for adding 8 onto any system keeping it isolated from any direct BCD store involvement is highly recommended after booting into 7 from the 8 BCD ended up causing drive errors on the 7 host drive. When adding 8 into the 7 boot oiptions prior to a clean install of 7 recently tended to the 8 automatic repair tool was required to see the 8 mbr information overwrite 7's simply from being the newer version of Windows. The same would be seen for seeing the entries for 7 overwrite those for Vista as expected with 7 being the newer version there.

The dual booting problems however was one thing never seen with the previous Vista/7 beta or Vista/7 RC dual boots. Vista was gone with the 7 retail launch however until the new 7 case was ready. Vista is now back on the old case since the first baord and supply both quit right when ordering for the newer 7 build.

Vista did run well then and is running good with it now seeing the exact same board the 7 case has with the first cpu now in use there since I went a little further lately to beef up the 7 build with a faster Phenom II X4 975 3.6ghz replaceing the 965 3/4ghz model plus adding even more memory in. The 8gb of Mushkin Enhanced was replaced by 16gb of Kingston Hyper X to max it out. 4gb of Mushkin on the old Vista x86 build and the other 4gb for a new 7 Pro mini tower case about to be finished. The Ultimate x64 stays on the main case.

 

[Mustang]

Thank you for that last post Night Hawk, it was most interesting and useful information.

 

[Night Hawk]

Hopefully that will be a help for many as I continue to hear more complaints from people about the RP being more "buggy" then the CP. I'm presently trying to help someone out with an old laptop only seeing a pair of 256mb sodimms of DDR memory who managed to get the 32bit RP on but can't get any AMD/ATI Mobility Radeon drivers to go on.

The integrated graphics did see Vista updates but nothing newer for the too old ATI Express 200 vpu chip seen on it. That's a case where the hardware simply doesn't support the next version coming since the owner was unable to use Vista or 7 updates while still able to get 8 installed but removing a few files apparetnly. Not the better move for sure.

 

[HYHO]

Hi..have anyone know window 8 support DVD Rom, because after installs window 8 release preview cannot find DVD icon at my computer and device manager. Anyone can help?
Attached is latest in window 8 error , DVD Rom not in window 8..Anyone can help this problem.

 

[Night Hawk]

Hello HYHO Welcome the EightForums!

The image you attached clearly shows an optical drive being listed under DVD/CD-ROM drives. If you place a blank disk in the drive you wouldn't be able to change drive letter in the Disk Management tool or view the contents since none are present however. The "Slimtype DVD A DS8A35" item is the make and model number for the drive itself when viewing it in the Device Manager.

 

[CB]

More to HYHO.

Normally under "My computer" on explorer CD/DVD-ROM is hidden when empty, unless you go to folder option and uncheck "Hide empty drives in the computer folder" Then it will appear all the time.

Kevin

 

[Kat]

Finally got it downloaded on my lousy connection.

Installing in VirtualBox now.

Will have a bit of a play with it there.....




EDIT: - Well, that ended in tears.

Wouldn't install into Virtual-Box off the iso.

So I burned it to a DVD, and tried that.

No joy, it won't work as an upgrade or as a stand-alone install.

Fails every time.

I suspect a faulty download.......

 

[Night Hawk]

Once you have the new VM by name created without the initial startup you go into the settings and add a new cd/dvd drive simply browsing right to the iso itself. The system setting by default sees floppy first which can be unchecked as well as moving the optical and hard drive up a notch each to bump floppy out of the way.

Once you have the iso added a new drive the setup will appear once the new VM is started. Sometimes you have to play with adding and then uninstalling it a few times with the lates VBox version. But the RP will install by iso as well as by optical drive if you burn the iso to disk.

 

[Kat]

Thanks, Night-Hawk, but I've tried various ways to install it, both in VBox from
the iso and a DVD, and as both a clean standalone install and as an upgrade over
Win 7, from a DVD.

Failed every time, so a faulty download is my main suspect.

 

[TerryE]

Kat,

First, interesting name and avatar, because my daughter goes by "Kat" and the picture looks very much like her cat. She's not a technical person though.

Does the VM boot at all? The times I tried loading Win8 in Virtual Box it booted but I got a strange error (about three sort lines of characters on a black screen). If you haven't already tried some of these things they might help determine whether the ISO is bad:

- Run a CRC check on the image (several free utilities out there to do that)
- Try mounting the ISO in another (running) VM or with an ISO mounting utility like MagicDisc (free)

I can definitely say that Win8 runs fine in VMware Workstation or its free counterpart VMware Player. I set it up as a "Windows 7" VM and tell VMware to install the OS later (since, at least with the version I have, it does not recognize the OS on a Windows 8 image or DVD).