Solved Serious questions for the Windows 8 viability for busines

I just installed Windows 8 professional on my Dell Inspiron Laptop. It has a 8 gig and 1tb HD. I downloaded and installed every MS update for Windows 8 until the Windows Update reported NO UPDATES! Then I installed Office Pro 2010, MS Mapping for America and Europe, Installed MS Visio and MS Project. Did all the updates before doing anything else. Then I installed Corel Draw X6 and Windows 8 is reporting severe problems and it currently resetting itself to nothing, no programs of software except the useless Windows 8 Professional. All this time is lost. Now is there any value or use for Windows 8 in a business environment? Installing Corel Draw X6 which is a very well respected business graphic software and Windows 8 professional (?) dies on its' own sword? And destroys all files, all software and all user files? That is Microsoft's offering to the business or user community? THAT IS TOTALLY AMAZING AND TOTALLY USELESS! So the wonderful competent programmers at MS think that if they cannot control the updating of all software, they will destroy all the files on the computer? Somebody needs to teach old Mickeysoft something. If this isn't reason to go the Apple, I surely do not know what isn't. And, BTW, this is the second computer this wonderful software did this two. On my main work station, after converting to Windows 8 professional and doing all the updates, Windows 8 Professional destroyed 1.5 million files in a wonderful reset. The Laptop was a test to see if format and install and all updates would be different.


So, anybody care to comment, speculate, condemn or whatever, I would love to hear your comments!

This sounds very unusual. I have never heard of Windows destroying files because of a program installation or update. But with Windows 8 and on the high seas your are never sure what happens.

I would say that you are a candidate for frequent images and especially for images before you install massive programs. But don't use the Windows imaging which may disappoint you again - use free Macrium.

Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Help Forums

I have been using Windows 8 on this Lenovo laptop since July 2013. I am fairly used to how it operates, but I am disappointed with all the bugs this OS has.
Even Vista, which a lot of people had complained about, was not this buggy. I visit this Windows 8 Forum, and I see that many others have the same problems that I have had.
First, when I clicked on some of the tiles on the start screen, they would come up, then disappear after a second. Eventually I upgraded to Windows 8.1, thinking that it would be less buggy.
After installing Windows 8.1, the Store wouldn't open and videos would not play. I found patches on this forum to fix them. When things seemed to be running fine, I did an image backup on 2/23.
It's good that I did, because last Sunday (3/16) I couldn't get on the internet because "no network driver was found". The mouse plugged into the USB port wouldn't work; only the built-in laptop mouse allowed me to do anything.
So with the laptop largely disabled, I decided to restore the image from 2/23. It took about an hour to restore the image, but all the functionality returned to the laptop.
The downside was that all the work that I had done since the last backup was gone. When a backup and restore is done, it not only replaces the operating system, but everything on the hard drive, including personal data.
I plan to now save my work on an SD chip daily, so if I need to do an image restore, I can later copy back personal data from the SD memory chip.
I can see why people are so negative about Windows 8 OS. It is a bad reflection on Microsoft to release an OS with so many internal problems.
But that seems to be their attitude; ship the product with known problems to meet a deadline, and let the users struggling to get it to work.
If I had a business, I wouldn't install computers with Windows 8. It's too risky at this point. My previous laptop runs Windows 7 & I have been using it since 2009 without any system problems.

What the Win 8 pro update process did was ask for the install disk. This is where it re-installs a useless minuscule version of Windows 8. When I gave the install disk, it promptly announced that the install disk was incorrect. That is what installed it in the first place. No I know at this point that unintelligent beings wrote the code so I tried again, but to no success. So right now I am installing Windows 7 professional. What a complete waste of anything and everything it touches. Again my thoughts dealing with the issues and problems I have encountered trying to work with Windows 8 Professional. This is amazing that anything like this is developed, then further amazing that it is marketed. Balls in your court folks. Enjoy!

Sounds like you should stick to Windows 7...

I never ever install Windows 8 or 8.1 in any Work Environment - It is just too unreliable - It's great for myself as I can repair it, but I have to give my clients a hassle-free system.

But if you do get a Windows 8 system for work - It's best to only get the regular updates and never get any "security" updates, Also, Windows 8 is a better environment for work than 8.1, especially if you have to use a Local Account. There are things you can do that are very similar to older versions of Windows, that they have changed in 8.1, things like the way the explorer window works, sharing is all different, and there is no real Backup system for 8.1- Windows 8 can use the Windows 7 Backup and Restore - If updated from 7, it will be on the system.

Now one thing. When I converted a Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8 and that failed, every last driver was up to date. Every last one and it did the same thing as the Laptop update did except it wiped out 1.5 million files and I have excuses 2, 77, 89 and who cares, I trusted that I could revert and when it got done, nothing was left of the 1.499 files, nothing. In fact even EaseUS recovery software could find nothing except files with names who knows what and content of garbage. In this case, it was a fresh install on the Laptop and I found out that the Bios had been updated and I didn't know it. Regardless, going into "I am going destroy everything on this computer" mode is a total reason to boycott old Mickeysoft. Even Donald would not do anything so ignorant and stupid. Again, I agree, never put this anywhere close to a business environment because if on a whim it asks for the install disk and destroys everything, that could be a real disaster. And everyhting looked in both cases like it was okay. Just plain sad!

Even Donald would not do anything so ignorant and stupid.

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LOL, I think you made the mistake by not backing up those files before you attempted such a major surgery on you PC. With every new install you lose your stuff if you keep it on the C partition. But the smart guy keeps his own stuff in a seperate data partition. Then it cannot get wiped unless the user makes a mistake.

theaudioanalyst

"In this case, it was a fresh install on the Laptop and I found out that the Bios had been updated and I didn't know it."

Are you actually claiming that when you installed W8 on your laptop that it updated your BIOS ? Not to be flip I just have to know .
j

That could be possible. They put e.g. the product key into the BIOS. There may also be a change for secure boot. A question worth to examine further.

theaudioanalyst said:

Now one thing. When I converted a Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8 and that failed, every last driver was up to date. Every last one and it did the same thing as the Laptop update did except it wiped out 1.5 million files and I have excuses 2, 77, 89 and who cares, I trusted that I could revert and when it got done, nothing was left of the 1.499 files, nothing. In fact even EaseUS recovery software could find nothing except files with names who knows what and content of garbage. In this case, it was a fresh install on the Laptop and I found out that the Bios had been updated and I didn't know it. Regardless, going into "I am going destroy everything on this computer" mode is a total reason to boycott old Mickeysoft. Even Donald would not do anything so ignorant and stupid. Again, I agree, never put this anywhere close to a business environment because if on a whim it asks for the install disk and destroys everything, that could be a real disaster. And everyhting looked in both cases like it was okay. Just plain sad!

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1.5 million files, and no backup. . .really. . .just a question.

whs , That's I'd love to know . Did it update the bios version or change some settings ?
j

Seems to me if Windows keeps heading in the same direction as 8, business environments will be better off moving to Linux. Why I think XP is still alive and refuses to die.

jetroho said:

whs , That's I'd love to know . Did it update the bios version or change some settings ?
j

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Can I send you on a scouting tour trying to find out,

Hmm, I've never had Windows 8/8.1 go berserk from one program.... The only one that I had issues was with Autodesk's 360 applet that crashed Explorer every 15-40 minutes. Got rid of that, perfect!

As for using Windows 8.1 in the enterprise, I'm a firm believer in it. A friend of mine who's a store manager at my local Home Depot just got a Lenovo ThinkPad tablet with Windows 8 on it since the company is apparently going to be updating all their hardware soon. She loves it because it's literally a baby PC she can take with her out onto the floor and actually use it for the company's special apps to do things like customer pick up forms and special orders and the whatnot. An ipad couldn't do that, a laptop can't do that easily, a desktop can't be mobile like that.

It also depends on HOW you customize your Start experience and HOW you will use it. If touch is going to be an input used, Windows 8 for sure. If this is more or less along the lines of a typical desktop environment, I'd say Windows 7 but from personal experience, it's HOW you setup your Start Screen is what makes the difference.

As for system stability, ever since November of 2012, it's been fairly smooth sailing on two custom built PCs of mine. I've deployed Windows 8/8.1 across...a few dozen different PCs now? All users report smooth sailing, nothing causing issues at all. I would check to see if your programs are ALL COMPATIBLE with Windows 8. Corel Draw X6 seems to be perfectly compatible so something else with everything is freaking something out. It would be best to better explain what is happening, BSODs, crashes, post dump files, etc. Your problem to me sounds very isolated.

Also, if you're doing upgrade installations, that will be HUGE pain in the crotch down the road.

I'd suggest to find an MSDN .iso image of Windows 8.1 Pro and blow everything up on a test system and start from scratch if you haven't already.

By the way, I was reading today a simple reason why Microsoft is so special by a programmer and ironically enough, program compatibility was the reason why. Being able to run a lot of 13 year old software in Windows 8.1 without too much issue is kind of a big deal, which it is. It also means balancing between fixing system code issues and maintaining compatibility. The more bugs they fix, the bigger the risk Windows will run into breaking compatibility.

whs , I was hoping the op would shed more light on this .
Normally I'm up for a challenge . But it seems my search foo is not strong at this moment .
j

It would seem with 1.5 million files he would have these on a server of some kind so that a backup of these files would be available and safe in case of a problem as he has described. Hell a live Linux CD should be kept on file just for a situation like this one.

Hell a live Linux CD should be kept on file just for a situation like this one.

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Right, not only one but several.

Thanks everyone!