Windows 8 upgrade and AP Hotkey

[Myrm]

Hi

I have two questions:

1. KK, so my labtop from PCS has Windows 7 Ultimate OEM. If I ever wanted to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro - could I buy a retail upgrade or would it have to be a OEM upgrade?

2. I have AP hotkey 6.0045 installed. I noticed that on the accompanying drivers CD there is version 6.0100 of AP Key. When I try to upgrade I get an error that says

Error 1316. A network error occurred whilst attempting to read form the file D:\drivers\06hotkey\hotkey 6.0045.msi

This is followed by a 'Error - 1603 Fatal error during installation.

Why can I not upgrade to AP Hotkeys 6.0100 from 6.0045?

Thank you vary much.

 

[vanthus]

You can upgrade a Windows7 OEM version to Windows8 using the normal upgrade tool "Windows8-upgrade assistant.exe",
you don't have to use a Windows8 system builder edition (OEM) version unless you want to run a dual boot system with your existing Windows7.
For the Hotkey driver issue try uninstalling the existing software/driver first,if it doesn't appear in "Programs and Features" uninstall it from device manager by right clicking on the device and selecting uninstall,then try installing the newer version.

 

[Myrm]

Hi Vanthus

Thank you vary much for solving my proplem with the hotkey driver. I was a bit unsure at first whether to uninstall the previous version as I had visions of not being able to reinstall it and my hotkeys not working, but I guessed it was safe enough after you advised to do so. I uninstalled 6.0045 and was able to install 6.0100 successfully.

Thank you also for your answer regarding Win 8. What are your thoughts on Win 8? Is it worth the upgrade on a labtop without touch screen capability?

 

[vanthus]

Well it's an on going debate Windows7 or Windows8,and it seems to be 50-50,personally I don't like windows8 but that doesn't mean you wouldn't.
I think the best idea is to try it out somewhere if possible before you decide.

 

[Myrm]

Hi Vanthus

Many thanks for the advice. I have decided to upgrade to Win 8 and see if I like it. If I don't I can always revert back to Win 7. I have created a system image of my labtop with Win 7 installed to make it easier to revert. I am wondering though; would it be best to do clean install of Win 8 when the disk arrives from Amazon (tomorrow) or just upgrade? I am not asking due to concerns about my programmes and games not taking to Win 8 but due to the Win 7 drivers I have installed that come on the drivers disk supplied with the labtop from PCS. Silly question but because it has the Win 7 drivers installed, when I upgrade to Win 8 will I need to uninstall the supplied drivers before installing the Win 8 drivers or will installing them automatically remove the Win 7 drivers?

Many thanks.

 

[Myrm]

KK, I'm back and this time I am using Windows 8. I upgraded and kept all my programs and files. During installation I was prompted to uninstall some Inter driver or other and I did that. Windows 8 update is now downloading and installing a driver update for the one I uninstalled. Haven't checked everything yet and still need to install Win 8 drivers from the disk that came with the PC but so far I like it.

 

[Myrm]

KK,

So I have performed the upgrade over my Win 7. Initially my labtop seems slower on Win 8. I don't know if this is just new drivers/programs or whatever, updating themselves or 'bedding it' but hopefully it will speed up. I am considering reinstalling from a fresh install (i.e. format the hard drive first) and seeing if the slowness is due to clutter from the upgrade. It seems to take a while to connect to the internet too.

One annoying thing; I keep getting a screen up asking me to select a from a choice of available browsers to download and install. I have IE10 and I am happy with that. But I can't find anyway to close that browser screen down or get rid of it (there appears to be no x in the upper right hand of the window.) Also, I notice there is no Start menu. How can I access things like services.msc which I simply used to do on Win 7 but opening the start menu and typing in 'services' into the search bar thing and it would find it for me.

 

[ubuysa]

KK,

So I have performed the upgrade over my Win 7. Initially my labtop seems slower on Win 8. I don't know if this is just new drivers/programs or whatever, updating themselves or 'bedding it' but hopefully it will speed up. I am considering reinstalling from a fresh install (i.e. format the hard drive first) and seeing if the slowness is due to clutter from the upgrade. It seems to take a while to connect to the internet too.

One annoying thing; I keep getting a screen up asking me to select a from a choice of available browsers to download and install. I have IE10 and I am happy with that. But I can't find anyway to close that browser screen down or get rid of it (there appears to be no x in the upper right hand of the window.) Also, I notice there is no Start menu. How can I access things like services.msc which I simply used to do on Win 7 but opening the start menu and typing in 'services' into the search bar thing and it would find it for me.

I've been running Windows 8 for some time so I can probably help.

First, I never do an upgrade install for any version of Windows. The slowness will probably be because of excessive file fragmentation of your hard disk as a result of the upgrade. I would strongly suggest you backup all your data and do a completely clean install of Windows 8.

The browser choice windows was forced on Microsoft by the EU. The best way to get rid of it is to make a browser choice in there. If you like IE10 then select IE10 and you'll not see the thing any more. You can also disable the startup of BrowserChoice via msconfig (though that's not a very elegant solution).

Most of the technical options (Control Panel for example) can be accessed on the desktop by right-clicking with the mouse in the bottom left corner of the screen. You'll see a crappy menu with links to all the usual stuff (clearly an afterthought!).

If you want a Windows 7 style start button and menu back there are many programs that can do this. I've tried most of them over time and by far the best is Start8 from Stardock. It's not free, it costs a whole $5 (US dollars) but it's very customisable and it does exactly what you want. They also have another tool called ModernMix which will let you run Metro-style apps in resizeable windows on the desktop, very handy if you like the Metro apps.

Don't hesitate to ask if you want any other help or info on making the change to Windows 8. I really like it, I think on balance it's a little faster than Windows 7 in most areas (better memory management I'm told) and I like the cleaner (non-Aero) desktop too.

 

[Myrm]

Hi ubuysa

I decided to re-install Windows 8 from a clean install and it is a much cleaner and faster now experience now. So far no proplems reinstalling all my old programs. Many thanks also for the hints.

 

[Myrm]

Having created a system image of the system as it was (Windows 8 installed over Windows 7 having kept all my files and programs) I reinstalled Windows 8 from a formatted hard-drive. It does seem a lot smoother having done that. Perhaps over-written upgrades leave behind a load of fragmented files in the system and registry?

One thing I have noticed with Win 8 though is that if I shut down the labtop, when I reboot I get the message "waking from hibernation" on the start up screen, the screen where you can enter the BIOS if you wish. I am puzzled at that as I chose 'Shut Down' from the Windows menu. Why was it in hibernation?

 

[ubuysa]

Having created a system image of the system as it was (Windows 8 installed over Windows 7 having kept all my files and programs) I reinstalled Windows 8 from a formatted hard-drive. It does seem a lot smoother having done that. Perhaps over-written upgrades leave behind a load of fragmented files in the system and registry?

One thing I have noticed with Win 8 though is that if I shut down the labtop, when I reboot I get the message "waking from hibernation" on the start up screen, the screen where you can enter the BIOS if you wish. I am puzzled at that as I chose 'Shut Down' from the Windows menu. Why was it in hibernation?

Windows 8 uses the hibernation feature to give you a faster boot. At shutdown Windows 8 closes the user session (as normal) but it hibernates the kernel. Kernel hibernation is a lot smaller than a full hibernate so it takes very little time to do at shutdown, the benefit of course is a faster boot. On my SSD there is little difference in boot time with the hibernate feature on or off but for your HDD I think you'll be seeing faster boots with it on. If you want to turn hibernate off completely (which also stops the hibernation of the kernel) open an elevated command prompt and enter "powercfg /h off" but without the quotes. This will also recover a couple of GB of disk space that the hibernate file uses.

See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fast-boot-times-in-windows-8.aspx for more info.

 

[Myrm]

Thanks for the reply and interesting link. If I wished to turn hibernate back on, how would I do this?

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks for the reply and interesting link. If I wished to turn hibernate back on, how would I do this?

"powercfg /h on" but without the quotes. Sorry I should have mentioned that!

 

[Myrm]

Sorry to be a pain, but do I enter that into the 'Run' prompt window? If so, how do I get that option up on Win 8 - there's no 'Start' bar with 'Run' in it like other Windows had. Thank you.

Oh, and do you have any advice on whether a labtop should be shut down or just 'put to sleep' when not used for a long period of time, overnight for example. Thank you.