Windows 8.1 is available now

No, I think a poster made an additional comment to what I observed about Refresh and Reset. Good to know that others are not experiencing issues with MR.

 

The trick that TOMxEU linked to is a bat file that just sends the rearm command to Windows. It's safe to use.

BTW, TOMxEU, thanks for the tips on getting an iso copy of Windows 8.1 GA install disc. It worked like a charm. And even though it is only 3.05 gbs in size it is the 64 bit version. I thought the size odd as well but hey it's directly from Microsoft and it was 64 bit after an install. Again, thanks. .

Later...

Bob

 

can anyone check the downloaded iso from the link tomxeu posted to see if its locked to the key used to download it? im away for the week and need a copy of the iso but dont want to have to download it 10 times. im upgrading family members systems and they all have valid win 8 keys but i dont feel like doing this procedure 10 times. im assuming it will be just like the upgrade for win 8 was where it is a iso generated for that specific lic key.

 

Hi ZFactor,

No, it is not locked to the key it is used. I have already tried in VM as full install.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

perfect thank you!! i have all versions iso's at the office but did not plan on everyone asking me to update them while im here lol so i didnt bring anything

 

Still not really a fan of windows 8-8.1

Got free copies of them from dreamspark as I was doing my MSITP, had 8 installed on 1TB secondary drive & had nothing but issues with it.

First one was a driver update from windows update (forgot to turn off auto updates) borked it & it was stuck in a auto repair loop for about 1 hour, gave up & reinstalled it. Second one was the description column in services.msc went from displaying the descriptions to then being blank even on the MS services.

Also found that the live tiles stopped working, only one I really used was the weather one & the bing app was only used to get wallpapers for the lock screen.

Will likely give 8.1 a try in a few months after the bugs get sorted out, like a lot of other folk I don't like modernUI at all, the tiles look like a kids tablet interface & the desktop is now flat, bland & has that annoying ribbon interface. Did have it in vmware workstation from when it was released on dreamspark.

Is there anyway to remove the shortcut folders in This PC that are on the right side ie the downloads, movies, pictures etc, seems silly to have them there & also in the left hand pane, only way I found removes them from both left & right panes.

Sorry for the rambling 2nd post

 

I'm finding similar issues to Banzi. For example, live tiles for mail and calendar are not working. Neither are notifications which was the only reason I used it.

IE11 has all sorts of rendering issues with outlook.com email composition and all vbulletin forums including here. At 100% zoom the page has elements missing. Zooming out to 125% seems to correct the issues, but then on the desktop it prevents the page from scrolling unless smooth scrolling is switched off. The modern UI version seems fine at 125%.

Several apps were broken after the update and left behind blank useless tiles which I eventually found in an Appdata folder and deleted manually.

Whether any of this is user error I'm not certain yet, but first impressions are not good.

 

Surface RT Recovery Image from MS Download Center:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40810

 

Does anyone know if Win 8.1 can be uninstalled and reinstall Win 8. The 8.1 has screwed my PC up like a Chinese fire drill.--------Max29

 

Can you reinstall mail,calendar app and see if the issue is resolved. For me, Mail app is working much better and live tiles are working as expected. I have set it up for large tile icon and could see last 3 unread e-mails at all the times. One more thing i observed is that now the e-mails are updated prompty as soon as they arrive. It was not the case earlier.

Not sure about outlook.com. I will test and see after i go home..
But this forum is rendered properly and rest of the sites i visited..
Do you have any kind of addons installed?

During windows 8.1 update, i have uninstalled most of the 3rd party apps (like netflix, hulu, flixter, vmware) and security related softwares. Once OS updated, i just installed required ones later.. just to make sure nothing gets broken becuase of the OS update..

To me apps (netflix, mail, IE metro) are working more reliably and faster than before, of course this is just 4-5 day observation.

 

Uninstall, restart, reinstall worked.
Thanks.

Only easy list TPLs. I've reset Internet Explorer and still have the same issues. Easily solved by using Firefox and/or Chrome of course, but I'd like IE to work.

In Outlook mouse over the toolbar at the top of the email compose window. It goes AWOL for me.

Good plan. That's what I should have done in hindsight.

All the apps are working now I think, so I'll form an opinion over the next few days.

 

In case anyone doesn't know, after upgrading to Win8.1 run Disk Clean-up with the Clean up system files choice. You will gain an extra 3 GB of Free Space in the C: drive.

 

After I upgraded a Dell laptop to 8.1, a new 350 MB "recovery partition" (NTFS, no label) was created. The required space was taken from the OS partition, whose size was reduced by the same amount.

Does anyone know what is the purpose of this partition?

Another question: does the upgrade process update the 490 MB WINRETOOLS partition (also a recovery partition)? Or, perhaps, the new partition is the "new WINRETOOLS"?

 

retail iso's are out and can be found if you search around a bit. just fyi.

 

That has happened since Windows 7. It was 100Mb for 7 and increased to 350Mb for 8. Not sure why you didn't have it before.

 

no need for the partition just use diskpart or similar to setup the drive before hand then install as normal. many installations of windows 7 did not have this i know for sure none of mine did at all i made sure of that. really easy if you need step by step for diskpart.

 

It seems that my question wasn´t clear. I am referring to an UEFI + GPT system with Windows 8.

This system was upgraded to 8.1. The upgrading process created a new 350 MB recovery partition. Before upgrading, there were 2 recovery partitions in the disk, the WINRETOOLS partition, and the Dell recovery partition. Now there are 3 recovery partitions (and 8 partitions in total).

My question is: what is the purpose of this new recovery partition? Is it another WINRETOOLS partition, updated to 8.1?

 

Just FYI, in case anybody hasn't know about this yet.

Source: hxxp://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Brings-Ads-in-Windows-8-1-393061.shtml

 

okay after 10 installs today i just want to clarify one thing again just to make sure those here know, i have went over both the rtm older release and the newest ga iso and compared them and the only things i can see (i spent much time comparing every file included) are the added "rollup" updates. otherwise they are the same. i tested this fact today doing all my installs. i downloaded the new ga iso and installed it as well as downloaded the previous iso from a legit source (who i know 100% is legit) and installed that. upon updating both the rtm older iso had the separate rollup updates to install where the newer ga did not. other than this they are the same.

i also compared the rtm to a iso i received from someone i know who works at dell which is the same iso they use to install on systems. it matches the rtm released earlier last month aside from adding the oem stuff due to it being dell branded.

so if you installed or upgraded using the previous rtm iso you are fine and there is no real need (unless you decide to just because) to start over and use the newer ga version. this may also help those searching for the newer iso which i can say for sure is now out there but much harder to find then the previous rtm was. this was confirmed to me by my contact as ms and i decided to test just to be sure.

 

@zfactor - Is there any difference in the keys the installation will accept though? I heard the 8.1 GA ISO had some keys blacklisted.

 

Good to see it worked for you.

i am able to mouse over the toolbar of the e-mail compose window, no issue to me. And i am using Easylist+EasyPrivacy+Fanbooy TPLs..

Could you turn off filtering options and see if it makes a difference?

 

zfactor, good information. Thanks.

 

Thanks for checking.
Turning off filtering makes no difference.
I really don't know if I'm chasing a problem on my machine or a bug that perhaps doesn't affect everyone.
I think I'll just avoid IE11 for now and wait for more information to emerge. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/21/internet_explorer_11_breaks_google_outlook_web_access/ is making me think it might be a bug.....maybe??

 

some of the "leaked" keys for win 8.1 were killed off with one of the updates. no difference as long as you are not trying to use one of those. any legit key will work fine. those were not touched