Windows 8 Drivers: Problems and Solutions

I realize it's a subjective thing, but could you be a bit more specific about how it runs faster... maybe a few examples would help. I know it boots faster, because it basically hibernates... but other than that, how is it faster. It sounds like you've put it on a few machines, so I'm curious what you've observed.

I noticed a HUGE difference in how fast 7 did things compared to Vista, but 8 didn't seem noticeably quicker than 7 in any way to me..

Keep in mind too, that a brand new spanking clean fresh install of a totally new OS, is always going to be a bit cleaner and quicker than one that's got 200 cumulative updates and has seen a lot of junk installed here and there...

 

Every site dedicated to benchmarking that made a serious review comparing Windows 7 with Windows 8 declared that Windows 8 is indeed faster.

You can use a search engine to reach these sites.

 

Faster at doing what? Why don't you save me the Googling and just enlighten me as to how it's faster?

 

Just in general use it is quicker. Sorry for not being more specific but the difference is real.

I've seen more a difference in going from 7 to 8 than Vista to 7, however that will vary between different computers. I recently did a clean install of Vista on my of my laptops, and even without any service packs installed performance was fine (although after running Windows Update many times, and doing countless reboots I did have both service packs and around 300 other updates installed). On some Vista machines, they've run so badly they've amost been almost unusable until SP2 was applied.

 

I know what you mean about it feeling faster I guess.. one reason why I was tempted to buy 8 was I like brand new clean OS's without much bogging them down. They're great at first....

I had Vista on a desktop I bought over 4 years ago, and thought it was fine, till I installed 7 the first day it came out. I was blown away. Later, after 7 had a few dozen updates, etc, I reinstalled Vista and it literally took me about 6 hours to install and update, with drivers etc. Same thing on 7 took less than 3 hours... Vista seemed to just do everything super slow, from installing drivers and software, to win updates, just everything.

Anyway, 8 may be quicker just because it's brand new.... not too much baggage accumulated yet... Or maybe it is a bit snappier in general. It just didn't strike me that much. I think 7 is fantastic already...

I like new stuff... but to be honest, if it were possible on new hardware, I'd still be running my all time favorite: Windows 2000.

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows 8 windows 7 benchmark

 

I find it.... irritating... that you use... so many "...".... in your posts... Dammit ... lol...

 

Surely speed will depend on hardware as much as operating system?

 

Not only that, there are other factors, like drivers, software running and ambient temperature.

 

I should imagine so.

 

Hahahaha.... it's an old habit that i've done for years. not much chance if it changing now.

 

Pretty amusing Sir WH... but... Win 8 vs Win 7, in routine daily practical usage... I doubt I would see much difference. Perhaps when putting a good load or stress in performance situations, maybe there is a difference. But for me, one seems as good as the other. It's similar to when people claim one browser is or seems faster than the next browser. They're all fast nowadays. And I seriously doubt most people can actually perceive much difference.

Anyway, if you say 8 benches better than 7, then fine...

 

Yes that's true. I know this all too well as, although not so much lately, I usually install new software to try up to seven days a week, and don't believe in every doing a clean install, so end up with some pretty messed up systems. In the past I haven't backup my computer (I'm doing better now), and every few years of so I've suffered from some major castrophy like hard drive failure, os major Windows corruption which has forced me to a clean install, which is the only reason why I've done so.

However, recently I have done a few clean installs of Windows 7 (and Vista), so I am comparing the speed of Winodws 8 to a clean install of Windows 7.

Vista is slower than Windows 7 as retreiving the list of available Windows updates. However other than that, when Vista is running it well it is not that much slower than 7. One exception is when Windows is looking for drivers for new hardware. A couple of years ago I plugged in two USB printers into a Vista and Windows 7 machine. Windows 7 was a lot quicker at automatically find and installing the required drivers for both printers. Also, unlike 7, Vista only found a driver for one of the printers.

 

I tried Windows 8 Pro for one day and it was slower than 7 on my PC in almost every aspect, boot time, shut down time, remote desktop etc. So I guess it depends on hardware etc.

On another machine though, Server 2012 was a lot faster than 2008 R2.

 

anyone like win 8 just not sure

 

I also tried Windows 8 and it was slower.

Maybe in a few months, when authors optimize their software to run on Win8..

 

Im sure this is a good program to use but i dont think im confident enough to use a driver update program which is not in english.

 

It's really quite easy to use, and all the drivers it downloads are in English. One thing I really like about it is that it tends to find a lot of manufacturer specific drivers - I've been running it on a lot of HP laptops lately, and a lot of the driver updates it finds are ones that have been released by HP.