Windows 8 Pro Release...

...has a great uninstall application, as despite the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant saying everything is hunky-dory, I spent the last 5 hours downloading and installing Windows 8 just to get the 2 screens shown below.

These appeared after the 'usual' Win8 ':( something has gone wrong' screen that I also got in CTP on a VirtualBOX VM, whatever I tried:

fig 1 - First error screen in the sequence

fig 2 - Second error screen in the sequence

It would be interesting to know from people who managed to install Win8 Pro on hardware that's a year or two old as I don't know anyone that's not had any problems at all.

Once installed, most people report a good experience (or at least some good experiences) but it is now 1am after wasting an unbelievable amount of time (and paying the cost of the software) that I won't get back, I am not in the mood to try to fix this now.

If Microsoft wants to compete in the tablet and phone markets with the likes of Apple, things have got to just work! With the diversity of the hardware platforms that it they will typically have to support in that arena, this isn't easy at best, but this certainly isn't the way to do it on a desktop platform they have dominated for a few decades.

I will have to maybe try it on a different box tomorrow. It depends if I can transfer that license across. Otherwise, dummy out of the pram, I'm sulking!

The Working Update

UPDATE: I finally managed to get it installed and working the day after. However, I had to reinstall all my applications (the majority of which were not on the Upgrade Assistant's list) and have still got some to do.

I had to choose to save only my files, not my apps. The BSOD error that was happening previously was coded as 0xC000021A. A quick Google seemed to suggest there were too many options at that point, a problem with winlogon.exe (which seemed to happen a lot in the history of Windows, including XP dying by itself), so I just thought blue word thoughts and installed the thing saving only my files.

Once installed, I am actually quite happy with it. It is very fast compared to Win7 on this box! Though I don't know if this is because I am not running some services which I used to. Apart from that, it is very responsive on my SSD based 3.6GHz quad core AMD Phenom II X4 975X Black edition.

The lack of Start menu was confusing, especially when I instinctively hit the Window key on the keyboard. The Metro interface does seem very simplified and closing Windows in Metro would be extremely long winded if I didn't know Alt+F4 existed. It requires a mouse to pick up and drag a Window to the bottom of the screen (think send it to the grave) or you could move the mouse to the top left hand corner of the screen to bring up the running apps bar, right click and select 'Close' (akin to right clicking an icon in the taskbar on Win7 and selecting 'Close Window').

The same is true of shutting Windows down. If you are o the desktop and choose Alt-F4 this brings up the usual Windows shut-down dialog box. Otherwise it is Win+C or move the mouse to the top right and select the 'Settings' cogwheel, then the power button, then 'Shutdown.' from the resulting context menu, then breathe!

I will continue to play and see where it takes me. There are a couple of annoying elements about Metro so far, but I hope this old dog will learn new tricks with time.