AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
Before doing the switch to Windows 8 do you have to have indexing turned on for your drives?

Dunno.

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
Also in regards to Windows 7, can you copy the contents of your existing drive to a bigger one, install that as your main drive and then run from there? I remember doing that with DOS and Windows 98. Just copied everything from small drive to big one took out small drive put big one in place and after a bit of fiddling it worked as my system drive. Had to repair the boot record first I think.

Sometimes that works.  Sometimes not.  Some applications are installed in such a way to prevent this very thing (to prevent unauthorized copying of the working application).  You may have to re-install some of your applications.  Depending on your user license, you may have to uninstall them on the old disk drive first, copy the data, and reinstall the application on the new drive.

Digital Photo PLUS wrote:
Check out Paul Thurrott's site. Short answer is that in-place upgrade from Windows 7 works well since the difference between the two is mostly UI.

http://winsupersite.com/article/windows … s-7-144322

Cool article. Thanks ..

And thanks for the other answers guys.

Aaron Lewis Photography wrote:
Turning off indexing in any recent version of Windows breaks stuff.

Really.....How so?

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
Really.....How so?

I can't provide any specifics but I know early on I was a big fan of disabling things like that. On my first Win 7 box I turned it off and it was most aggravating.

Through the years I've learned that sometimes vanilla is good. so unless there's a specific reason to disable something like that, I just leave it alone and let it do it's thing. As you know behind the scenes Windows services are very tightly knit into other process and things rely on other things. When you mess with that harmony you'll ultimately wish you hadn't

The bad part is, you may have a problem a year from now that no one can explain because you disabled something like that.

Aaron Lewis Photography wrote:

I can't provide any specifics but I know early on I was a big fan of disabling things like that. On my first Win 7 box I turned it off and it was most aggravating.

Through the years I've learned that sometimes vanilla is good. so unless there's a specific reason to disable something like that, I just leave it alone and let it do it's thing. As you know behind the scenes Windows services are very tightly knit into other process and things rely on other things. When you mess with that harmony you'll ultimately wish you hadn't

The bad part is, you may have a problem a year form now that no one can explain because you disabled something like that.

I guess I may turn it back on just to be safe

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
I guess I may turn it back on just to be safe

I used to tweak everything. Back in the days of Win 2.0, 3.1 etc I knew everything. Much more than Microsoft but as Windows got more complex I grew and learned that tweaking can only harm you. If you follow MS instructions and guidelines, you'll always be safe AND when problems do arise, there will be an answer.

The best thing I can tell you is that if you do make changes to the system environment, document it. Date time and what you did along with the reason you did it.

Aaron Lewis Photography wrote:
Turning off indexing in any recent version of Windows breaks stuff.

If you image a drive. not copy but bit copy or image a drive using cloning software for any Windows OS after XP you'll run into issues. Some are known easily fixed.

Just copying programs will only work with programs that don't write anything to the system folders or the registry, which are few and far between now days

For instance, if you clone a Win 7 disk the clone will not boot. You have to boot to the install disk and run fixboot, then reboot and all will be well. This has to do with the ID or the physical disk.

I have indexing turned off on my hard drive. I just upgraded to W8 from W7 today. The W7 installation was on a 64gig SSD hard drive and I cloned it to a 128gig SSD hard drive without issues.

You can't just copy the files, but it's fine if you clone the drives with the necessary boot partition. Both PC and OSX have a hidden partition that the system needs.

Aaron Lewis Photography wrote:
Turning off indexing in any recent version of Windows breaks stuff.

If you image a drive. not copy but bit copy or image a drive using cloning software for any Windows OS after XP you'll run into issues. Some are known easily fixed.

Just copying programs will only work with programs that don't write anything to the system folders or the registry, which are few and far between now days

For instance, if you clone a Win 7 disk the clone will not boot. You have to boot to the install disk and run fixboot, then reboot and all will be well. This has to do with the ID or the physical disk.

Bull.

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
Does Win 8 still have the familiar "Run command" that you used to get from the start menu?

Also 2 things how do you revert back to Win 7 if you don't like 8, and if you do like 8 how do you get rid of the old Win 7 install?

So far I am getting the hang of 8 and almost beginning to like it.

Oh Where also are the settings for the "photos" app? It says my photo sources are hidden and to check my settings?

Command prompt: Yes  (Win+X is an easy shortcut that will get you to it, although there's several ways).

Revert to Win 7, you don't AFAIK (which has been true of every OS since... Ever?  Reinstall Win7 if you don't like it).

I think the old Win 7 stuff gets put in a special folder you can axe when you're done. 

Win+C will get you to charms.  Open it when you're in the photos app and click settings OR just hit Win+I and go straight to settings (yes you can do it all with the mouse, I prefer shortcuts).

I believe photos bases it's location on the Pictures Library.  If you want to change what folders are in that library, open up Windows explorer, on the left hand pane you should have libraries and in that pictures.  Right click and hit properties and you'll have the option to add or remove folders for that library (same for music, videos, etc...)  That hasn't changed since Win 7, they're just finally DOING something with the libraries (which I'd never bothered to use before)..

Hope that helps.

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
Does Win 8 still have the familiar "Run command" that you used to get from the start menu?

Also 2 things how do you revert back to Win 7 if you don't like 8, and if you do like 8 how do you get rid of the old Win 7 install?

So far I am getting the hang of 8 and almost beginning to like it.

Oh Where also are the settings for the "photos" app? It says my photo sources are hidden and to check my settings?

There are already utilities to put back the Win7 shell onto Win8

see:
http://bgr.com/2012/09/07/retroui-downl … 8-desktop/

http://bgr.com/2012/08/24/windows-8-sta … -download/

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

http://www.superutils.com/products/win- … -switcher/

Tog wrote:
Command prompt: Yes  (Win+X is an easy shortcut that will get you to it, although there's several ways).

Revert to Win 7, you don't AFAIK (which has been true of every OS since... Ever?  Reinstall Win7 if you don't like it).

I think the old Win 7 stuff gets put in a special folder you can axe when you're done. 

Win+C will get you to charms.  Open it when you're in the photos app and click settings OR just hit Win+I and go straight to settings (yes you can do it all with the mouse, I prefer shortcuts).

I believe photos bases it's location on the Pictures Library.  If you want to change what folders are in that library, open up Windows explorer, on the left hand pane you should have libraries and in that pictures.  Right click and hit properties and you'll have the option to add or remove folders for that library (same for music, videos, etc...)  That hasn't changed since Win 7, they're just finally DOING something with the libraries (which I'd never bothered to use before)..

Hope that helps.

I tried all those and this is what I still get in the photos app

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:

You can see now how user friendly Win 8 is over Win 7

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:

I tried all those and this is what I still get in the photos app

I opened it up for the first time right now and it automatically scanned my pictures folder.

I think, for whatever reason, you just don't have any folders/locations enabled. If you're going to use the "apps" that are included in Windows, you just have to remember that moving the mouse pointer to any corner will give you a different function.

In this case, just move the mouse to the right hand side of the screen, click "settings", and then "options" to enable locations.

RacerXPhoto wrote:
You can see now how user friendly Win 8 is over Win 7

Oh it's an adventure alright....... I might just pull my hair out if this keeps going on. Now my user account has gone wonky keeps asking for permission and I can't turn UAC off...... and i'm administrator

EDIT: All working now.... Did a more or less clean install and all seems well except for maybe one of my game cheats not working but I think I can fix that problem.