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I will phone them on Monday and see if they can advise. ofcourse I am legit I take licensing very seriously , that is why i seek advice on what I should do.

So what if I installed the PC in the office using the MAK key in the VLSC? would I need to buy a new MAK key for 8.1 to make it activate? I noticed in VLSC I can use either a KMS or MAK key for Windows 8.0 but Windows 8.1 does not have any keys associated with it in VLSC. It simply says that I need to contact volume liceensing for a key.. Which seems strange as part of my volume licencing covers all versions of Windows. sorry I am just trying to understand this and its confusing.

I have sorted it Created a new group policy enforced and re-created roaming profiles. A bit of effort but got there in the end.

Hi The problem is that when I downloaded the iso of 8.1 pro and installed it, yes it upgraded but I simply couldnt activate it.. I tried all the keys for windows 8.0 that are provided to us by our Volume Licensing and none of them worked. I was pretty much stuffed as there was no way of rolling it back so I had to reinstall 8.0 again as 8.1 would not activate whatever key I tried. I just dont want to risk trying that again because it took me a considerable amount of time to restore all the local software etc. It just doesn't make sense why Microsoft has made this upgrade such an ordeal for volume licenced customers. I even phoned up my vlsc provider and asked them but they couldn't really help as they said it should work but they had not got any other clients who had atempted it yet. I also saw a few people claiming workarounds by hacking methods / disconnecting the internet / running scripts / regedit. But the thing is that I don't know why I should need to be doing that as I am a fully licenced customer and pay a huge amount every year to have VLSC. Like I said I'm baffled and have lost confidence in Windows 8.

That is ridiculous.. I thought the whole point of 8.1 was that it is a glorified patch to a slightly broken OS (Perhaps not broken but missunderstood). I'll stay on Windows 8.0 then certainly won't bother installing any more Windows 8 instances at my company. I will stick with 7 from now on.. thanks for the advice.

hi ive tried these... clicked on the get update and it goes to the store but no windows 8.1 update is visible. I also tried downloading the iso and installed it on one of the client computers but it refused to activate with the windows 8 pro key. I rang up my volume licensing provider and they said its free but could not confirm as none of their other clients have even made it to Windows 7 yet as they refuse to let go of XP! Seriously.. they are in for some stress next year I guess I will just have to leave it on Windows 8.. Baffled..to be honest. It doesn't matter so much as I only installed Windows 8 in one section of the office to prove I could make it work alongside Windows 7 and roaming profiles.. I don't really think it makes a lot of difference in the office as users simply click the desktop tile and they are basically back to windows 7 or might as well be. Missing start button is a non issue anyway as all their shortcuts are on the desktop. And from what I saw when I installed manually 8.1 before I realized I couldn't activate it was that the start button simply goes back to the tile screen which is pretty useless in the office except for looking colorful and pretty. All they say is "its another click until I can open up outlook and google". perhaps it will magically appear in the updates later on....

I have the fully KMS activated windows 8 pro at my company. but for the life of me I cannot find the update anywhere? Not in the store or windows updates.. is it not free for certain versions? Seems rather odd considering it is supposed to be sorting out some poor features of Windows 8 for office environments. I ran all available windows updates on my client machines in the office but nope...no windows 8.1 update.. Its quite frustrating actually.

Hi I'm having probably one of the most annoying problems ever. I recently moved some files onto a new file server (2008r2) because my old server (2003) crashed and burned. Everything works fine except Folder Redirection (Documents) I just cannot make this work, I have tried every combination I can think of... I have told it to redirect to the new location: \\myserver\users\ I have told it to use the users home folder I have told it to create a new folder in the new location I have checked and unchecked the boxes which say move documents to new location Whatever I try it just refuses to work on Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers.. the default library seems to be \\myserver\users\user\downloads!!? or some user/public folder I have no idea why as I do not have any download redirection policies in place. What makes it even worse is that some users seem to be redirected to the new location correctly.. I found if I remove users profiles completely that sometimes seems to fix the issue and users are then redirected in the library to the new my documents location. but I cant believe this is the solution as this would be a HUGE task... with a lot of headaches involved. so its not everyone but most people. Is there any fix in the registry that brute forces it to go to the new folder? I have tried the user shell folder section and set it to the new location but for some reason that doesn't fix the library redirection problem. Because the old server completely failed I cant keep it running while folder redirection was changed over which I know is how it should have happened. But surely there must be some way to override this annoyance in the users profile. thanks

Finally I can make that tile menu useful at work! http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1899865

Well the replies here and my research have made me pretty much conclude that others do not consider the app store safe enough or even rate it very highly to be allowed on a corporate network. I must admit most of the apps I have seen are just pointless, this is true. I would have honestly thought that Microsoft would only allow safe apps on their app store, but I'm not filled with confidence from all the "goog"...I mean "binging" I have done. will almost definetly block it for most / all users now. It's a pity but I'll get over it. I don't think it was a useless exercise to install Windows 8 on a room of computers at the office, however without using the appstore it has pretty much summed up the fact that I cannot personally see that Windows 8 has any real benefits over Windows 7 on a business network whatsoever.. I use Citrix / VMWare and not hyper v so there isn't any benefits of Windows 8 virtualisation with hyper v either. I will still keep those Windows 8 PC's running, maybe something new will turn up, or I will discover an amazing new feature that is worth the effort. perhaps if they made a program that allowed me to deploy custom tiles for "ALL Users" that would be neat enough... yet they haven't... obly tile sort of works but not for all users, only for the current user. thanks for the replies

I'm really struggling on the decision to allow or disallow the app store in my company... lots of users want it to be available to them and it does seem by removing the app store is pretty much making the whole point of windows 8 a waste of time. I want to promote new tech and I do actually like windows 8 but my concern is how secure is the app store... will there be malicious network wrecking apps for hacking or deleting files on a network... supposedly Microsoft are monitoring the apps in the app store but I wonder if anybody else has allowed the app store in their company? Its obviously a key feature of windows 8 and there are some nice productivity apps there. I do take security seriously that is why I am asking anybody else here who may have been having the same dilemma, surely I'm not the only one who is thinking about this. I don't like to lock everything down for the sake of making the user feel like they can't even personalise any of their desktop experience, that just annoys users and I can understand that.. I like to go with the flow but I don't want to cause a security risk if allowing users to have their own apps is dangerous. Thanks

Has anybody noticed a problem with the right click menu not working on the start button for users with roaming profiles? The only way to fix it is to recreate that users roaming profile. but after while it stops working again.. anybody seen this before? Know a fix for it?

haha yes good idea

I was looking at Server 2012, the upgrade process looks quite easy from R2.

I have figured out the problem. Because I have a mixed environment of XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers I have had to perform profile separation because Windows 7 and windows 8 profiles are actually different. Even though they have the .v2 they are not the same. The Windows 8 computers are in an OU with loopback processing enabled. In the group policy they are instructed to go to a different location for their profile which overrides the user profile location in Active Directory. it was the only way to my knowledge that I could mix the different operating systems so that people could roam around and log into which ever pc they want to while maintaining their personal settings. so this explains why when a user logs in (When not connected to the domain) it is still forcing the profile to look in the location of the server which doesn't exist. This would explain why apps won't install as that's profile specific. The brainwave came when I noticed that I couldn't create a working local user unless I had removed the computer from the domain because the domain loopback policy is trying to force the user profile to be looking at the server. might make sense to some people... So basically the only way to allow users to install stuff at home is to give them a local account to use because I can't fiddle the group policy to know if they are offline and forget the profile redirection. all of this wouldn't be a problem if I didn't have both windows 7 and windows 8 pc's on the same network. Now if Microsoft would have put their thinking hat on and said ok lets call Windows 8 profiles .V3 then we wouldn't be having this problem! In all seriousness I think others might get tripped up on this.... I can't imagine I'm the only one trying to mix different OS's in a domain with roaming users.

Yes it's running at 2008r2 functional level. as I said on the domain it's fine, no problem it's when they are logged in offline which is where the problem appears to be.

Hi... what versions... well take your pick! They seem to have a new version every other week! I did Java at University and used to love it very much.... But now that relationship has gone really bad.. Yes you have described exactly my problem. It's such a pain really! Thanks for the info about that software, I will try it. I have used the Microsoft uninstaller utility before to remove broken Java, however I have heard that Microsoft pulled that utility because they said it could cause problems on your network. to be honest It has worked every time for me so I don't see the fuss. I was not sure that you could script uninstalls with that! That's interesting. I don't fancy manually running that utility on 1000 computers or re-imaging them either. thanks

Has anybody come across a problem with domain enabled windows 8 tablets when working out of the office. I have found that the user can only install "APPS" when they are physically in the office building... when they go home and log in, they are able to log in with cached credentials and can run apps etc (Except skype for some weird reason) BUT.. but the main problem when they are at home is that they cannot install any APPS it just fails every time. They can go to the app store and download an app it says installing but then bombs out with a failure! My guess is that it's trying to find something on the domain... Which is a serious flaw if this is the case! How can people work outside of the office on a domain tablet ?? That would be stupid! I don't really know how to get around this. I tried creating a local user for home use but that doesn't work as Apps are per user (Which is causing some real headaches I'm sure) I also tried to make that domain user a local administrator of the tablet... That doesn't work either. a bit stuck on this one...

No I wasn't at the company 10 years ago. So I guess I should block it on our firewall then. Shame but I guess it's too risky.

Hi I'm trying to embrace the future at my company and have allowed users to install their apps while logged into the domain. do other people think there will be dangerous apps released on the app store, like VPN Tunnels and stuff like that? I don't want to take it away as its a fundamental part of windows 8 but on the other hand I don't want to open up our domain to dangerous apps. it's a tricky one.

yea I know it is odd... but it is there isn't it.. Thing is the error message it throws doesn't say you can't log in because its a domain, the error message says "Your password was incorrect for Live" ... strange... when the user has actually logged in using their domain account they are able to install apps using the live ID.. that works... I'm not so much bothered about that though.

When my Windows 8 laptops / tablets / pc's are added to the domain, I see that users are able to login using their live ID ? This is no good! I don't mind them adding apps when they are logged in but I don't want them to log in as a completely different entity which would give them admin rights to uninstall / install software. I tried myself and it told me that my password was incorrect when I tried logging in as my live id.. even though my password wasn't incorrect.. does this mean the domain is doing its job and not allowing live ID login even though it gives you the option at the log in screen? thanks

What has happened to Internet Explorer 10 using touchscreen? Drop down menus on just about every site don't work anymore! Firefox is fine as usual... does this mean every website is going to have to reprogram their drop down menus For the sake of IE10!!? How stupid is that!! Sort it out Microsoft!

Hi there I manage roughly about 1000 computer devices in my Active Directory organization / split between sites I try to deploy java through group policy, but the problem is that it's sometimes not reliable due to old versions still lingering on some of the more ancient computers. And users, sometimes can't log in because Java deployment has gone wrong and has halted the PC waiting for administrator input. So I have had to resort to doing manual installs just because deploying it causes more hassle.. The main issue I find with Java is that the install does not remove the older versions, which I think is very annoying. I am completely aware that if they were always deployed with group policy then old version removal is achievable but the problem is that this isn't the case, some were installed manually over the years. (And I have around 1000 pc's) This has caused a real headache for me. Adobe flash recently have started appearing through windows updates (on the IE 10 PC's) , I wish java would do the same. So I'm wondering is there some other 3rd party patch deployment tool that would remove old versions of Java and install new ones or is there a way to somehow allow Joe bloggs to install Java themselves without getting an elevated warning prompt asking for admin rights? Does anybody else have another way around this as I find it probably ranked as number 1 most annoying network management task! Thanks

1 & 3 .. And so what? I can say something if I like? Just cos somebody else has doesn't mean others can't also ? 2. and I'm sure you do, as I said you are the expert obviously.. But I am sorry but I don't recall anybody saying that the concern is that further down the line that this tweak may actually cause adverse affects when service packs / updates are installed? That's not worth considering then? Just install it on a corporate network and hope for the best.. Good thinking I actually think my comments may be food for thought to somebody who might be thinking of deploying this tweak on a large scale network. I remember reading about somebody who tried that with windows blinds back in the day and they bricked a whole suite of computers in an office.