Jump to content

Now they're chopping up the Start Button's bones


JorgeA

Recommended Posts

As I said I can't check it myself now but you can just try to create a text file, deny access to it for everyone and then run edit.com from commandline and try to edit the file.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


32bit Windows 8 is likely going to be a legacy OS for people to use on older hardware. Of all the new hardware I am testing this month:

2 AMD boards

10 Intel boards

4 notebooks

All of them except 1 have UEFI 2.3.1. So in this case, 32bit Windows (7 or even 8) is not supported on those devices.

So because many manufacturers are using the new spec, I forsee that most Windows 8 in the market will be 64bit, or tablets which will have RT for ARM. And even the tablets will be from few manufacturers, since there is some limiter in the channel for who can sell ARM based products for some reason.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All of them except 1 have UEFI 2.3.1. So in this case, 32bit Windows (7 or even 8) is not supported on those devices.

So because many manufacturers are using the new spec, I forsee that most Windows 8 in the market will be 64bit, or tablets which will have RT for ARM. And even the tablets will be from few manufacturers, since there is some limiter in the channel for who can sell ARM based products for some reason.

Tripredacus,

So I gather that motherboards with UEFI can't run 32-bit OS's? I didn't know that.

--JorgeA

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All of them except 1 have UEFI 2.3.1. So in this case, 32bit Windows (7 or even 8) is not supported on those devices.

So because many manufacturers are using the new spec, I forsee that most Windows 8 in the market will be 64bit, or tablets which will have RT for ARM. And even the tablets will be from few manufacturers, since there is some limiter in the channel for who can sell ARM based products for some reason.

Tripredacus,

So I gather that motherboards with UEFI can't run 32-bit OS's? I didn't know that.

--JorgeA

Its not so much "can't" its more like "probably won't". As I struggled with getting things figured out about it... I was not able to explain the 95% failure rate of being able to deploy Win7 32bit on them, and the 95% success rate while using 64bit. I've done probably over 50 (or maybe 100) deployments on this new spec and was never able to explain why I wasn't getting a 100% replication of either kind.

Intel and the other ODMs I was in contact with didn't really have any idea of what the trouble was. It took me about 2 months to get the "32bit not supported on UEFI" email from Microsoft. While the official line of why Win 8 32bit isn't supported because it can't take advantage of UEFI 2.3.1's features, I'm certain this slight incompatibility also weighs heavily into their decision.

Now for the technical reasoning behind this, it has to do with the bootloader. You should be able to deploy 32bit Win8 (or Win7 for that matter) onto a UEFI 2.3.1 spec board as long as you use unattend to only have 1 partition. Its when there is a System Reserved (or similar) partition involved that Windows does a kabooom on this hardware spec. It was really annoying when I didn't have the answer, but now that I do we just adapt to it. What else can you do?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Tripredacus

Are you sure about that? I've got an UEFI motherboard (ASRock A55 Pro3) and had no problems with installing Windows 2000 on it. Is it only related to UEFI 2.3.1?

Edited by tomasz86
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now for the technical reasoning behind this, it has to do with the bootloader. You should be able to deploy 32bit Win8 (or Win7 for that matter) onto a UEFI 2.3.1 spec board as long as you use unattend to only have 1 partition. Its when there is a System Reserved (or similar) partition involved that Windows does a kabooom on this hardware spec. It was really annoying when I didn't have the answer, but now that I do we just adapt to it. What else can you do?

Thanks, Tripredacus. I was wondering if it was a sneaky way to leave 32-bit OS's off the plane.

--JorgeA

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well it seems that the UEFI thing was decided back in 2006 as you can read in that KB article. Remember this was even before it was expected that Windows 8 would only have a 64bit and 128bit version. :rolleyes:

So what ended up happening was that after initial development, the UEFI spec was only to support 64bit. And it turns out the market didn't exactly trend along with the projections, so we now have a situation where hardware supports UEFI 2.3.1 (due to manufacturers getting product out to support Windows 8) and still quite a demand for 32bit OS. And most of that demand is from the Enterprise and ISVs, not so much the consumer market.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OT :ph34r:, but not much ;), and about shooting one's feet, seemingly MS decided to shoot it's parrtner's feet:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9348986/Microsoft-Windows-Phone-8-leaves-Nokia-in-fragments.html

Guess WHICH part of Windows 8 will be anyway available to users of the "old" (on average less than one year old) Lumia's? :rolleyes: :

http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/06/21/windows-phone-7-8-hitting-nokia-lumia-710-and-800-next-week/

jaclaz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's funny. Windows phones already don't sell (they're like 1% of the market), Nokia is just about the only company that still bothers making them, and Nokia's sales are quickly dropping: 24.4M smart phones sold in Q1/2011, to 19.6 in Q4/2011 to a mere 11.9 in Q1/2012. And only a small part of that are Windows phones too (2M -- yep, their old Symbian phones outsell them 5 to 1). Their sales dropped more than 50% in a year, in a market that's very healthy and with HUGE growth (50% in a single year). Nokia's doing so poorly (a €929 million net loss in Q1/2012) that they're currently cutting 10000 jobs and shutting plants down. And with this announcement, analysts (Nomura Holdings Inc) just slashed their sales predictions of Nokia devices by 41% which is understandable, because who wants to buy an obsolete phone that already wasn't selling? I don't see those Surface tablets selling much better either.

Meanwhile, iDevices are selling like crazy (enough to have made Apple the most valuable company i.e. the one with the biggest market value worldwide), and Google's activating more than 900,000 Android devices per day. MS already lost the game and they're turning Windows into garbage in order to win a war that's already lost.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have just found out,classic Shell has been updated today with better support for Windows 8. In this new version of Classic Shell 3.5.1 it now boots straight to the desktop,by passing the Metro start screen.

See here Classic Shell forums-My link

As you know previously on Windows 8, you had to click on the desktop tile to get to the desktop. Not anymore.

Now if you have Classic Shell 3.5.1 installed,you are now taken straight to the desktop on every start up and log on. And another thing that's new in this version of Classic Shell 3.5.1 is that now,when you click"search files and folders." You are taken to Windows Explorer just like on Windows 7. Where as in previous versions of Classic Shell you got taken to the Metro start menu. Which did not suit everybody or me.

So before when you had Classic Shell installed on Windows 8,you hardly dealt with the Metro theme and Metro start menu. But now if you have the new version of Classic Shell installed,you don't deal with it at all. As now all of your work is done from the Windows XP or Windows 7 start menu on Classic Shell in Windows 8.

So it looks like we are winning the battle to see less of the Metro theme on Windows 8. As Classic Shell works on all versions of Windows 8,including Windows 8 RP. And if you install classic Shell you can now boot straight to the desktop on Windows 8 RP and Windows 8 CP. So now no more hacks if you have got Classic Shell installed.

So,time to upgrade to the new version of Classic Shell 3.5.1. Andrea Borman.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just tried it! It works excellent. Windows 8 boots beautyfully directly on desktop. :thumbup . And it gives you the best start button and start menu ever! The classic Shell! Still there is the sidebar which gives you te possibilty to use the metro if you like to do so! I can say that I am very very satisfied with this new development and now the major reason not to upgrade to the newest OS is not only gone but thanks to Classic Shell the whole situation is now better than ever!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's DEFINETLY the best news! And a good reason to turn to Windows 8! :yes: It seems that even the worst limitations can be worked around!

In the same sense that one can drive around the potholes on a really bad street but given the choice every day it might be more sensible to just use a different street.

There is still the uglified Aero transparency. And there is still the low budget amateurish icon set that looks like it was stolen out of a public bus or airport terminal. Lots of people will be angry with the decapitated multimedia functionality which is designed to make you ignore the piles of optical media you already purchased and instead become a dumb terminal for internet based content and advertisements. There is a lot of freedom of choice that has been deprecated and that is the point really. To breed a whole new category, a stable of consumer Microslaves who are one click away from buying stuff.

Frankly I think this thing is one of the biggest insults ever perpetrated on a company's existing customer user base while simultaneously a wild flailing stab for the non-users currently comfortable on their iPhones and other rival devices. See what they did there, designing one product for two completely different audiences.

Metro should have been a self-contained simple add-in available for any Windows version, a VM-like protected sandbox building upon previous ideas like DosBox and Sandboxie that runs in a Window for developers or end-users on demand. Not smashed like a square peg in a round hold onto everybody's system that may be interested in the minor updates to the OS core between Windows 6.1 and Windows 6.2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not only that. But in the new version of Classic Shell you can now change the start button or create your own custom button on Windows 7. This is the first time we have ever been able to change the start button in Windows 7. But although Classic Shell now has the added feature of being able to change the start orb on Windows 7,you cannot change the start orb on Windows Vista. in Classic Shell.

So the feature of being able to change the start orb in Classic Shell has been added to Windows 7 but has not been added to Windows Vista. I don't know why that is. Maybe the feature that enables Classic Shell to change the start orb in Windows 7 is not compatible with Windows Vista. So it has not been added to Windows Vista. But Classic Shell will give you both the Windows XP start menu,the Windows 7 and other customised start menu's on Windows Vista. just like it does on Windows 7 and Windows 8.

The new feature of being able to change the start orb or create your own custom button on Windows 7 in Classic Shell is a new and interesting one. As in the past you could not change the start orb on Windows 7,Windows Vista or Windows XP,without editing the shell files.Which is risky as you can break Windows.

The only other start menu software's I know that can change the start orb on Windows 7 and Windows XP are Start Menu 7 and Vi Start. But that's not very well done as it looks like the start orb is placed on top of the old start orb.

But not on Classic Shell as you can see in my picture of my Windows 7 with my Windows XP start orb,thanks to Classic Shell. Andrea Borman.

post-355949-0-55300400-1341142414_thumb.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...