Win 7 to 8

Hello

I don't know if this is approprite for this forum but I'll try. I am about to leave Win 7 Hom Premium 64 bit and move to Win 8.

I have studied a lot but before I get stuck with a couple of questions I wonderer if someone here could fill in a couple of blanks for me.

I ran the advisor and some featues are not compatible like avisynth , bluetooth, Win live essentials,MSE DVD and ATI and ATI manager.

1-Do I remove these before I install 8 or are they just not compatible and I seek out drivers when 8 is installed?


I know how to start the download for $39.99 and save it as an iso file to desktop. Then right click it and burn to dvd. I have a burner but this is what a turtorial says to do if you have Win 7.

I keep my key safe for later and pay.


2-I have the Win Media Center and Win PRO Pack coupon but don't know which to pick.


3-After I set the bios to boot from disc, the partitions confuse me. I am doing a clean install.

I have attached a pik of my discs which may help you tell me if I should keep any partitons at all and which ones.


4-Do I need to click the advanced button at this partitoning point?


5-If there are any other tricky places could you pease advise me?


I know I am asking alot but I would really appreciate the help.

Thank you,

Peter

 

1. The funny thing about 8 is that there is a ton of stuff preinstalled with the live tiles. Almost all of the live essentials are already installed. I really like the mail app myself. I'm not sure about the other programs.
2. Windows media center isn't included with Windows 8. I have windows 8 basic and found out the WMC coupon only works for the Win 8 Pro. So if you are going to use both, you will need to the Pro pack update then the WMC update.
3. My laptop came preloaded with Win 8 so I didnt do much installing myself, but I would imagine the System Reserved portion is either for backups or for the OS itself. Outside of that I'm not sure.
4. Not sure
5. I haven't seen anything tricky other than the start menu is missing. You can add a toolbar manually by right clicking the taskbar and creating a new toolbar. Type in %programdata%\microsoft\windows\start menu. Or you could install a 3rd party program like classic shell to get a start menu.

Hope this helps a little. This is all based on my recent experience with Win 8.

 

I hope someone who knows the answers I asked will anwer for me, but thank you.

 

As I've said before peter nothing is going to survive a clean install. If you want these features in Win 8 you will have to find and install them after 8 is up and running.

You need the Media Center. If it's Win 8 Pro you have downloaded you won't need the Pro pack as you already have it.

See 4

Probably yes as you need to delete both existing partitions and create a new one for Win 8. I believe you can do this through the advanced options but please don't ask me for a step-by-step. It should be self-evident though as you want a new partition which uses all of the disk.

Apart from the partitioning it's absolutely straightforward but, as always, take an image of the entire disk before starting. That way if you do get it wrong - unlikely - you can always start again.

 

Personally I would stick with 7. Unless you have a touch screen on your PC, or wanting to go to Bob 2.0, stick with 7. 8 is having still too many problems with it since its release mainstream. Just last week, we had problems trying to get into the bios for my son's brand new Toshiba Satellite, and after three or four tries, we managed to kill the Windows 8 install. In order to bring back to life, had to do a full recovery and then reinstall the updates.

Just do yourself a favor and stick with 7, there really is nothing special for 8, until you start getting into the server edition, and then you get some stuff that Server 2010 did not offer. Even the Metro Gui for Server 2012 is as fugly as the Metro for 8 desktop.

 

Well, with the partitons, I think I will select the one I want 8 installed on and keep the others so I can reinstall 7 if I need to.
The reason I might try is that the pc is pretty full of clutter after a couple of years and could use a format anyway. I have the 7 OS disc and the dvds I created when I got the machine.

I won't be writing again as I have gotten all of my answers attended to and I am thankful for your kind patience.

It sounds like you cannot put a smartphone/tablet in a desktop.

I have now to think about what I will do.

I'll let you know and thank you once again.

I give this forum a pat on the back as others have a section just for Win 8 and they are not as friendly. :wave

 

The System Reserved partition contains Win 7's boot files. If you leave it there and install 8 on the existing C partition it may cause your 8 not to boot so you should delete it. That won't stop you from reinstalling 7 later if that's what you want.

 

Thank you for that explanation, B.

I was doing ok till Win 8 came along with Windows 8 hardware using the UEFI replacement for the traditional BIOS, like Macs do etc etc. etc

Nothing justifies a new pc to play with when when Win 7 is still fresh and running. Buying good hardware based on historical OS migration did not pan out this time. They pulled the rug out from under.
My wife can surf and email.
I still have tv.

 

UEFI has no implications for you peter. 8 installs and runs just fine on older machines. It's no different at all from earlier upgrades - 98 to XP, XP to Vista, Vista to 7 etc. It's about whether you want to move on or stick.