I have Installed Windows 8 Pro after getting it cheap (£10) windows expertzone offer / upon rebooting after unlocking LFS / I Have had to unlock it again for a 2nd time no hardware changes made - software issue reason for reboot was the USB software provided by Asus caused an incompatibility for the USB controllers so windows 8 disabled them at startup (great!)
(using a new os with no mouse \o/)

I fear to try reboot again

Any chance of increasing unlocks - just in case this turns out to be lost each reboot.
At moment I dont want to test until I get some more unlocks please.

*edit USB isssue is AICharger = there is a update that resloves the controller issue*
**windows update does not provide an update**
*** Here is fix*** http://event.asus.com/mb/2010/ai_charger/

Decided to reboot / LFS still unlocked / phew. Seems was as suspected USB controller messing with windows activation.

Thanks for pointing this issue out, I had exact same problem when I had a ASUS motherboard.

As far as I know, XP is still the last decent OS from MS.

I read some horrors about Windows 8, how it is basically designed for small screen tablets and not convenient on a PC.

But anyway I still don't want to move from XP because I can set my desktop to use two monitors as a single extended desktop and I can set LFS to run full screen on that. As far as I know, this very good feature was disabled in Vista, and hasn't returned since. But please tell me if I'm wrong.

The multiple screen feature was indeed removed by Vista, but modern AMD and nVidia graphics cards can do it themselves. AMD's Eyefinity supports up to 6 screens per card and I believe nVidia has some kind of equivalent.


Windows 7 is actually a very solid OS. There are a fair few improvements over XP - its 64bit implementation especially, plus better stability - although it does use more RAM (less than Vista though). Saying that, with 8GB RAM costing less than £30, who cares.


Underneath, Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 with some performance improvements and a few other tweaks.

The new tablet ("don't call it Metro"*) interface is the start menu and nothing more. The desktop still exists as it was, other than the start menu, so the only time you need to access the tablet interface is when opening programs and shutting down. It is a bit clunky to use with a mouse though, but a hell of a lot better than it was in the Developer Preview.
Frankly that's no real hardship, as since Vista most people use the start menu only to begin typing the name of a program then select it from the list of the results - that behaviour hasn't changed.


I haven't properly played with W8 on real hardware yet - only in a VM - so I can't really say what it's like to use on the long term.
I've been using W7 every day for over 3 years now and I personally prefer it to XP. It's certainly much more stable; the only thing that's ever crashed it for me is when the occasional broken version of Flash takes out the graphics driver.


*They got sued over the Metro name for Trademark infringement or something

^ what Degats Said but there is a little more to windows 8 then meets the eye.
And yeah its now called "modern ui"
I am a little curious why people complain about the start menu / before this it was CLI / for me it is just evolving with the times. The desktop is just a click away so why the fuss / create own start menus with toolbars.
The more I use Windows 8 the more I like it For me the tile system works well as an overview to the PC. Want to go work power user style use desktop.

Now normally when installing a new operating system, I would do a clean install and dual boot. But the issues regarding GPT/MBR installs from USB/EFI caused me a few headaches + raid arrays.
So I just upgraded the OS....
The USB issue kicked in after on first boot into installed OS.
On the first boot, all was ok USB was fine / it was on the 2nd reboot that USB was killed by OS disabling AI chargers hooks into the controllers.
W8 would not let me uninstall the software
Only solution was as in 1st post.
Odd thing is mates at work with Intel (cwhh /me spits)
W8 application compatibility checker sees AIChargers as incompatible as asks user to remove.
This seems to be bug with AMD systems.
Anyways in my humble opinion hardware is becoming more geared to mobility and the trend is now even influencing the largest X86 chip makers (Intel AMD).
Hence the changes for the largest X86 OS = W8

Windows 8 does improve on multi monitor support / I have yet to test the capabilities of the capabilities per application / per screen etc.

I do plan to test this soon and will report on LFS behaviour if any odd stuff happens, prolly keep it to this thread or mmm will see what happens.

Windows 8 = W7+1 in my opinion. The metro interface (yes, I will call it that) is easily fixed by installing Start8. The kernel improvements in 8 are pretty fantastic, it simply feels much faster and smoother than 7, let alone XP. Multi monitor support has also been improved with a proper taskbar that extends to all screens.

Being a developer, I think having a triple screen setup would be the best option without having to rely on XP's legacy dual monitor support. Both AMD and Nvidia now offer several screens on one card. Keplers can do three gaming monitors + one desktop monitor running at the same time.

Quote from Matrixi :

Windows 8 = W7+1 in my opinion.

Actually, Vista.2
Vista = 6.0; W7 = 6.1; W8 = 6.2.

TBH, I think Vista got way more bad press than it deserved.
Most of the initial problems were caused firstly by the change in driver model, which meant that hardware manufacturers had to get off there arses and update drivers - something that many were incapable/slow at doing. Secondly, they removed a lot of the 'hacky' ways of doing things, which meant that a lot of programs that weren't written properly in the first place had problems. Finally there was all that "Vista capable" crap with PC OEMs - that one probably has equal blame between MS and the OEMs.

Vista with SP2 wasn't actually much different from the early W7 versions. There are a few retarded things about it and some inefficiencies, but it runs a lot better than it did originally.
Windows 7 fixed many of the strange design choices, improves UAC and has improved stability and efficiency - basically just tweaks and a few features over Vista. W7 is better than Vista overall but there's not actually a huge difference between the two.

Something that I think was forgotten by most people who still loudly hate on Vista is how much of a dog the almighty XP was when it first came out. It had a heavily criticised UI, consumer driver/software compatibility problems and was more of a resource hog and more unstable than Win2k. Sound familiar?
XP only really became usable after SP1 and only got good after the big changes made in SP2.

ive currently got windows 7 and windows 8 each and degats gets it correct by saying its windows 7 plus more , it looks similar in parts until going through things like the start menu and i kind of like the windows app store. on windows 7 its just as easy or possibly easier to setup multiple monitors, if using 2 monitors its easily done within windows display settings

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976064

Quote from spotty1 :

on windows 7 its just as easy or possibly easier to setup multiple monitors, if using 2 monitors its easily done within windows display settings

The specific multiple monitor feature that was removed (as a built-in Windows feature) since Vista is where multiple displays behave as if they're the same screen - meaning fullscreen games etc will span across both displays.

In Vista/7/8, the displays used in extended mode still behave mostly independently - the start menu, task bar & full screen applications load by default only on the primary display and maximised applications will only be on a single display, not both simultaneously.

To get the old feature back on Vista/7/8, you have to use hardware (TH2G), software (SoftTH, but that only works for fullscreen 3d programs afaik) or a 3rd party driver feature like Eyefinity.