Paul Thurrott: Windows 8 Secrets

A related issue is that even the most fastidious advocate of backing up may miss something. As you recover your data and start reinstalling applications after a clean install, you may discover that you forgot to de-authorize an application like Apple iTunes or Adobe Photoshop, didn’t back up a critical but hidden data file (like Outlook’s notorious PST file), or missed some other palm-slap-to-the-forehead, obvious-after-the-fact thing that you really wish you had remembered. But once you’ve blown away your previous Windows install, it’s too late.

Microsoft tried to alleviate these issues in the past with solutions that were separate from and ran outside of Setup. One, called Upgrade Advisor, evaluated the hardware, devices, and installed software on your PC and then presented you with a report containing, potentially, a list of issues you may need to address before installing Windows. A second utility, called Windows Easy Transfer, took the guesswork out of files (documents, pictures, movies, and so on), e-mail, and settings from the previous version of Windows to the new version. You would run Windows Easy Transfer twice: once against the previous version of Windows to acquire this data and then again under the new version to apply it all back.

Windows Easy Transfer had other onerous requirements. You needed an external hard drive, network location, or even a crazy, specially designed USB cable to use this utility.

Upgrade Advisor and Windows Easy Transfer are both excellent tools, but they suffer from the same basic problems: You need to know they exist, and obtain them, and do so before you install Windows. And there’s nothing in Windows Setup to even suggest that such tools are available. As a result, many users simply don’t know about them and run into problems these tools could have easily fixed.

In Windows 8, the traditional Windows Setup routine doesn’t solve these issues, and it works much like that of its predecessor. But the new web-based installer does solve these issues, and it does so in the most obvious way possible: It integrates both the Upgrade Advisor and Windows Easy Transfer directly into Setup, making these processes not just discoverable but obvious and unavoidable.

The web-based installer has other advantages as well.

For example, with traditional, media-based installs of Windows, you need to know whether you have a 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) version of Windows and then buy and use the appropriate Upgrade media when performing an in-place upgrade. With the Windows 8 web-based installer, this is handled for you behind the scenes.

Each Windows Setup disc or download also comes with an associated product key, a complex, 25-digit sequence of letters and numbers that you must manually enter accurately before Setup will continue and, later, activate Windows. With the web-based installer, this product key is tied to your Microsoft account and automatically applied to the install during setup. It’s yet another thing you don’t need to be worried about.

Also, the Windows 8 web-based installer uses a new form of compression that is specially tuned for the massive Windows Imaging (WIM) file that makes up the majority (size-wise) of the files that form Windows Setup. So it’s far more efficient to stream this file from the web while running Setup than the old method of downloading a disc image file (in ISO format), burning that to disc (or installing to USB), rebooting the computer, and running Setup that way.

Put simply, the new web-based installer is faster and far more full-featured than the traditional, media-based Setup variant. Like we said earlier, we can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to use it.

Well, there are always reasons, of course. Enthusiasts who purchase or build their own computer without a copy of Windows preinstalled may need to install Windows 8 the old-fashioned way. For such cases, Microsoft does allow you to download an ISO version of Windows Setup as before, and then create your own Setup disc or USB device. Remember, Windows is all about choice.

Okay, there’s one other reason. If you’ve been running Windows 8 for a while and would like to reinstall the OS from scratch, there’s a new, quicker way than with previous methods. It’s called Push Button Reset, and it can work in one of two ways: A factory-fresh, literally new install of Windows or a new install of Windows in which your settings and Metro-style apps are retained as well. This new feature is so amazing and so useful that we devote a lot of time to it in Chapter 11.

You can access the web-based Windows 8 Setup from the Microsoft Store ( store.microsoft.com) as well.

Before you can install Windows 8 with the web-based installer, you will need to visit Microsoft’s Windows website ( windows.com), sign in with your Microsoft account, and purchase the version of Windows you’d like to use. Microsoft will provide you with a product key, which you won’t need if you’re using these instructions, and then provide you with an opportunity to run Windows Setup from the web or download the operating system in ISO format so that you can burn it to disc or copy it to a bootable USB device later. Choose the former.

This initial download is tiny, about 5 MB, and it initiates Windows 8 Setup. You can run this file directly from your browser or choose to save it to the hard drive and then run.

In the first phase of the wizard-based Setup application that launches, an Upgrade Advisor-type tool runs and polls your software applications and hardware devices to see whether everything is compatible with Windows 8. When the compatibility check is complete, the wizard will indicate whether you have any items that need your attention. (See Figure 2-2.) If you’re lucky, this will be a short list, but no worries yet. As you may discover, most of the items that require your attention are minor.

Figure 2-2:Cross your fingers. You could be lucky here.

To see what’s wrong, click the link titled See compatibility details. This report, shown in Figure 2-3, can be printed or saved to disk, but oftentimes you can deal with the pertinent issues immediately.

Figure 2-3:The Compatibility details report

In our experience, some typical issues do arise here. These include:

• Microsoft Security Essentials:Microsoft’s free antivirus solution is not compatible with Windows 8, so you will need to uninstall it before Setup will continue. (You will be prompted to do so.)

• Apple iTunes:The compatibility checker is nice enough to remind you to de-authorize your iTunes account from within the iTunes application before continuing. However, you should remember that some other applications will need to be de-authorized as well, including some from Adobe, such as Photoshop.

• Other software issues:The compatibility report lists any software applications that will not work in Windows 8, many of which will be accompanied by a link so you can get help on the application’s website. If you see such a message, save the compatibility report to disk, back it up, and use it later to make the fix(es).

• Other hardware issues:Some hardware drivers may need to be updated after Windows 8 installs, and the compatibility report will call out some of them with a message to get updated drivers from Windows Update or the manufacturer’s website. This necessity is discussed in the section about post-Setup tasks later in the chapter.