Will Windows 8.1 Upgrade Retain Installed Software?
Sep 28, 2013
While I'm somewhat undecided about how I'm going to update to Windows 8.1, I started wondering about how the update process works.
The last thing I do before I update will be to make an image of my C: drive, so I can experiment a little.
If I just run the update from the Windows update utility will it keep all of my installed software?
I ask because of how Windows refresh treats your installed software as if it didn't exist.
I'm leaning toward just trying the upgrade process because I can always go back and do a clean install if it doesn't work out anyway and I'd like to see it the update process does really work.
I have so much stuff installed that I'm literally looking at weeks of work to get everything back and configured again if I start from scratch.
All of my games, graphic arts software, all of my movie and sound editing programs, not to mention all of the little items like Fraps, Dropbox, Itunes, 3D Movie Maker, the list goes on and on.
I have a sony vaio laptop which came with a pre-installed windows 8 OS. I recently upgraded it to windows 8.1. After the upgrade, I have observed that many softwares that are actually installed on the system are not listed in the apps list, such as Microsoft office, autocad, freemake, etc. It becomes really inconvenient to open any new file of these software.
I've been trying to change my power options. I go into Power Saver, "change plan settings," and try to change the "On battery" setting from "Put the computer to sleep: 3 minutes" to "Put the computer to sleep: Never." (I want to make this change because I have a Dell XPS, and it can have difficulties waking up from sleep.)
I've made this change a number of times, but after a while my computer simply reverts back to the 3 minute setting on its own. So, I leave the machine alone for a few minutes, I come back, and it's asleep...even though I thought I had changed the setting to 30 minutes. And in fact, I *had* changed the setting to 30 minutes; the computer is somehow reverting to 3 minutes on its own.
At work i have Windows 8 Pro installed from an MSDN ISO, having been waiting for the 8.1 update today i have now just seen a quote on Microsoft's site saying "If you installed Windows 8 using an MSDN ISO, you might be able to install Windows 8.1 using a similar ISO from MSDN"
Is there an easy upgrade option for this type of Windows 8 install? Preferably, without losing any data.
I was upgrading to Win 8.1 pro with WMC, but when the download was just 5% completed, the net got disconnected due to power cut. When I restarted the system and Click on the Upgrade Tile in the Store, it goes to Download Page. And when I click on the Download button, it says Application is installed. I can't find it in My apps either so that I can click on uninstall and do a fresh upgrade. The download was only 5% completed. Now I am unable to upgrade.
PS: I googled somewhere and found that I had to empty the SoftwareDistribution folder is to be emptied. After doing that, now when I try to upgrade I get "Your Windows 8.1 installation could not be completed, something went wrong and the windows installation could not complete".
I've looked through the Skydrive FAQ, I cannot seem to verify if I wipe my drive, the files synched will remain on Skydrive.
I have ran the beta Windows 8 since release, subsequently lost my job and cannot afford the $40 to buy upgrade now that Jan 15th is here. (RC/Beta expire, OS reboots every 2hrs, installing Ubuntu)
I have a grandfathered 25GB account with all my MP3's and photo's and would like to know for sure they will remain on Skydrive if I wipe my laptop. Would make it much easier than backing up these files once again across multiple USB and DVD's.
I tried to use location on the Bing weather app and it was over 100 miles out. Couldn't figure out how to solve this so uninstalled it.
Then I did something obviously stupid, I did a restore. I thought that by 'all apps' WIndows 8 did not mean programs, but it evidently does (a slight rewrite would make that clearer to those of us who don't identify all apps as including programs).
Ok, I had to reinstall programs, a nuisance but that's all. However, all my Bing apps are now gone.
They appear in 'Your apps' in the store as in my computer named DOUGW-PC but a search doesn't find them. Reinstalling doesn't do anything either. I can install new apps and they show up fine.
I'm using Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit. If I go to Control Panel/Windows Update/View Update History KB2919442 is shown as installed successfully on the 12 March 2014 "BUT" if I go to Control Panel/Windows Update/Installed Updates there is no KB2919442 listed.
If I download KB2919442 directly from Microsoft and try to install it manually it says "This update is not applicable to your computer"
I'm obviously having no success trying to install KB2919355 as it never shows as available in Windows Update and if I download it manually from Microsoft and try installing manually I get the same error message "This update is not applicable to your computer"
Yesterday, I clean-installed Windows 8 Pro x86 on an old Dell Vostro 1400 laptop which had been running Windows 7 Ultimate, and it activated and ran fine, without even a single exclamation point in Device Manager. I applied the update necessary to make the Store offer 8.1 and proceeded to install it as I've done on a couple other machines. After downloading the thing, it errored out with:
Couldn't install Windows 8.1
Contact your PC manufacturer to see if you can upgrade the System BIOS
When I clicked the OK button, it then gave me the informative and grammar-challenged error box:
Something happened and the Windows 8.1 couldn't be installed. Please try again. Error code: 0xc1900104
Try again Cancel
Ever the optimist, I clicked Try again, and of course, it proceeded to download all over again from scratch, only to error out in the same way. I then downloaded all the Windows 8 updates, although just the one had been necessary on my other machines that successfully upgraded to 8.1, and tried again, only to get the same result.
Today, I've discovered the Windows 8.1 Compatibility Assistant, which avoids the lengthy download of the upgrade every time (Microsoft, maybe you should run it implicitly before downloading 3 GB of transient data), and it tells me:
This PC doesn't meet system requirements
Contact your PC manufacturer to see if you can upgrade the System BIOS
Obviously, no BIOS updates are available, and what exactly is the problem here with my BIOS. The obvious googling turned up nothing except some people with Sony Vaios that had the same problem, which was corrected with a BIOS update, and of course, there is no information on what their BIOS update does to make the 8.1 upgrade possible.
I've just upgraded from win8 to win 8.1 using the windows update (store), my questions are :
1. Can the ISO file that was automatically downloaded by the system during windows 8 upgrade to 8.1 be saved or backed up? the download was about 2.6 GB.
2. If so can the backed up file be used to do a "clean install" in future on the same machine?
Is it possible my new windows 8 computer does not have a browser installed? It's been a week, I keep searching, can't find one anywhere. I installed chrome on it, that works. I assume I can download IE free from MS, But IE has to already be on this thing someplace. Where is it?
Unlike windows 7 in windows 8 when i shutdown my PC, the monitor shuts down in 4-5 secs, but my CPU still runs for while(approx. 1 min), I have to wait until the whole PC shuts down. If I don't & cut the power from the UPS Battery,the next time I boot into the PC, I don't get a fast start up.
- I have 160 GB Clover 161HJ ATA Hard disk drive - Intel dh55pj motherboard - Intel core i3 540 processor,clocked at 3.06-3.07 GHz
I installed Windows 8 and cannot boot my computer. I can hear the hard drive whirring but then it stops completely and black screen... Before that the power brick stopped working and the motherboard was fried.
I'm on Windows 8 64-bit on a Toshiba Satellite L750.
My computer has constantly been a pain and has not once been completely usable. There is always some sort of flaw. I deleted everything and installed Windows 8 last week because it seemed as though only 2gb of my 6gb of ram was being used, and I wanted to installed Win 8.
Currently in the Resource Monitor I have 2 gb in use/free and 4gb of is labelled 'Hardware Reserved' and doesn't appear to do anything.
I have spent the past two hours trying out different methods to get it to work, but none of them did, and on the forums I looked at there seemed to be no real solution and the threads just trail off into unrelated problems.
I really need this 4gb to be active so I can actually use my computer properly and use the full 6gb of ram that came with the laptop. This problem has been around on Windows 7 and still exists after doing a fresh install of Windows 8.
I'm using Classic Shell to navigate and I go to the Apps folder. I have tons of apps installed it seams, Weather, Video, Travel, netflix etc.. i don't need any of these and wish to completely remove them from my system. I suspect i should be able to do this from Programs and Features and turning windows features on and off but I don't know where these apps reside.. I can't seem to be able to find any of them in the Windows features area. I also want to uninstall any unneeded apps that show up in the metro start page thing. Not just disable them, or unpin them.. I don't want them on my system at all.
I installed Windows 8 on a separate hard disk plugged into a Windows 7 machine, ultimately of course resulting in a dual boot machine - with 7 on C: and 8 on D:. I added BOOTMGR to the Windows 8 drive (with bcdedit) and have removed the 7 drive leaving only the fresh Windows 8 drive in the PC.
In Windows 8, I can see that the system drive is still D: - 8 doesn't show itself as C: at all, like my Google search results said it should.
I tried changing the drive letter to C from diskmgmt.msc but I get an error saying: "Bad parameter".
Now what's that all about? How to change the system drive into C?
My friend's sister installed Windows 8 twice, and it installed successfully both times. When I start the Netbook it gives me an option to choose between one of the two installs. I'd like to delete one of the installations but I'm not sure how to do so.
I installed windows 8 on my PC 3 days back. The problem i am facing is that it's sound is not working. I heard we don not need to install additional software to make sound working. But this is not working in my case.
I'm certain I have the right memory installed. I just noticed that Windows seems to think I only have 4GB installed (I have 8 installed). In doing some research about this, I found that maybe the BIOS needs to be updated. I don't want to update the BIOS unless necessary in order to avoid something getting messed up.
I was trying to install windows 8.1 on my new SSD for my laptop. However during the installation process, I accidentally unplugged the USB drive that had the Windows 8.1 install on it and the process was interrupted.
Now whenever I plug in that SSD into my laptop it gets stuck in this "boot loop" kind of deal where I hear it start up and turn off all in a matter of 10 seconds or so and all I get is a black screen.
Without the second hard drive my laptop runs almost flawlessly. Only issue is upon booting up it asks which operating system to use and gives me two options: Boot from Windows 8.1 or Boot from Windows 8.1 volume 4.
Earlier today, I decided to do a fresh install from my retail CD of Windows 8. Windows 8 was my existing OS. (I just wanted to start fresh). For some reason, it did not create the usual two additional small partitions (system reserved and one called recovery). Everything seemed to work alright, but was wondering why this happened (only the C: partition was created).
Chrome on Windows 8 launched from "Metro" screen doesn't support many extensions, for example Awesome Screenshot (over 1,000,000 users) can't be installed from Chrome Web Store???
This means Chrome browser on Win 8 launched from "Metro" screen doesn't support extensions and apps that use plugins?
i have the same problem, it gives me the same error, "Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The partition contains one or more dynamic volumes that are not supported for installation."
my laptop came with a pre installed windows 8 having gpt format but i downgraded to windows 7 and reformatted it to ntfs,.. now I want to go back to windows 8 and format the drive to gpt again, but the external hard drive that contains the backup image was corrupted. What should I do?
I bought a Razer Blade 14" laptop last week and it comes pre-installed with windows 8.1 core
Im looking for a way to download the windows 8.1 core x64 iso so that i can format the laptop and reset the partitions of the ssd (14GB is allocated to the system restore)
after much googling i saw that people have been getting an iso through using their windows 8 key, but mine is straight up 8.1 so after trying the method it did not work.
Installed 8.1 about a week ago and I'm fairly happy with it so far (after removing charms, going straight to desktop etc) however I have a few minor problems.
Firstly my windows keyboard shortcut key is not working (Logitech G15)
Secondly in power options there are no plans that I can change, if for example I try to create a power plan I get the message "Your power plan information is not available". Tried sfc etc but no problems are detected.
Finally it just seems slower in some respects vs win 7 x64 ultimate, especially booting up. SSDs are all trimmed and aligned and all drivers are installed.
