The Windows 8 thread - post your experience here

[danger]

Anybody using here Virus TI as plugin successfully under W8? (no soundcard feature now)

[mfx]

I've not had much luck with ASIO soundcards in WIndows 8.

I performed a fresh W8 install on the PC (not an upgrade: cleared drive using diskpart and installing straight from Windows8 ISO), with no other peripherals or drives attached and added each one by one. My experience :

Access Virus on USB2 port (not hubbed) with 1 meter shielded usb2 cable. Sound dropped
RME Fireface using the advised legacy method with 3070 driver. Worked for about 10 minutes then dropped had to reset fireface.
Various plugins failing.

For ease, sanity and productivity went back to my system image Windows7 restore.

I personally will wait till SP1 is released.

Things to look at if you wish to persist.

Obviously perform a fresh reinstall I have a link which might help you (do not simply apply an upgrade to your existing W7 install = trouble) :

Check all drivers are latest.
Check all your motherboard drivers are upto date. Worth emailing your hardware support of mobo top verify the best drivers for your bios with Windows8.

Anyway a good guide to installing Windows7 and the same applies to Windows8 :

Reinstalling Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

My personal experience:

Process :

• Backed up any important data on the OS drive ie; bookmarks, etc.

• Updated the motherboard bios using the latest available from the hardware manufacturers. Reset everything and rebooted back into BIOS. Set the BIOS for Hard Drives to AHCI for all drives and SSD to default boot with no other devices bootable including LAN etc. Switched off any unecesary motherboard hardware (2 on board ethernet sockets as I use a seperate PCI ethernet card) and the onboard HD sound intel CH10 (from memory). Made sure as many relevant bios setting at default/auto particularly for memory and cpu timings.

• Disconnected all hard drives leaving only the SSD on Port 0 and the DVD drive (IDE 1) connected, replaced all the sata cable with new ones (had some spare). Had a general clean up of all the fans and tidied all cables leaving inners streamlined for air flow. All Hard drives except SSD still not attached and left out for the remainder of Windows 7 install.

• Using the Linux/Ubuntu boot disk method performed a secure SSD erase restoring the drive to manufacturers state.

• No formatting required as SSD secured wiped let Windows 7 decide and did not opt for format. Installed Windows7 without any usb ports occupied (apart from mouse and keyboard) and no other hard drives or hardware attached (apart from the obvious graphics card etc...Im not that good).

• Ran updates for everything.

• Reconnected each hard drive one by one performing reboots and updates on each occassion. I did not use any of the JB Micron controller ports. On reading some post around the net and from users on the manufacturers (EVGA) forum they are not overly recommended, feel free to interject and correct my info here. This also identified that one of my recent harddrive purchases was a SCSI drive on SATA with 64MB Cache, believe this may be better serviced on a motherboard with USBIII?

• Once everything was done performed a windows backup system image before installing any more hardware, software or drivers.

• Installed each hardware component piece by piece using windows update driversw or latest manufacturer drivers. Rebooting on each install.

• Installed all relevant software required for my use and registered (takes hours, well 2 days but done). Only software I installed for system maintenance was CCleaner to keep the SSD free of junk, ESETNod 32 (I trust this antivirus), 7zip for compressed files, VLCPlayer for playback, Infranview for photos, Foobar for music, copytrans for ipod and only firefox for browsing (ignoring Internet explorer 9). Configured all the software for my use (again time consuming) and promised should I need anything more in the future I have a book to make notes and when a page is filled restore from image, retweak and back up again.

•Checked the eventviewer verifying no nasty exclamation marks and warnings, apart from one's which I was aware about when installing 2 pieces of aditional software and trying to be clever.

• Renamed the original WindowsBackUpSystem image to original and performed a final backup along with recovery DVD just in case.

Been running now for 3 days and only 1 BSOD which occurred when installing Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007. Ran antivrus and spyware check on the disk in the laptop. There were approx 6 cab files not accessible so rescanned system post office install. On second install attempt all went smoothly. Possibly the ide cable was not quite in properly. This is a genuine copy as far as I can tell.

So what I have learnt from this lesson :

Be patient, dont do short cuts no matter how tempting it may seem and be pragmatically logical on installations. A well thought out and proper installation saves a hell of a lot of time and trouble trying to resolve issues and running around in circles, creating more problems and adding further issues into the equation. Further more if anything more happens I can just reinstall again and I believe the image is suitable for any SSD or Harddrive,

[UltimateOutsider]

Originally Posted by thenoodle

The msfn forums have lots of tips for those wanting the old start menu etc.

I've been super pleased with that Classic Shell Start menu replacement on SourceForge. It completely restores all the features I missed in Win 8, and makes the OS perfectly usable for my purposes.

Originally Posted by danger

Anybody using here Virus TI as plugin successfully under W8? (no soundcard feature now)

I have used the Virus TI (running TIOS 4.5) on Windows 8, using the audio interface feature only... didn't try any sequencing with the Virus on Win 8.

The audio interface feature, however, worked fine for me- just as well as it did on Win 7.

[Sensorychaos]

For an ez update of all your drivers...check driver agent. Really usefull and fast way.

----> http://driveragent.com/c/refer_landing

[Psychlist1972]

FWIW, on this machine, I did an in-place upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8. my MOTU 828mk3 (using firewire) worked perfectly once I reinstalled the driver. Cubase also worked fine once I updated to the Win8 version of the dongle driver.

I have an interest in seeing this machine work well with Windows 8, but honestly, I really didn't need to do much of anything special.

This is a custom machine with a Gigabyte UD9 motherboard, 12 gigs ram, 6 core intel processor, SSD, NVidia graphics.

Pete

[funkyspacecadet]

If anyone experiences problems with firewire in Win8 they can try this driver: QImaging Software Downloads

Scroll down to the IEEE-1394.

It's enabled my RME Fireface 400 which has always only worked correctly on the older, more stable 'legacy' firewire driver. I've had this issue since Win7 on both VIA and TI controllers. YMMV.

Hopefully Microsoft will add the old legacy driver back into Win8 otherwise I'm looking at a $1000+ spend I can't afford.

Otherwise, Win8 continues to run swimmingly on my studio machine (i7 2600k @ 4ghz, 16GB ram) smoother than Win7, especially multitasking, so I'm not keen to jump back to Win7.

Also for those wanting the old Start Menu back, I'm very fond of Classic Shell: Classic Shell | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

Classic Shell also allows you to boot straight to the desktop and disable the hot corners, which annoys me greatly. It's very tweakable and best of all, free.

[Angemash]

- if you make it look like Windows 7 and get rid of the Metro design, implement the start button again, it's like Windows 7 except that you need an hour or so to find the system settings and tweak content in there..

[Psychlist1972]

Originally Posted by Angemash

- if you make it look like Windows 7 and get rid of the Metro design, implement the start button again, it's like Windows 7 except that you need an hour or so to find the system settings and tweak content in there..

As a power user, Windows Key + X is your friend.

Pete

[norbury brook]

I remember when I got my first macbook pro, as a windows user I found everything a lot more difficult and consequently I was a lot slower using OSX.
A long time mac using friend then spent an hour with me and went over a lot of keyboard short cuts and suddenly things started to make sense.


Windows 8 reminds me of the same transition, just spend some time learning how to use it rather than trying to force it to work the way windows 'used' to do and you'll be a lot more productive and happier.


MC

[Ramonizer]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

Windows 8 reminds me of the same transition, just spend some time learning how to use it rather than trying to force it to work the way windows 'used' to do and you'll be a lot more productive and happier.

The difference is that OSX follows human interface guidelines and Win8 breaks them. So that OSX is much easier to adapt to because its intuitive.

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users

[norbury brook]

that's like saying English is intuitive but German isnt. I never found OSX intuitive as someone who'd come from windows, I just had to learn a different 'language' . I found iOS for example a PIA coming from an Android tablet but once I'd learned 'the iOS' way of doing things it was fine.

My Partner who is a clever university educated woman certainly hasn't adapted to OSX and doesn't find most things intuitive after 3 years on her macbook, I still have to show her how to do quite basic things. My best friends wife who is a judge is the same, watching either of them operate their macbooks is quite challenging .

there is a you tube clip of a 3 year old flying round windows 8 on a touch screen so if a 3 year old can make it work well then I would probably say it's quite intuitive to someone who hasn't got any computer baggage.

I'm surprised by the windows 8 hatred around, last night I was reading about dev's complaing about the tight control microsoft want for apps from the app store. Apple have always done this and suddenly because Microsoft do it it's terrible !!!

the good thing about windows is though you'll be able to keep using windows 7 for the next 10 years no problem if that's what you want.




MC

[loopy]

One need only look at the current state of security in the Android world to see what happens when apps and the store aren't tightly controlled. Windows 8 is growing on me as I get accustomed to the differences from Windows 7. It's certainly faster on the same hardware, an i7. All of my software is working and I haven't experienced any problems yet.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

... I never found OSX intuitive as someone who'd come from windows, I just had to learn a different 'language' . ..

As someone coming from the real mac-os which actually was very intuitive, I found windowz far more intuitive to learn than system neXt.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

that's like saying English is intuitive but German isnt. I never found OSX intuitive as someone who'd come from windows, I just had to learn a different 'language' . I found iOS for example a PIA coming from an Android tablet but once I'd learned 'the iOS' way of doing things it was fine.

My Partner who is a clever university educated woman certainly hasn't adapted to OSX and doesn't find most things intuitive after 3 years on her macbook, I still have to show her how to do quite basic things. My best friends wife who is a judge is the same, watching either of them operate their macbooks is quite challenging .

there is a you tube clip of a 3 year old flying round windows 8 on a touch screen so if a 3 year old can make it work well then I would probably say it's quite intuitive to someone who hasn't got any computer baggage.

I'm surprised by the windows 8 hatred around, last night I was reading about dev's complaing about the tight control microsoft want for apps from the app store. Apple have always done this and suddenly because Microsoft do it it's terrible !!!

the good thing about windows is though you'll be able to keep using windows 7 for the next 10 years no problem if that's what you want.




MC

I'm not a fan of OS X, but it makes reasonable sense, as the basic pre-W8 Windows UI has since Win 95. (The earlier Win 3.x desktop was a disaster from UI design points of view but the actual file system windowing was fine.)

W8/Metro, however, is an absurdity on a machine not hobbled by a touch-only physical interface. It certainly turns good UI design principles on their heads and breaks a number of cardinal rules of usability design.

(And, yes, I do own a touchscreen tablet. I even like it quite well now that I'm used to the fact that it's a TPITA trying to get anything vaguely approaching real work done on it. Heck, writing a couple sentences is an aggravating trial. And that's with what is supposedly the best voice reco going, along with a slide-typing replacement v-keyboard, etc.)

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Ramonizer

The difference is that OSX follows human interface guidelines and Win8 breaks them. So that OSX is much easier to adapt to because its intuitive.

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users

That article gets at some of the worst problems with this UI.

[CharlesEdward]

Windows 8 is da ish!!!

[kaboom75]

Ableton Live 9 64bit beta and windows 8 64bit

All 8 threads of my CPU used with 7 track mixes. It's rock solid.

[Ramonizer]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

that's like saying English is intuitive but German isnt.

I'm german, it's my native language, and yes, i think english is more intuitive.

[norbury brook]

Originally Posted by Ramonizer

I'm german, it's my native language, and yes, i think english is more intuitive.

Ha, excellent, I just picked two random languages there and, as we say in england; 'hit the nail on the head' :D


I think the point here is what's intuitive to one person isn't to another. I mean look at the way people interact with the various DAW's . I for example could never get on with Logic, seemed the most inappropriately named piece of software I'd ever used. However I've friends who love it and find it easy to use.




MC

[funkyspacecadet]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

I think the point here is what's intuitive to one person isn't to another. I mean look at the way people interact with the various DAW's . I for example could never get on with Logic, seemed the most inappropriately named piece of software I'd ever used. However I've friends who love it and find it easy to use.

What annoys me deeply is lack of options for tweaking/customisation. For example, Reaper is highly configurable, themeable - now that doesn't interest most people I'm sure, but if you have a particular way of doing things, or, like me, a very hard time dealing with bright user interfaces, being able to download a theme / change colours is a complete MUST HAVE.

Windows 8 is not terribly customisable, you basically have 2 options for themes, either the overly bright standard theme or the ugly dark high contrast theme - which is what I use. You can't really do much in terms of changing the colours of the standard Win8 theme, only the title bar and some other elements can be changed.. unlike in Win3.1->XP you had pretty much complete control over the interface colours and it started going downhill from Vista with the Aero interface.

And hell, even the themes for XP to 8 are digitally signed, you have to use a patch/hack to enable unsigned themes, and guess what? A lot of them don't work that well.

Win8 also has some annoying default hotkeys, like WIN+1,2,3,4,5 etc; which I've traditionally always used for my own purposes but since Vista it's been allocated to the quicklaunch bar and disabling them is beyond the means of Joe Average.

But maybe I'm just a fussy user, I'm a big fan of Linux, having used Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc; .. I still prefer Windows as a desktop OS but in Gnome/KDE/XFCE you're able to pretty much set all your colours, hotkeys etc; to the way YOU want them.

My fear is that Windows is becoming more like iOS in that it's restrictive and locked down. I hate companies that don't offer customisation options AND attempt to lock things down. Not everyone thinks the same, behaves the same and has the same ability, some have special needs, preferences and just want to make their machine THEIR machine.

disclaimer: I enjoy my iPad, my Win8 machine, my Android phone my Linux boxes, I'm not an OS fanboy of any particular platform.

[Ramonizer]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

Ha, excellent, I just picked two random languages there and, as we say in england; 'hit the nail on the head' :D

I think the point here is what's intuitive to one person isn't to another. I mean look at the way people interact with the various DAW's . I for example could never get on with Logic, seemed the most inappropriately named piece of software I'd ever used. However I've friends who love it and find it easy to use.

It depends if you start at zero or not. What really counts in usability is how people do without any previous knowledge when it comes to user interfaces. Windows 8 is proven to be very confusing for beginners.

It's miserable to introduce a new UI paradigm if it isn't easier to handle (better, faster) than the previous one, it's proof that they want to lock you in, preventing you from switching to better alternatives. They're shitting on their usual customers because they still think that it's 1995 and no alternatives out there..

[chucks]

And now we're expecting the Windows Blue release sometime midyear. Apparently they've figured out what they've done wrong with the UI and also made performance enhancements with a new kernel. Most interesting - apparently this will be the start of a short cycle refresh ala Apple.

[Timur Born]

For your info: The non legacy Firewire driver/stack of Windows 8 uses less CPU than the non legacy one of Windows 7. The legacy driver of Windows 7 also uses less CPU.

In practice this may not be relevant, though, and likely depending on the CPU you are using. For example, with my bootcamped Macbook Pro with mobile i7 the legacy W7 driver does allow slightly more audio effects/tracks to be used compared to the non legacy one. But for only less than a minute when average wattage and temperature force the Turbo Boost multiplier to decrease from x31 to x27.

Every Intel iX CPU has an average wattage maximum, that can only be passed over for short periods of time (hence: "average"). On my MBP it's set to 45 watt and I can manually change it to Intel's specified maximum of 48 watt. Desktop processors may differ and then it's also up to cooling.

If I find time and motivation I may compare all three drivers/stacks at non Turbo Boost clock-rates (x21 for my CPU).

[jrwaltb]

"For your info: The non legacy Firewire driver/stack of Windows 8 uses less CPU than the non legacy one of Windows 7."

Its funny you say that because I never actually tried the regular/non legacy Windows 8x32 firewire driver and instead quickly imported the Windows 7 legacy firewire driver. My concern was using the unsigned legacy firewirex64 driver in Windows 8x64(when I upgrade my cpu) but maybe the "legacy driver" is not needed at all. Thanks for the info and I will report back when I get around to trying the non legacy Windows 8 firewire driver.

[Youn]

I upgraded from xp to win8-32bit for 40 bucks.

It boots maybe twice as slow but other then that seems fast enough.

The start screen is fast and easy to customize and use (I find it funny how butt-hurt people are) and the rest of the OS isn't really all that different. I find myself hitting the windows key more to start an application, but can say for sure that it's a good thing and saves a few seconds each time. Also, I actually like how everything looks now - was never a fan of Aero, but good lord either were a buge improvement to fisherprice look of XP :P

Biggest gripe is that my Yamaha i88x doesn't work anymore, but I've read some people got it working so I'm not too worried about that I'll get it going soon. I think I just need win7-32bit 1394 drivers, but have yet to find them.

[Youn]

Well, I've tried many drivers now from various sources but nothing seems to be working. I'm following the instructions given here:

mLAN Users Forum - Microshaft windows 8

I've yet to try the drivers they talk of (Windows 7 32-bit) because I've yet to find them online. Do any of you beautiful people have them and can share with me? PM me if so.

[funkyspacecadet]

Originally Posted by Youn

Well, I've tried many drivers now from various sources but nothing seems to be working. I'm following the instructions given here:

mLAN Users Forum - Microshaft windows 8

I've yet to try the drivers they talk of (Windows 7 32-bit) because I've yet to find them online. Do any of you beautiful people have them and can share with me? PM me if so.

I do, send me a PM.

Also you can try this: QImaging Software Downloads

Scroll down and get the 1394 driver there, it's the Thesycon driver which doesn't require the driver signing hacks to work, but it may not work with your device. But it's a preferable option IMO.

[unguitar]

I have installed win 8 on an Asus laptop with Rme UC/Babyface.

before the change I could see win 7 having 83 processes running and 2,19 Gb ram used just to keep the system running.
Under win 8 the processes are 48 and the ram used is 1 Gb.
Great improvement !
Dpc shows different figures: latency is pretty high: 1016 while on win 7 this was just a rare peak when running most of the time around 500.
But there is a very interesting thing: all these values are now stable !
Ram, processes, dpc latency have been jumping up and down like crazy on win 7.
I have the feeling that the os can be fine tuned better than win 8, but this is just a feeling, nothing that comes from a real knowledge.

These values have been checked without any previous finr tuning, wifi and antivirus were on.

Now: how can I bring dpc down ?
;-)

[funkyspacecadet]

Originally Posted by unguitar

I have installed win 8 on an Asus laptop with Rme UC/Babyface.

Dpc shows different figures: latency is pretty high: 1016 while on win 7 this was just a rare peak when running most of the time around 500.
But there is a very interesting thing: all these values are now stable !
Ram, processes, dpc latency have been jumping up and down like crazy on win 7.

Are you referring to the DPC Latency checker by Thesycon? It does not report DPC timing in Windows 8 accurately as they have stated on their site. I can't access it at the moment to quote it here though.

I'm not aware of any means to check DPC on Windows 8 yet, but in general, rule of thumb is to keep your machine as minimal as possible. Uninstall crap you don't need.

[Mr. Wilson]

After running with a PT10.3 install on a W8 upgrade over W7, I found enough plugs from my locker having issues to drive me back to my W7 boot. Months later I've built a new i7 6 core rig and went with a clean install of W7 on a SSD drive (boots in 30 seconds) and have the most stable PT/Win rig I've ever had. The W8 and former PT quad i7 4 core rig has been relegated to be my new gamer rig...ironically what I originally bought it for. I ended up needing to use the "Reset" feature which ended up doing a new clean install on that rig and now I'm seeing which of my Racing Sims play well with 8.

After all is said and done I'm not a hater of W8 and in fact it seems way more efficient and does boot faster than a normal 7 install. I do however think MS needs to revamp it esp the "Start" and "Charms/Tiles" deal for Desktop users who don't have touchscreen or trackpads to make that UI work properly. They should make it so when you move your mouse/trackball to one side or the other the "Charms" bar reveals as opposed to the annoying corners thing. It would then be very much like the OSX "Dock". I find that I'm spending most of my time in the "Desktop" and there it feels like W7 anyway. I suppose this could be thought of as a "customization" and I've grown quickly used to this more familiar part of the whole UI.

Alas I can see why W8 is getting hammered on...it reminds me of how Lion was not received well by the OSX community, which I didn't agree with...Hell I work in OSX Snow Leopard, Lion and Mt. Lion everyday and I don't think twice about it. It's not heart surgery!!