help! I hate windows 8!

[WelshBloke]

Problem is as thread title.

Just (stupidly) took advantage of the end of the windows 8 offer and upgraded and really really wish I'd stayed on win 7

I can't get my wireless network to show up in windows 8. It can see 1 of my neighbours networks but there's a few more out there that it can't see so somethings borked.

If I try to manually enter the settings it tells me that the network already exists and do i want to open up the connection dialogue (or some such) but then nothing happens.

Any advice?

Thread title changed as Lopri kindly solved the original problem.

 

[WelshBloke]

Right ah heck this. I'm having a bath and a beer and praying that WHS is going to let me restore my Windows 7 installation in the morning.

At least Microsoft has decent customer services so I should be able to get a refund easily.

 

[lakedude]

My W8 laptop has trouble finding the homegroup but all the W7 boxes work perfect...

If I start at the W7 box and search for the W8 box it works but if I start out on the W8 box first it will not find the homegroup.

Once the W7 box "forces" the W8 box on the network the W8 box works fine for a while but it does drop back off for some reason??

 

[lopri]

Sigh.. What is your adapter's chipset? Realtek.. I guess?

See if this thread can help.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2294295&highlight=

 

[WelshBloke]

Cheers for that. :thumbup:

Still don't think I'm going to keep it though, at least I can send the return request from my PC now though.

 

[WelshBloke]

Am I supposed to have a build number in the corner of the screen?

 

[WelshBloke]

How the smeg do you search in the windows store?

 

[darkewaffle]

Am I supposed to have a build number in the corner of the screen?

That's the sort of thing that usually shows up when your copy isn't activated or it thinks you have a counterfeit key or something. I had some issues with the W7 license on the box I upgraded to 8 (it lost power and something got corrupted I think) and would get that message on the desktop after every boot.

Can't speak on the wireless issue, my Win8 box is wired only.

 

[WelshBloke]

That's the sort of thing that usually shows up when your copy isn't activated or it thinks you have a counterfeit key or something. I had some issues with the W7 license on the box I upgraded to 8 (it lost power and something got corrupted I think) and would get that message on the desktop after every boot.

Can't speak on the wireless issue, my Win8 box is wired only.

Yeah apparently it lost activation when I installed WMC.

 

[DooKey]

Yeah apparently it lost activation when I installed WMC.

Same happened to me, but I left it alone and the next day it had reactivated itself without issue.

 

[WelshBloke]

How the smeg do you search in the windows store?

This again.

Also is there a way to open it from the desktop or do I have to go into metro first?

 

[spdfreak]

It is actually quite a bit more useable if you have multiple monitors... you can leave the metro stuff on one monitor and desktop on another. But, without my TV tuners working in media center, it's a no go for me.

 

[WelshBloke]

It is actually quite a bit more useable if you have multiple monitors... you can leave the metro stuff on one monitor and desktop on another. But, without my TV tuners working in media center, it's a no go for me.

I've got multiple monitors.

Its still horrible. Especially the way it flits in and out of metro if you click on the desktop on the other monitor or if a metro app opens up on the "wrong" monitor.

Also mirroring the taskbar is just plain daft.

 

[darkewaffle]

I've got multiple monitors.

Its still horrible. Especially the way it flits in and out of metro if you click on the desktop on the other monitor or if a metro app opens up on the "wrong" monitor.

Also mirroring the taskbar is just plain daft.

You can adjust the taskbar appearance on each monitor independently I believe

 

[WelshBloke]

You can adjust the mirroring settings to make them both display the same taskbar or a unique one

Win! :thumbsup:

 

[spdfreak]

Some of this is simply "what I'm used to" syndrome. My sister got an Acer tablet that runs the full win8 and it is great on it. The kid that works out with me at the gym just got a new laptop and he loves it (he's 17) so there is somewhat of a "generation gap" thing going on here. No doubt, it makes less sense on a desktop, but it does offer a lot of features that kids who have grown up on phones and tablets really like. I have a friend who is a software developer for a large company and he put it on 2 of his machines including his dev machine and after a week of using it he is totally fine with it. Some of it is simply getting used to it even if it's not ideal on a desktop. I certainly have no love for it, but if I could get my TV tuners to work in media center I'd keep it.

 

[IamDavid]

I'm amazed at the number of responses like this. Do people seriously not understand how to use Window 8? It does have a learning curve but nothing my 3 children couldn't figure out in under a day.

 

[lakedude]

I'm amazed at the number of responses like this. Do people seriously not understand how to use Window 8? It does have a learning curve but nothing my 3 children couldn't figure out in under a day.

Yeah, if you are lucky and if you are not using a touch-pad.

Edge Swipe on a touch-pad is really annoying and confusing.

Maybe you were lucky and had no bugs but my W8 laptop is fighting me every step of the way.

Task manager was messed up and would not kill locked up games.

The backup function refused to work stating a lack of disk space even though the disk was an empty 1TB and the files to be backed up were only about 60GB...

EDIT: Oh and the homegroup thing which works perfect with W7 but is all weird with W8...

Now sure I've managed to edit the registry, download 3rd party apps, and change some settings to fix these issues but it was by no means easy.

If you ever want to test it I'll restore my laptop to the original state and let your kids have at it. Hope you are a good parent because there is going to be some crying going on...

 

[IamDavid]

lol, sorry about your experience lakedude. I guess it's different for everyone. We've upgraded a couple laptops, main desktop, and our new tablets all run it with no problems. The touchpads on the HP laptop is by far the most interesting to get the hang of so I can understand the frustrations.

 

[drum]

This again.

Also is there a way to open it from the desktop or do I have to go into metro first?

just type from the start screen to search. from the store, start typing to search.

 

[Mem]

lol, sorry about your experience lakedude. I guess it's different for everyone. We've upgraded a couple laptops, main desktop, and our new tablets all run it with no problems. The touchpads on the HP laptop is by far the most interesting to get the hang of so I can understand the frustrations.

I've upgraded three with no issues including two wireless networked ,tried Belkin,Netgear and Asus routers on Win8 with no issues,does seem AT OS forum has gone donehill,people not happy unless they are moaning about something here,reminds me of the older XP and Vista moaning threads years ago lol...

WelshBloke if you want help I suggest you give us more info like hardware details etc,router/chipset things like that, any error messages(anything in event viewer logs?),your thread title and post tells us nothing useful,btw is your SSID broadcasting?..Also you might get more luck in Networking forum.

 

[pmv]

I'm amazed at the number of responses like this. Do people seriously not understand how to use Window 8? It does have a learning curve but nothing my 3 children couldn't figure out in under a day.

I reckon the issue is that all new OS's have teething troubles for a proportion of users, as some hardware lacks functional drivers and people need to learn new ways of doing things. That's just normal.

But with Win8 this seems to lead more rapidly to exasperation and anger because there isn't as much of a compensating sense of gain as there was for, say, win98 to XP (or XP to 7 - best not mention early Vista). People aren't gaining as much so there's lower tolerance for the inevitable hassles.

 

[Mem]

I reckon the issue is that all new OS's have teething troubles for a proportion of users, as some hardware lacks functional drivers and people need to learn new ways of doing things. That's just normal.

But with Win8 this seems to lead more rapidly to exasperation and anger because there isn't as much of a compensating sense of gain as there was for, say, win98 to XP (or XP to 7 - best not mention early Vista). People aren't gaining as much so there's lower tolerance for the inevitable hassles.

To be fair only really here,OCuK forums are more positive towards Win8,apples and oranges as they say,personally find Win8 boring now,in my case nothing goes wrong lol...
I also had no issues with Vista(solid OS IMHO)...I've had my fair share of issues in 98,XP even Win7 etc ...I prefer to troubleshoot then moan,moaning gets you nowhere IMHO.

 

[WelshBloke]

...WelshBloke if you want help I suggest you give us more info like hardware details etc,router/chipset things like that, any error messages(anything in event viewer logs?),your thread title and post tells us nothing useful,btw is your SSID broadcasting?..Also you might get more luck in Networking forum.

Sorry. I edited the OP as Lopri help solve the original problem. Theads sort of my venting place now for all the little niggles that are bugging me about the OS.

Edit:I'll give you some more details though if you're interested.

 

[WelshBloke]

...But with Win8 this seems to lead more rapidly to exasperation and anger because there isn't as much of a compensating sense of gain as there was for, say, win98 to XP (or XP to 7 - best not mention early Vista). People aren't gaining as much so there's lower tolerance for the inevitable hassles.

I think that you may have hit on the main issue there.

There's very little gain for a fair bit of inconvenience.

I'm struggling to find anything that win 8 does better than win 7 on a normal desktop.