Windows 8 Release Preview Installed

Thanks! Maybe I'll stay away for a bit longer.

 

I guess that just like my luck with my second S7S - no screen lift - my luck with Windows 8 RP is far different from most. It has been a joy to use, particularly the improved handling of multiple screens. It does lock up on occasion, but it is ALWAYS with an IE 10 window open, and seems to be display driver related. Pen and touch work fine together and separately, and I haven't noticed any problems with x86 programs. I just hope others are having the same experience, because ordinarily all blogs and forums are dominated by those having problems (rightly so) rather than those who are lucky to be stable.

 

I've stopped using Google Chrome with Windows 8 RP and I seem to be experiencing fewer lock-ups than before (of course, that could just be a coincidence).

So that's the good news. The bad news is that I did something that stopped the screen from rotating automatically when I reposition the tablet.
I've tried uninstalling and re-installing the Intel drivers for Windows 8 (including the latest 2770 version) without any success. there is no option to enable/disable auto-rotation in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display\Screen Resolution on my system (as has been suggested in some other posts).
Unless someone has any great ideas I think I'm going to re-format this system (I was going to say "wipe the slate clean", but it seemed too cheesy) and reload Windows 8 from scratch.

 

I have just tried to do an installation of the Release Preview on my S7 (UK version 64gb). I went into the bios and enabled UEFI boot support and started the installation then came to a halt with the message that it could not install EFI on an MBR partition. Have not seen any other reference to this on this site. I went back into the bios and disabled the UEFI entry and started the installation again which completed with no problem. I assume there are advantages in enabling the UEFI so it it feasible to change the boot from MBR to GPT or is that likely to cause additional difficulties?

Thanks,

Alan

 

To change from MBR to GPT, you need to wipe out your whole disk first. Please see Windows and GPT FAQ

You cannot make a sector-by-sector copy of the whole disk. I guess that's the only downside of GPT. MBR is too old and should be phased out. To UEFI boot from a GPT disk, you only need a FAT32 partition on your disk which contains the boot manager and BCD store, no need to edit those horrible boot sectors.

 

Thanks for your help.

Alan

 

If you are having the random shutdown bug (everyone I've talked to does - some days rock solid, other days 5-7 power off lockups), check out Paul Thurrott's suggestion of installing Hyper-V; it's already stabilized mine:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article...ws-8-release-preview-freeze-workaround-143550

 

Any solution for 32 bit atoms?

 

MS Surface Pro - 12/12