I'm looking to upgrade to Windows 8 64 bit from Windows 7 64 bit. It's not clear to me which upgrade of Windows 8 to order that will guarantee Windows 8 64 bit. I was wondering if a colleague here would offer some advice on how to select the right version. If you go to the Microsoft site or to Amazon or any of those, none of them specify which version they are offering. Is it just automatic now?

 

B)

 

Lee

My w8 Pro came with two cd's - 32 & 64.

 

Vic

If you get the $15/$40 download from MS, what you first get is a small program wndowsupgradeassistant.exe which you run from your computer. It first does some compatability checks and gives you a heads up. (AFAICT, this is the point where it determines if you can run 64 bit and if so, will give you the 64 bit version. There doesn't seem to be a way to select it yourself. My system that I ran the upgrade asst on was running 64 bit windows. I don't know what happens if you are running 32 bit windows.) It then asks for your credit card. Once you do that it shows you your key and also emails it to you. (Obviously, don't lose this!) then it gives you some install options. I picked "install by creating media" then "Choose media/ iso") after which it downloaded an iso. I burned the iso to dvd using imgburn (there's also an option to create a boot usb flash drive instead of iso/dvd if you prefer).

 

Once I had the dvd and key printed out I booted the dvd which first asked to type in the key, then allowd for install options, either upgrade or custom, the latter allows you to select the drive/parttion and under advanced you can delete your existing partition (assuming you don't want any data from it) also any restore partition that win 7 might have created for you. Then just point the installer to the unallocated space on the drive (no need to create partition or format first) and the install routine handles from there.

 

If you want to keep your existing partition I guess there's options to to keep programs and files, or just files but I always like to start fresh (one less thing to worry about if a program doesn't seem to work right later).

 

Some folks wanting to create Win8 VMs I guess found that the key didn't take (after install the windows wasn't activated) and have had some luck re-running the license manager from within the win 8 VM but I think that is just in a VM environment.

 

scott s.

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Don't upgrade to windows 8 just yet.

As you can see, there are intermittent issues with dissapearing joysticks.

Windows 8 UI sucks. I say that as an early adopter who just had to install Windows 8. I usually like change, but after a few weeks I'm still not comvinced it's a step up. And add compatibility andnhardware issues on a fsx pc - i'd stick with win 7 for now.

You can have a Windows 7 type start menu using Start8, can switch back and forth between desktop views. However there is a charge of $4.99 USD for the Start8 interface: http://www.stardock....roducts/start8/

why would you pay for that when you can have Classic Shell for free.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/microsoft-windows/9-windows-start-menus-windows-8-208963?page=0,1#ClassicShell

$5 is neither here nor there. I just looked and they both seem good, but Start8 looks a bit slicker.

 

I'm actually going to install this. Maybe I'm just getting old and fear change....

 

Stil Win7 on my FSX computer though, and no plans to upgrade at this stage.

Yes, I agree, Win 8 works better on my laptop (thinkpad T61) than it does for my FSX/Prepar3D rig.

Until MS sorts out the disapearing hardware, it;s a nono for me.