Windows 8.1 - I Can Live With It

[raymac46]

When my Windows 7 notebook died I had to replace it with a Lenovo model that runs Windows 8.1

That certainly would not be my first choice of O/S given what I read.

However with a few tweaks I've found Win 8.1 to be quite tolerable. It does boot and shut down faster than Win 7 and seems to make good use of the AMD Beema APU in the notebook.

I will say though that I absolutely HATE the Start Screen and the "Modern" apps. The notebook has a touch screen but I never use it. Add to that the fact that most of the Lenovo bloatware comes as tablet type apps and I was anxious to banish the Start Screen forever.

The way to do this is to install the free Classic Shell program. Then you get a Start Button and Menu back and never see the Start Screen when you boot. You can even install a Windows 7 Start "Orb" and get back a Windows 7 look and feel.

Just in case the Start Screen does show up I uninstalled all the bloatware apps but I hardly ever see it anyway.

So in summary I can live with Windows 8.1 if I pretend it's really Windows 7.

[ebrke]

Or there's this solution in 8.1:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/fl/boot-to-desktop-windows-8.htm

[Pete!]

Classic Shell was the first thing I downloaded when I got my new computer.

It made the Win 8 learning curve disappear.

 

With a familiar interface, and a working start button, the rest was easy.

 

BTW: On dialup, most of the METRO/Modern apps are totally useless.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Pete!

[raymac46]

Or there's this solution in 8.1:

http://pcsupport.abo...p-windows-8.htm

 

That will bypass the Start Screen but to get the Start Button and Menu back you are going to need Classic Shell or Start8 or something similar. In 8.1 the Start button returned but it only takes you to the Start Screen.

Edited January 5, 2015 by raymac46

[ebrke]

Good to know. I hope to bypass win 8 completely, since at this point I only use it on mother's laptop and she's working on a fairly new Lenovo running win 7, but all knowledge is good in case I find myself trapped into win 8.

[goretsky]

Hello,

 

Be sure to uninstall any preloaded software from Lenovo that you don't want via the Uninstall or Change a Program applet (filename: APPWIZ.CPL) in the Control Panel.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[zlim]

Here's today's zero day exploit of 8.1, courtesy of google.

http://blog.lumension.com/9654/google-shows-hackers-how-to-exploit-windows-8-1/

Edited January 6, 2015 by zlim

[lewmur]

Here's today's zero day exploit of 8.1, courtesy of google.

http://blog.lumensio...it-windows-8-1/

I'm on Google's side in this. Sometimes the ONLY way to force MS to fix an exploit is to make it public. Ninety days warning should be plenty of time to fix it. MS just couldn't be bothered to fix an exploit they didn't consider important enough to warrant their attention. This isn't the first time, by far, that it took making an exploit public to force MS to fix it. And many security firms take the "ninety days and reveal" approach.

Edited January 7, 2015 by lewmur

[goretsky]

Hello,

 

It's really difficult to say how long it takes to resolve a software bug; it's different each time. And even if a bug is simple to fix, it may require a large amount of testing to ensure it doesn't break anything else, and then you want to give it to the entity which reported the issue and see if you can get them to verify the fix, which can take additional time based on their workload.

 

As one example, in the mid-1990s, I worked at an instant messaging company, and we had a crash report on the books (well, in the bug-tracking database) that was open for 2-3 years in our IM client app. It was regularly-but-infrequently reported to us, but never with enough information to figure out what was occurring and why. One day, a customer gives us step-by-step instructions to repro, along with a super-detailed system inventory, and we find out the common denominator, which was a third-party TCP/IP stack. Five minute fix, and maybe another half-day or so to test the patch and get the customer to verify it. Point is, it's not always immediately apparent where bugs are in code in the first place.

 

You know, one thing that's kind of funny about this is that when I re-entered the security field a decade ago, I started to get concerned that I'd have to deal with criminal gangs dropping new malware, zero-days, etc. over the Christmas/New Years period, which is a time at which a lot of companies close up early, or at least operate on reduced staffing. But, one of the things that happened was that as malware became more of a criminal enterprise, the authors of malware started to take off, too, just like folks in legal, legitimate businesses. The one thing, though, that I never expected, was that when this Christmas holiday scenario came true, that it would be a company like Google that was releasing vulnerability information.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

Here's today's zero day exploit of 8.1, courtesy of google.

http://blog.lumensio...it-windows-8-1/

I'm on Google's side in this. Sometimes the ONLY way to force MS to fix an exploit is to make it public. Ninety days warning should be plenty of time to fix it. MS just couldn't be bothered to fix an exploit they didn't consider important enough to warrant their attention. This isn't the first time, by far, that it took making an exploit public to force MS to fix it. And many security firms take the "ninety days and reveal" approach.