[compnovo]

compnovo, on 19 January 2013 - 04:55 PM, said:

I finally decided to upgrade my media center PC to Windows 8 Pro, mostly because the forty-buck special ends at the end of the month along with the free WMC add-on. I ran into an interesting glitch that I was only able to get around because I made a Win7 image on an external drive before I got started.
I did a clean install, and after it completed I went to the Nvidia site and downloaded the latest drivers and software for my graphics card. When the system restarted it wouldn't load the desktop, it just looped. I figured I'd boot into Safe Mode to roll back the driver but neither f8 nor Shift + f8 would work. Weird...
The next thing I tried was booting to the Win8 Pro disc I made from the ISO (and installed with) to try a repair but my PC would not boot to the disc. REALLY weird....

I'm replying to myself because I learned something valuable about Win8 and my media center PC this weekend that might help others.

I decided to swap out the nVidia 210 back to the original ATI 4350 (the 210 is headed to a friend's build) so I went through the standard drill: uninstall card and drivers in Device Manager, shut down, etc. After rebooting and updating the ATI drivers I noticed I still had the nVidia drivers in the uninstall app, and they refused to be removed. After futxing with it for a while I decided to try Win8's "refresh" option for the first time, but that meant booting to the Win8 disc and I had trouble with that before.

This is what I discovered:
1. I wasn't waiting long enough for the disc to boot. With a modestly powered system it takes seemingly forever to get to repair mode but if you're patient it will appear;
2. Refresh works great, your files are preserved, but it uninstalls everything, including all the updates. However, you do end up with a nice clean install;
3. ATI's latest Win8 drivers work sweet with my TV. I didn't have to play around with over/underscan to get the desktop's resolution correct, the proper resolution was set by default.

I was never really happy with the upgrade because I suspected there were glitches hiding in the background but now I am, everything is running like it should be.

[compnovo]

Latest update, in the interest of full disclosure:
As much as I like Windows 8, I reinstalled Windows 7 on my media center PC this weekend. Win8 has been running beautifully but I discovered an issue that pushed me into making the change. I hadn't bothered reinstalliing the drivers for the TV card (due to laziness), and discovered this weekend that there are no drivers for the Diamond card that I have, neither on their site nor native to Win8. I like to occasionally DVR a TV program, and I didn't want to purchase another TV card, so I opted to roll the OS back. The Win8 license won't go to waste, eventually my wife will want to make the switch on her desktop.
...I'm not sure if she knows that yet....

[waldojim]

compnovo, on 29 April 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

Latest update, in the interest of full disclosure:
As much as I like Windows 8, I reinstalled Windows 7 on my media center PC this weekend. Win8 has been running beautifully but I discovered an issue that pushed me into making the change. I hadn't bothered reinstalliing the drivers for the TV card (due to laziness), and discovered this weekend that there are no drivers for the Diamond card that I have, neither on their site nor native to Win8. I like to occasionally DVR a TV program, and I didn't want to purchase another TV card, so I opted to roll the OS back. The Win8 license won't go to waste, eventually my wife will want to make the switch on her desktop.
...I'm not sure if she knows that yet....

That is sad... Media Center in Windows 8 does do a better job being a DVR...

[compnovo]

waldojim, on 29 April 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

compnovo, on 29 April 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

Latest update, in the interest of full disclosure:
As much as I like Windows 8, I reinstalled Windows 7 on my media center PC this weekend. Win8 has been running beautifully but I discovered an issue that pushed me into making the change. I hadn't bothered reinstalliing the drivers for the TV card (due to laziness), and discovered this weekend that there are no drivers for the Diamond card that I have, neither on their site nor native to Win8. I like to occasionally DVR a TV program, and I didn't want to purchase another TV card, so I opted to roll the OS back. The Win8 license won't go to waste, eventually my wife will want to make the switch on her desktop.
...I'm not sure if she knows that yet....

That is sad... Media Center in Windows 8 does do a better job being a DVR...

I know, but I've always had good luck DVRing with WMC so it was worth the swap. My wife didn't even notice the difference because I had Start8 installed so that the system would boot into desktop mode.

[LiveBrianD]

How did the Windows 7 drivers not work on 8?

[compnovo]

LiveBrianD, on 29 April 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

How did the Windows 7 drivers not work on 8?

LB, I'm not sure I understand your question.

EDIT: I'll give it a guess. The Win7 drivers simply wouldn't install, the OS said it couldn't find compatible drivers on the disc.

This post has been edited by compnovo: 29 April 2013 - 08:32 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Yeah, that's what I meant. You couldn't force the drivers in device manager (if you could get the raw driver files from it) or run the driver installer in compatibility mode?

[compnovo]

LiveBrianD, on 29 April 2013 - 08:41 PM, said:

Yeah, that's what I meant. You couldn't force the drivers in device manager (if you could get the raw driver files from it) or run the driver installer in compatibility mode?

Nope, when I tried going in that way the driver folder couldn't even be found on the disc, which was weird. When I installed Win7 there were no problems, easy-peasy.

[waldojim]

Very likely this has something to do with the new audio stack... that is what I have seen in around here anyhow.

[LiveBrianD]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried running Windows 7 audio drivers on 8?

[compnovo]

LiveBrianD, on 30 April 2013 - 06:05 AM, said:

Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried running Windows 7 audio drivers on 8?

If you're referring to onboard audio drivers, Win8 loads its own and I don't mess with the motherboard's driver disc (never did with Win7 either). I haven't had any problems with either OS.

[waldojim]

compnovo, on 30 April 2013 - 10:23 AM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 30 April 2013 - 06:05 AM, said:

Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried running Windows 7 audio drivers on 8?

If you're referring to onboard audio drivers, Win8 loads its own and I don't mess with the motherboard's driver disc (never did with Win7 either). I haven't had any problems with either OS.

There are also audio drivers for capture cards. Most likely, something Windows 8 won't have a native replacement for.