Will Windows 8 be the death of PC gaming?

[Pulsar_t]

Windows 8.1 is out? Well after the Surface flopped and Win8 succeeded in driving many to tablets because of its clumsy interface, we are left wondering what shape the PC will be taking in the next few years.

[isiolia]

Windows 8.1 is out?

Not until mid October, unless you want to run the Preview version.

[noiseredux]

so I don't know if you guys have heard, but there's been a lot of folks having issues updating to 8.1

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2056292/ ... ssues.html

^I myself got hit with one of these error messages when I tried the update. Basically after a half hour download, the update went to install but then when it tried to restart I got hit with a black screen. My GPU wasn't outputting anything. I had to take the GPU out, plug VGA into mobo and reboot and was greeted with a screen saying that the install was not successful and I was reset back to 8.

So much like folks complaining that their nVidia card drivers were wonky with 8.1, it seems my (Radeon) card may have been an issue as well.

I have a Lenovo desktop, and their 8.1 Upgrade is straight scary.

http://download.lenovo.com/lenovo/conte ... ex_en.html

They seem to recommend you uninstall like... everything before upgrading. Why? Is 8.1 incompatible with so much?

Anyway, just sort of rambling here. But bottom-line is I loved Win7 and am still quite underwhelmed by 8. I can't upgrade to 8.1 for whatever reason. Oh, and for some reason 8 won't let me use Chrome (nor Firefox) which is infuriating. It just will not launch the app. Tried various compatibility modes, uninstalling, re-installing, running as Admin, not running as Admin. Double click and nothing happens. So not only do I think Win8 sucks on its own merits, but now it's making me use IE which also sucks.

[emwearz]

I had big issues with the update, because I upgraded my Windows 8.0 Pro, which I bought in a store, to Windows 8.0 Pro with Media Center, which was a free upgrade for awhile from Microsoft.

After updating via the store, Windows would not activate. Not using my store bought 8.0 key or the Media Center upgrade key. I called Windows, who had no idea what the problem was and after a few days on the phone and asking on places like reddit and looking over MDL, I kept getting told my only option was to nuke and start fresh. I was pissed off.

I found out later that because people were able to exploit the media center keys to upgrade, Microsoft would allow you to only activate the key via 'add features', but because when I upgraded my Windows was tied to the Media Center version, it did not use my Retail 8.0 key, thus would not register.

The solution I eventually came to was I edited my registry so it appeared I had Windows 8.0 Pro, I think downloaded the 8.1 installer from the MS site, using a generic installer key. Because it thought I was using a lower version, it gave me the option to upgrade and keep all my settings. I installed Windows 8.1 Pro (without Media Center).

Once installed it would still not activate! Because my key was 'activated on another computer', I called MS to do an activation over the phone, no dice, because if you get this error then you need a certain type of activation and only the crew who work Mon-Fri can do it, waited until Monday morning, activated within 5 minutes.

At the end of it all, I am just happy I did not have to reinstall everything and got it all working. But it was not as simple as 'Download via the Marketplace' for me.

[isiolia]

They seem to recommend you uninstall like... everything before upgrading. Why? Is 8.1 incompatible with so much?

Anyway, just sort of rambling here. But bottom-line is I loved Win7 and am still quite underwhelmed by 8. I can't upgrade to 8.1 for whatever reason. Oh, and for some reason 8 won't let me use Chrome (nor Firefox) which is infuriating. It just will not launch the app. Tried various compatibility modes, uninstalling, re-installing, running as Admin, not running as Admin. Double click and nothing happens. So not only do I think Win8 sucks on its own merits, but now it's making me use IE which also sucks.

It's probably a lot more due to Lenovo not testing their preinstalled software with 8.1 or something. That's what a lot of it looks like to me anyway. Basically, saying it might not work so that if it doesn't, they can just link to that page and say they told you so.

Odd that you can't run Chrome and Firefox in 8. I've had no problems doing so.

I had big issues with the update, because I upgraded my Windows 8.0 Pro, which I bought in a store, to Windows 8.0 Pro with Media Center, which was a free upgrade for awhile from Microsoft.

Mine is as well (well, I have an OEM copy of Pro, but still Pro with Media Center) and it worked fine.
Only issue I had was with nVidia stuff, but that seemed to be resolved with a driver reinstall. Other upgrades I've done/seen at work have been fine.

[MrPopo]

By contrast, I upgraded from 8.1 Preview to the full 8.1 and everything worked just fine for me.

[BoringSupreez]

Other than it's intrinsic failures, Windows 8 vanilla worked fine for me. I "upgraded" to the 8.1 preview, which even after plenty of updating and virus scans continues to act glitchy and unpredictable. Windows 7 was so much better, I should have stuck with it.

[ZenErik]

I don't use Windows 8 much but never really had much of an issue. Same goes for XP and 7. Never ended up using Vista much. Same goes for every edition of OS X I have used. Same goes Linux Mint, Ubuntu, etc. same goes for Android. Same goes for iOS.

Not sure how people end up having so many problems. But I guess it doesn't hurt that I work in the repair biz.

[noiseredux]

By contrast, I upgraded from 8.1 Preview to the full 8.1 and everything worked just fine for me.

no surprises there.

I'm not saying that the upgrade is a total mess. But it's been messy it seems. I thought maybe it was just me, but the more I Googled, the more blogs, etc I found with folks having similar issues.

There was a writer on Forbes who wrote about how he's been using Windows since the first release, and how he has like 5 computers running Win8 that he needed to upgrade to 8.1 and 3 of them worked fine, but 2 of them he couldn't get to upgrade.

Though at least most folks w/ troubles (like me) are getting hit with a "sorry, but here's Windows 8 still" screen instead of a brick.

That said, I still really miss Windows 7. I feel like everything just worked. I mean, I've had 8 for over a month now and I still need to Google stuff like "how to open calculator in desktop mode" which is just not good.

[Stark]

Isn't the adage that, every other release is good?

Win 8 = bad
Win 7 = good
Win Vista = bad
Win XP = good
Win ME = bad
Win 98 = good
etc.