Windows 8.1 upgrade

Windows 8.1

My upgrade experience

Microsoft said it would be an easy upgrade and all programs and settings would be carried across. Well this was almost true but in my case it wasn’t so easy.

The upgrade is obtainable from the App store in Windows 8 and from there you can proceed to download a 3.36Gb file so it’s best to leave plenty of time and have a good broadband connection.

As the download gets on you will notice it starts displaying messages about doing a compatibility check before performing the upgrade. Once the upgrade is done your computer restarts, in my case twice and on the second restart I was left for a long time with a blank grey screen. At this point I decided to leave it alone and go out then upon my return a few hours later it was ready for me to create my account and this is where things got a little strange.

I was asked to sign in with or to create a Microsoft account, before this upgrade I had two accounts on the computer and one was a local account and one my Microsoft account so I was puzzled why it was asking me to create one as it was supposed to transfer my settings etc. I proceeded to log in with my existing Microsoft account and was then presented with the requirement to access via my recovery email address a one time code to tap into a window before I could proceed (Another reminder of the importance of keeping your email recovery options current), this done I put in the code and was then informed that the account was already in use on this machine and I should proceed to next and now there was a new button allowing me to proceed.

Once I was logged in the familiar desktop and all my things were there but not without changes. I had when I first moved to windows 8 purchased the Start8 menu from Stardock and was very happy with it, now I was aware that the upgrade gave you a start button but I wasn’t sure if it was mandatory or not, for me it was and when I clicked it I only got a blank square that covered a third of my screen. The problem here was that the Start8 menu was still there in operation and also the new windows 8 start button, to sort this out I had to uninstall the original third party menu I had been happily using, then I found the new start button worked fine albeit taking me back to the tiled interface of the Metro screen. This is at the moment something I am prepared to work with.

The next thing I noticed was my Avast Internet Security was missing so a quick visit to the Avast website and I downloaded my license and the product and reinstalled. I also took the opportunity to remove some programs I have not used in a long time.

Conclusion

The upgrade went quite well but should have been smoother as in previous versions of Windows. Also do make sure that if you are also doing this upgrade that you know the recovery options for your Microsoft account and how to access them, additionally if you were one of many people who installed a third party start menu then that too will change once the upgrade is complete.