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.
