Day: 22 May 2014

Windows 8.1… at last!

Start screen under Windows 8.1 (now with more tile sizes)
Start screen under Windows 8.1 (now with more tile sizes)

This afternoon—after having made sure that last night’s backup happened successfully—I upgraded my PC to Windows 8.1 Pro (64-bit). It had been running Windows 8 Pro (64-bit), so just a 0.1 upgrade! Unlike last year’s botched attempt, this time it was successful and took less than an hour.

Issues

Only three applications complained:

  • 8GadgetPack didn’t run until I’d installed the latest version.
  • Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 reported that it was incompatible. No problem: I’m not using a Windows Mobile phone now. I’ve uninstalled it.
  • SteelSeries Engine reported that it couldn’t initialize. I had suspected my SteelSeries Sensei mouse to be the main culprit in last year’s failed upgrade, so I wasn’t surprised. Downloading the latest version seems to have sorted this.

Tweaks

I’m still using two applications to tweak the Windows 8.1 experience:

  • Start8—Adds the classic start menu back to Windows 8/8.1.
  • Decor8—Personalizes the Windows 8/8.1 start and login screens.

Relief

What a relief to finally get it installed, and without any problems whatsoever. Dear Microsoft, I wish it had been this straight-forward seven months ago. But thank you.

I tweeted my progress through the upgrade: