Windows 8.1

This page is about Windows 8.1 - various observations, and it includes some sections on settings that I reckoned needed tweeked.

At the moment my knowledge is all based on a couple of Toshiba laptops that I have been setting up, and so I am suffering a bit in that I don`t know how many of the settings and how much of the bloatware is put on by Toshiba. and how much is put on by Microsoft.

Way back during 2014, Microsoft acknowledged that Windows 8 was a flop, and announced the future launch of Windows 10 in late 2015.

However that meant that OEM`s didn`t have a sellable version of Windows to put on their computers - few people wanted Windows 8, and Windows 10 wasn`t available.

So I have a suspicion that Windows 8.1 was cobbled together as a temporary stop-gap so that OEM`s had something new to put on computers - particularily important for the Christmas market.

By Christmas 2014, only a few months after its launch, there had been roughly 3GB`s of updates to Windows 8.1 - that is an awful lot of updates in just a few months, and somewhat confirms my views about it being cobbled together in a hurry.

Default screen

Windows 8.1 is somewhat different from previous versions of Windows ( excluding 8 ) because its whole orientation is that you should want to live in the cloud, and do everything through the cloud.

The Start screen and the Apps screen work quite well in that regard, and do what they are supposed to do.

However if you want a more normal desktop on start up, you can change the default screen to your desktop by going to Control Panel / Personalisation - select "Taskbar and Navigation" in the bottom left corner, and select the Navigation tab, then tick or untick the relevant boxes.

Desktop Taskbar

It appears that Microsoft have not sufficiently isolated the Start screen from the Apps screen, and from the Desktop screen.

If the desktop taskbar is in its default position at the bottom of the screen, it can interfere with the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen on both the Start screen and the Apps screen.

Moving the taskbar on the desktop up to the top of the desktop screen seems to work better.

Office

The two laptops I have been working on came with Office already installed - sounds like a good deal, except that you only get a 30 day trial period - after that you have got to buy a licence.

The other thing to notice is that this is a version of Office called " Office Click-to-Run".

It is different from normal programmes in that the installation and updating is done from the Microsoft servers.

The updating is done automatically at a time over which the user has no control - this could be quite inconvenient if a portable computer is connected to the internet over a metered WiFi, and Office decides to download tens or hundreds of MB`s of updates.

If you want to kill this, the Click-to-Run executable is listed in Services, and can be disabled through Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services.

On one of these laptops, Office activated okay using a product key purchased through Microsoft Volume Licencing, on the other laptop, Office was uninstalled.

Now I had no problem uninstalling the Office Click-to Run version, possibly because it had never been used, and so the Click-to-Run executable was not enabled.

There seems to be quite a lot of people writing on the internet about not being able to uninstall Office Click-to-Run - I suggest that if you want to uninstall it, first of all go into Services and make sure it is disabled, after setting it to disabled, do a restart, then try to uninstall Office Click-to-Run through Control Panel / Programs and Features.

If it doesn`t uninstall, then there are several suggestions on the internet about what to try.

Power options

Several previous versions of Windows have options for "Sleep" and "Hibernate" - in some of the older versions of Windows it was standard advice to disable them.

There is quite a lot of hype on the internet about how good they are now on Windows 8.1 - I disagree - I personally think they are dangerous, especially on laptops, or battery powered devices.

The default settings for power options on Windows 8.1 - and I think also on Windows 7 - is that when the battery level gets down to a critical level, the computer should go into Hibernation.

Now it seems to be common knowledge that when Windows goes into Sleep mode, the computer is still taking current out of the battery, so is draining the battery.

I have been quite unable to find a definitive statement on whether current continues to be taken out of the battery when Windows is in Hibernation - there are a lot of different opinions about it, but as I say, I haven`t found a definitive statement about it.

What I can say is that on both of these two laptops, when they have been in Hibernation, they have ended up with batteries that were so flat that even the BIOS didn`t know the time and date.

It really doesn`t seem to be a smart move to set a default option that Windows goes into Hibernation when the battery charge gets down to a critical level - much more sensible to have the laptop shut down.

I suggest killing off both Sleep and Hibernation - you can do it through Control Panel / Power options.

Task Manager

Windows 8.1 has added a rather good version of Task Manager, with some useful facilities in it - you can access it in various ways -

- CTRL - ALT - DEL provides a menu which includes Task Manager
- right click on the task bar
- right click on the square button at the end of the task bar
- on the Apps screen
- use the "RUN" option - the executable is taskmgr.exe

Recovery and System back-ups

Windows 7 introduced some excellent facilities which enabled you to create images of your computer, and use them to do a complete re-install.

Windows 8.1 continues these despite what a lot of sales staff and websites tell you, but Microsoft have hidden them away a bit.

A Recovery drive can be created by going to Control Panel / Recovery - note that on Windows 8.1, it is not possible to put this on a DVD, it must go on a USB memory stick.

You have a choice as to whether you save just a boot-up drive, or the whole recovery drive - they are both useful, and you should probably do both.

For a boot-up drive, a 1 GB USB stick will suffice.

For a full recovery drive you will need a 32 GB USB stick - even though it says you need a 16 GB one.

Don`t ever - ever - ever use these USB sticks for anything else - it will break them, and they will no longer work as recovery drives.

A System Image can be created by going to Control Panel / File History, and in the bottom left hand corner, select System Image Backup.

There are a number of options as to where Windows will look to find a place it finds suitable for laying down the image - it seems to only be prepared to lay down the image in the root of a drive, I can`t persuade it to lay it down inside a folder structure.

User accounts

Because it is intended to part of your on-line life, Windows 8.1 has to some extent tried to move away from local accounts on each computer.

They have tried to set up Windows 8.1 so that you should login with a cloud account - I am not sure about this, but I don`t think it necessarily has to be a Microsoft account - any cloud based e-mail account will do - I went through the process using a dummy Yahoo address, and it seemed to be happy about it, although I didn`t finalise it.

I can see their thinking - it means you can login to your laptop, tablet, phone, or whatever and get exactly the same view of your cloud environment - a sort of roaming profile.

The problem is that desktop computers are not mobile phones, they do different things, and they are used in different ways.

I also question the usability of touch screen monitors in the desktop environment - if you are using a big touch screen monitor, the monitor has to be closer to you than it should be for a good ergonomic sitting position, you will be forced to hunch over the top of the keyboard in order to reach the monitor.

You can still create local accounts, even though Windows 8.1 doesn`t really want you to - a good start is to disconnect from the internet before you try to set up the account.

Something that you might have a problem with is the fact that if you create a local account, log in with it into Windows 8.1, then go on-line and log in to a cloud account, Windows 8.1 will convert the local account to a cloud account, and you may well then have difficulty logging in locally if you don`t have an internet connection.

It is something I haven`t met so far because I have not used a Microsoft cloud account with Windows 8.1, but there is quite a lot of dialogue on the internet about it.

I think it can be converted back again to a local account through Control Panel / User Accounts, but this will presumably involve having to log in to the computer using a different administrator level account.

Network connection names

I have found that Windows 8.1 has a tendency to cross over wireless network names to ethernet connection names - so that the ethernet connection has the name of a wireless connection.

Using the "Rename this connection" doesn`t get rid of it, as it changes another name.

The only way I have found to get rid of it is to go into the registry and manually delete the name.

Network connection wake-up

Something you need to check is whether a network device can wake-up the computer - this could be quite dangerous - if a laptop wakes up when it is in a padded case, it will overheat.

At least some of the network connections on the two laptops I have looked at are by default set to allow wake-up.

Go to Control Panel / Network and Sharing Centre / Change adapter settings.

Right click on each adapter listed and select "Properties".

Click on "Configure" - select "Power Management" - untick the relevant box.

Wireless ad hoc networks

Previous versions of Windows have allowed users to set up ad hoc, or peer-to-peer, wireless networks between Windows computers.

Actually, they aren`t proper peer-to-peer networks, because one computer is set up as a master, however the effect is the same, you don`t need an external master.

However on Windows 8.1 this ability has been removed from anywhere amongst all the GUI configuration screens.

It can still be done, but only through a command line screen, using netsh commands.

Now at first sight it seems to be a bit strange that Microsoft should continue to use NetBIOS - an old, unencrypted, famously insecure protocol - to enable users to interconnect computers - and then take away the modern physical layer that NetBIOS needs to provide the connection.

The majority of Windows users will never use netsh to set up a wireless peer-to-peer network - they are more likely to use their internet connected broadband wireless router as a master.

So now we have a classic man-in-the-middle situation where anyone on the internet who has the know-how can evesdrop on what the users believe to be a private communication network.

Microsoft can put their hand on their heart and say that haven`t left a back-door - it is more a case that users will set up a wide-open front-door which allows the world to listen in to their private data exchanges between their computers.

PC Settings

PC Settings is a group of screens that allow you to see or change various settings - it doesn`t work just as well as it might.

On one laptop, I have disabled the Bluetooth network connection through the Network Connections screen, and yet PC Settings says it is on and searching for Bluetooth devices.

Another observation is that if you open PC Settings, then close it again, even if you specifically close it through the task bar, the executable "SystemSettings.exe" continues to run, and is using memory.

The only way that I have found to stop it is to kill the process.

Charms

Charms are one of Microsoft`s annoyances - the idea is that if you move the mouse over one of the right hand corners of the screen, then you get a pop-up area on the right hand edge of the screen with various icons in it.

I think it was introduced in Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 has added the facility to switch it off - go to Control Panel / Personalisation, click on "Taskbar and Navigation" in the botton left corner, and select the Navigation tab.

Untick the relevant box or boxes.

Unfortunately, in my experience the wretched things still appear, along with a huge pop-up digital clock - another Microsoft fail !

Powershell

Windows 8.1 includes Powershell 4.0, Windows 8 included Powershell 3.0, and Windows 7 included Powershell 2.0.

Now if you want to standardise the version of Powershell across the different versions of Windows, then you can upgrade the Powershell on Windows 7 to Powershell 4.0 using the upgrade instructions and software provided by Microsoft.

Except it doesn`t work !

You can do the upgrade, and it then shows itself as Powershell 4.0, but what Microsoft have hidden away on their website is the fact that if you upgrade Powershell on Windows 7 to Powershell 4.0, you don`t get the whole of Powershell 4.0, you only get a part of it.

I can`t tell you the details, but it appears that some of the internal coding of Windows 7 does not support much of Powershell 4.0.

So although it claims to be Powershell 4.0, in fact it is only a part of it.

I don`t know what the situation is with Windows 8.

Hardening Windows 8.1

Most of the techniques I wrote about in a previous webpage about hardening Windows 7 are applicable to Windows 8.1, and I suggest you have a look at that web page.

In conclusion .....

From my limited experience of Windows 8.1, I have come to the conclusion that Windows 8.1 doesn`t really have much of a future - it is buggy, and the three different screens ( ie, Desktop, Start, and Apps ) means that the operating system is getting in the way of doing whatever it is you want to do on your computer.

If you are running Windows 7 just now, I don`t see any point in upgrading to Windows 8.1 unless you need Powershell 4.0 - Microsoft will provide security updates for Windows 7 until 2020.

If you are still on XP then you have a problem - OEM`s cannot now sell a new computer with Windows 7 on it, Microsoft have blocked it.

It would of course be possible to buy a new computer with Windows 8.1, and also buy a Windows 7 DVD - remove Windows 8.1, and put on Windows 7.

An expensive option, and not trivial, as the booting mechanisms are different, which means digging into the BIOS.

The good news is that Microsoft have announced that Windows 10 will be available as a free upgrade for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 - lets hope that Windows 10 gets it right !

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