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Install Win 8.1 Update or lose future updates ...

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by PeteC, 2014/04/10.

  1. 2014/06/14
    kosketus

    kosketus Inactive

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    @ Bill

    OK let's call it quits. I've no wish to carry on the argument about judicial intervention and neither, I imagine, have you.

    As I understand your position, it is that the demand I'm expressing is one that does not merit being satisfied.

    You may be right but I'm sure you won't expect me to agree, because if I did I wouldn't have made it in the first place. All previous versions of Windows up to and including 7 have - to the best of my knowledge - been able to be uninstalled (&/or the system drive be formatted) and thereafter clean-reinstalled, by any user who for whatever reason considered this to be necessary. MS in its own documentation has gone to considerable pains to expound the merits and the methodology of "clean installs ".

    The knowledge that - if I mess-up some harebrained experimental operation and as a result find myself in a situation where my computer is unresponsive to all attempts to get it working again, I can as a last resort format and clean-reinstall the OS - has been enormously reassuring. Personally, I've lost count of the number of times when - having tried every other way to solve a problem with Windows I could think of - I've found just that to be necessary.

    Furthermore, from what I read on the net this is an experience commonly undergone by a significant number of Windows users. You dismiss it out of hand, by flatly pronouncing that the inception of Windows 8 has removed the need.

    For my part, I can't for the life of me see any justification for MS having so "managed" (sic) its implementation of Windows 8 as for the first time to have made impossible a clean reinstall of an OS. The meagre arguments you advance in justification leave me, I'm afraid, completely unconvinced.

    For the avoidance of doubt, let me repeat that the reason why this is so is that in return for the payment made for an upgrade version of Windows 8 a product key was obtained which was part and parcel of that purchase. Despite the fact that 8.1 is not a new OS but only an upgrade of Windows 8 (what used formerly to be called a "service pack ") the product key which formed part of the original purchase of the Windows 8 licence is not allowed by MS to be used to activate anything other than that original copy of Windows 8.

    It has been made impossible by MS once 8.1 has been installed (if thereafter the drive containing it is formatted) for 8.1 to be clean-reinstalled on that computer (from a CD or usb stick onto which a downloaded .iso of the 8.1 installation software has been burned - entirely in keeping with the licence conditions). Only an 8.1 product key will activate 8.1, and such a key can only be obtained by paying MS for a (totally superfluous) copy of Windows 8.1 - EVEN THOUGH EVERY PURCHASER BELIEVED THAT THE RIGHT TO USE WINDOWS 8 IN ITS ORIGINAL, AND IN ANY OF ITS (BY MS) SUBSEQUENTLY MODIFIED, INCARNATIONS WAS IMPLICITLY PART OF WHAT WHAT WAS BEING PAID FOR AT THE START.

    In my opinion MS's behaviour is at the very least in rank bad faith. It would be interesting to learn what other people think (we already know that you think the matter is of no consequence whatsoever).
     
    Last edited: 2014/06/14
  2. 2014/06/14
    Bill

    Bill SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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    The courts stepping in and telling companies how to run their business? That suggestion does not merit any attention.

    What needs to be done is exactly what is being done. Consumers are NOT buying W8 in anywhere near the numbers MS anticipated. W7 is still outselling W8 and Linux share is increasing too. And Microsoft's poorly implemented attempt to placate PC users has alienated even more.

    Clearly, in your mind, screwing over a portion of their customers was planned, regardless no evidence to the contrary.

    Significant number of users? Bull feathers! This is what I mean by "very vocal" MS bashing. This issue only affects W8 users who have decide to [most likely prematurely] reinstall the OS from scratch. That in itself is a significantly small number of users. And the problem only affected a portion of those users to make the number of affected users even fewer.

    I use this analogy a lot - the Honda mechanic, seeing nothing but broken down Honda's all day may easily get the impression Honda's are lousy cars.

    I did no such thing.

    I said repeatedly this Microsoft debacle (forcing the new Start Screen on W8 PC users) was a poor business decision in the first place, then the fix was poorly planned and badly implemented.

    And "flatly pronouncing "? Well that is a just a flat out lie! :mad: Since you like to misquote, inaccurately paraphrase, and flat out lie about what I said, I'm done.
     

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  4. 2014/06/14
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff Thread Starter

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    Gentlemen - time to cool this debate.
     
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  5. 2014/06/14
    kosketus

    kosketus Inactive

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    I despair
     
  6. 2014/06/14
    lj50 Lifetime Subscription

    lj50 SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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    Bill: I finally convinced my last karaoke XP holdout customer to stop using XP. Thank you for your XP comment in your Post(#18). I read it to him and he finally relented. I guess he got sick and tired of me hounding him.
     
  7. 2014/06/15
    kosketus

    kosketus Inactive

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    Believe it or not, on this occasion as always before I posted in this forum because I was seeking help.

    My aim was to elicit useful information here, because I've found the whole miasma surrounding MS's bungled (not just my opinion but that of multiple commentators with far greater knowledge) transitioning to Windows 8 from previous versions totally confusing. And imo whether or not anyone in MS intended to make it confusing, out of some imagined (vanishingly improbable) conspiratorial motive is completely beside the point. What matters is not the intent (even if we knew what it was) but the actual effect upon the customer of MS's choice of actions; whether that effect is in actual practice damaging, represents the breaching of an implied term of the understanding the customer reasonably believed her/himself to be entering into, or in any significant (not pettifogging) way constitutes a departure from the demands of good faith which ought to be honoured by the seller of a good or service. As to whether such is the case only a judicial ruling could decide, and that seems unlikely to be forthcoming.

    Meanwhile, my or anyone else's personal opinion on that matter is incidental. Furthermore, on re-reading my post #9 I see that my wording was sloppy and didn't accurately convey my opinion anyway (I amended it in a subsequent post). Whether that justified the intemperate attacks since directed at me, in personal terms, I leave to others to judge. All I will say is that in over 8 years' harmonious participation in BBS forums I've witnessed nothing which compares with the ferocity of this onslaught, which leaves me open-mouthed with astonishment.

    But to come back to my question:- In my quest for clarity I've read numerous posts in other forums and what they they seem to me to boil-down to is that - although various workarounds (not approved by MS but not contravening the licence terms nonetheless) have been devised by clever people which have enabled them to install and thereafter to activate Windows 8.1 despite (like myself) having only a Windows 8 not an 8.1 product key - unless you possess the necessary ingenuity and/or luck you will not be able to do this. (I've tried and failed). My motive for posting here was to seek either corroboration for this conclusion or - far better - disagreement with it together with an exposition as to why it was wrong, which might lead to a resolution of the impasse.

    So far I've had only corroboration (from Gordon here http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-8/107460-recovery-image.html, post # 12). He too encouraged anyone thinking otherwise to pipe up: to date, no one has.

    If this is indeed the last word, any of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) who paid for a retail upgrade version of Win 8 is (if they subsequently opted to upgrade it to 8.1, then to update 1) now debarred from clean-reinstalling their Windows operating system of choice because they have been cut off from access to the product key which MS demands for activating it. Disregarding the 'Reset' and 'Refresh' boot-menu options, if their system has for any reason ceased to function or become seriously impaired and they wish to make a clean start the only way is by having (as Gordon advocates) created a 'recovery' disk image burned to some external medium through the use of a third-party program such as Acronis True Image. To do that one would need, as he says, to have done it immediately after initial installation (plus tweaks) and if it was not done then the possibility of getting back by that means to anything like a promordial state is gone forever.

    So, finally, one is left with two choices if one wishes to have the ability to clean reinstall in the traditionally-understood sense:- 1) revert to Windows 8 or, 2) buy a retail copy of 8.1 for a substantial price and say goodbye to a fair return on the money you spent on the now-redundant copy of Windows 8 (which you spent in the fond belief - grounded in all previous MS practice - that you were paying for a product which would in all respects see you through to Windows 9's introduction).

    That still leaves open the question - on which we already have the benefit of Bill's opinion - as to whether anyone who does wish to have that ability is mentally-incapacitated, anally-retentive and/or, quite probably clinically certifiable either way.
     
  8. 2014/06/15
    Bill

    Bill SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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    Repurposing old, but still chugging along, XP systems as network connected storage (NAS) devices is how I convinced a lot of folks to finally migrate away from XP - at least for their primary systems where they do their banking, pay bills, shop, etc. No one likes to throw away something that is still fully functional - but when it comes to security, sometimes you have to.

    But again, it is critical to block access to and from the Internet on these systems as well. This is most effectively done by yanking out the Ethernet cable or wireless adapter - isolating it from the local network (LAN) and the Internet. Short of that, blocking the IP and MAC address via the router is the next best thing. We need to remember that malware has a primal goal of propagation - and that includes spreading to "locally connected" computers too - not just Internet connected. This is why simply not using the XP system is not good enough.

    I am glad your karaoke client finally saw the light.
     
  9. 2014/06/15
    lj50 Lifetime Subscription

    lj50 SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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    So am I and thanks again.
     
  10. 2014/06/15
    retiredlearner

    retiredlearner SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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  11. 2014/06/16
    kosketus

    kosketus Inactive

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    Hi Neil

    Thanks for the tip.

    No I hadn't, but in my searches I might have passed it by because it deals with a different situation - namely, an OEM version of Win 8 pre-installed on a purchased laptop. I'm dealing with two desktops (one self-built) each with a retail upgrade version of Win 8, installed from CD/usb-stick.

    So there are some important differences, which may mean that, at most, only some of what is demonstrated in the video is transferable.

    Nevertheless I have of course watched it and shall be watching it again to see whether there's anything there that I might usefully experiment with. I'm bound to say that I'm not optimistic but I'll certainly be studying it intently. I'll let you know how it goes
     
  12. 2014/06/16
    kosketus

    kosketus Inactive

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    Apropos of the immediately-foregoing exchange of posts, I can't forebear to point out in passing that the maker of this U-tube guide belongs to the self-same group of anally-retentive, semi-moronic individuals as I do myself.

    And he's evidently entirely unashamed about it. Strange, considering that he comes across as a level-headed, sensible sort of guy.
     
  13. 2014/06/18
    kosketus

    kosketus Inactive

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    Hi Neil

    Reporting back as promised.

    Not looking hopeful, I'm sorry to say. The video's maker breezily says:- "I've obtained a retail iso, downloaded through torrents... you guys might be able to find it... ". I'm none too familiar with this kind of thing but, nothing daunted, launched myself into the unfamiliar waters. Then wished I hadn't 'cos they seem to be populated mostly by sharks, crack-peddlars and other dubious types (I ended up having to clean out an assortment of junk I found they'd sneaked onto my computer).

    In the end I did succeed in pinpointing a reputable source, from which I downloaded via torrent the exact same iso that features in the video. Having done so, I found it to be an RTM version (shows the video's age I suppose) and thus useless now.

    Just for the hell of it I plan to see if his method (ie using it in conjunction with a generic product key) will work for me (which I strongly doubt) but even if it does that test will be as far as I go with it. If it does work I'll revert to trying to find another bona fide iso - easier said than done! - and try it with that.
     

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