Using Windows Embedded 8.1 as a daily driver

## Windows

So I downloaded this Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Enterprise x64 ISO off The Pirate Bay, which claims to be the original ISO from MSDN (which is true, since I checked the SHA1 using HashMyFiles and both the ISO's hash and the hash provided in MSDN are the same), and decided to give it a try in my real PC, since I've tested this in VMWare and it seems to work correctly, and I've also tried using KMSPico in order to crack it, and it works.

**Please note that I won't give you the ISO download link since this is not an ISO given for free by Microsoft (requires MSDN subscription in order to download it). However, you can try finding the ISO from those torrent sites, and be sure to check the hash using Hashmyfiles too, to ensure that the ISO you downloaded is the original one.**

The first thing I did was to shrink the partition on the D drive. Unfortunately Disk Management refuses to shrink it for some reason (it keeps claiming that there's not enough free space even though I still have 28GB left), so I used Partition Wizard to shrink it. It successfully shrank my drive by 24GB.

The next was to create a bootable USB to install it. I used Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to do it, and used my 8GB flash drive as the target drive.

I then set my WD HDD as the master drive, since it refuses to install if I set my Fujitsu HDD instead. I also used the USB flash drive as the temporary boot device, obviously to install it, and I used that 24GB partition for the installation drive.

Setup finishes in around ten minutes, which is convenient, considering the fact that I only have a C2D E7500 2.93GHz and 2x1GB DDR2 RAM.

I customized the configuration in the out-of-box experience, since a lot of the features M$ offers are compromising my privacy. I signed my M$ account in (which is quite mandatory), and then it takes me to the Start screen as usual.

The only disgusting thing is that the icons for the default Metro apps that aren't installed here ARE shown in the start screen, unlike the one I installed in VMWare. I decided to unpin those since I won't install those at any time (Metro apps are useless in the first place anyway). I guess this is probably because I'm connected to the internet, so that it downloads some data from M$.

Some of the last things I did was to install KMSPico (required to activate it, since I don't have the key in the first place), and the display driver. Surprisingly KMSPico still works in this version of Windows despite being a version that's not supported. Probably has something to do with activation method, which is probably the same as Win8.1.

So far, I haven't encountered any problems using this. However, from what I read, Windows Embedded will NOT get the free Windows 10 upgrade, since all Windows Embedded versions are treated as an enterprise version of Windows.

**UPDATE:**It appears that DirectX 9 doesn't come preinstalled with Windows Embedded 8.1 (OBS installer will tell you that DirectX components are missing). However, I installed it and it seems to work fine. DirectX 10 and 11 come preinstalled though, when checked in dxdiag.

## What works

* Chrome
* IDM
* KMSPico (for activation crack)
* Lightshot
* OBS (requires you to install DirectX 9 first)
* PCSX2
* PvZ
* Steam
* uTorrent
* VLC media player
* VMWare Workstation 11

## Gallery

Winver in Windows Embedded 8.1The system menu in control panel. Note that it says "Windows is activated" because I cracked it using KMSPicoEven PvZ works perfectly fine, although I have to copy the files from my Windows 10's ProgramData to get the user profiles to load (which is what I did after taking this screenshot)Steam works (which means you can play your Steam games on Windows Embedded 8.1)The start screen. Note that there used to be some more app tiles which are not installed by default, but are installable. I've unpinned them as they're pretty much useless for me. If this PC wasn't connected to the internet, the installable apps wouldn't have existedChrome in Windows Embedded 8.1