[Windows 8 General] lanman99:
I did it

After doing an in place Upgrade on my box i hope my story will help you.

I simply couldn't resist the offer MS made 'til 28 Feb 2013 so i downloaded Windows 8 64 Bit to my Laptop and after the Upgrade Assistant gave me a green light and promised except for the ATI drivers everything should work out i started the upgrade. After roughly 4 h the Upgrade process was done and windows 8 ready. Even the mentioned ATI driver was not a big problem because after the initial upgrade windows 8 asked if i would care to update it and did so.

Windows 8 is creating a Backup of your current installation so there is a restore point you can use. I did not try it out and after 2 weeks i deleted the restore Point.

So far so good. The installation wasn't that complicated. Unfortunately after that i could no longer install any Program or update. The reason behind it was that the upgrade process is exchanging something in the users Registry and after that the security checks simply denied me access to the file System. Even booting in recovery mode did not help (just like my Android GBook tablet at the moment ;) ) . Only way to cope this was to create a new User with Admin Rights as a replacement. Doing so one of my document Folders got lost in transition. I still have no Idea what happened but after moving a Folder from MyDocuments user old to MyDocouments user new the Move process suddenly died and the files where gone. I did have a Backup so luckily it was just annoying but still gave me a rough time figuring out what happened.

You will probably be bothered to reinstall some applications (MS Apps will work) and the new interface is something to get used to for a Lot of Developers.

My System turned quiet a bit slower because of the ever running index service etc. Indexing is even denying write access to newly created files quite regularly and you will have to wait for it to finish before file operations are possible. You definitively have to tune system services if you want a system that is not slowing you down.

My final advice after 2 Month using Win8?

Don't do an in place upgrade it if you don't have to. Windows 7 was working perfectly for me. After 15 years of IT Support under my belly (even thou most of it doing Back-office Servers) Win7 felt like an OS that wasn't in the way and did a great Job. Windows 8 will get in your way via slowing down your Box and making steps that were natural in win7 more cumbersome.

Especially System settings are more or less hidden (because the average "dummy" user needs to be protected from it :silly: ) and are hard to find. Turning every entry in your Start menu into an Metro Icon does not Help either. It's just messing up your start screen. Be Prepared to switch between metro and "normal Desktop" quite often if you are still using "older" programs. Even if you don't want to your Program will decide for you :(.

I think a fresh install helps in that category because it might make it easier to "switch your mind" to the new environment. It will also be a chance to clean your System of old and rarely used programs.

If you still want your Upgrade make sure your Backups are up to date and Working!

Hope this is helping you out.

Cheers

Lanman99