Easier Set-Up for Windows 8

Features, Setup - By admin on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 12:02

Normally, many of us wait until we buy a new laptop or pc to get the latest version of Windows, but what with the economic downturn and the fact that many people have only just bought new laptops, tablets or computers, Microsoft believes that many people will want to install Windows 8 onto their existing machines.

They found that this was certainly the case with Windows 7 upgrade and they are believe that people running Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 will simply want to purchase the new Windows 8 OS to run on their machines.

The problem in the past has been that installing and setting-up a new OS has been tricky.

When people wanted to install the Windows 7 upgrade Microsoft discovered that this involved them working through 60 screens to complete installation. They want to make the set-up for Windows 8 easier than that.

One Streamlined Set-Up Experience

Writing on the MSDN blog, Christa St. Pierre from Windows 8 Setup and Deployment team said "In Windows 8, rather than having Upgrade Advisor, Setup, and Windows Easy Transfer as separate apps or features, we’ve folded them together into one fast and fluid experience in which we first determine if your PC, apps, and devices will work in the new OS, note which things you want to keep (apps, files and/or settings), and then install the new OS.

"We’ve also added the capability for setup to resume automatically after certain actions (such as resolving a blocking compatibility problem), which in the past would have required restarting setup again from the beginning."

Compatibility Determined

Windows will report on what items will work and what need some tweaking to make them run in Windows 8. The full compatibility report is shown below:

Windows 8 Downloads

Next as Christa explains the downloading of Windows 8 begins. "The integrated download manager provides time estimates, data validation, the ability to pause, resume, and re-download only parts of the file if something goes wrong. Additionally, because we have already scanned the PC to determine compatibility we know which version of Windows 8 to download – eliminating the need to ask questions such as which language or OS architecture to choose."

This should, naturally, speed up the installation process and dramatically reduces the number of screens the user has to work through to install the new OS. Plus you can still use your computer whilst the download is in progress!



Once the download is complete you are offered the choice of creating a USB file to boot from - useful for the developer preview and for dual boot systems, or whether to continue the installation to use Windows 8 as your one OS.

Choose What to Hang on to

You are then offered the choice of what files, applications or data you would like to keep from your old OS and use in your new one.



Christa explained: " The upgrade options that you might see in the screen above depend on which version of Windows you are upgrading from. Here’s the list of what you can migrate based on your currently installed version of Windows:"

Naturally, a clean install option is supported across all versions.

Blocking Problems

If there are some problems to be resolved before Windows 8 can be installed, the new streamlined set-up experience tells you exactly what you need to do to get Windows 8 up and running on your machine.




The end result of these changes mean that instead of looking at an average of 60 screens, a user installing Windows 8 will only have to work through 11 screens. Making it much quicker to install and start using.