Captain Support and the Windows 8.1 Upgrades

Being the adventurous type of guy he is, Captain Support decided to launch into Windows 8.1 upgrades on his Mom’s and sister-in-law’s laptops. They were identical machines, both running Windows 8 and configured the same. One was local and the other connected to over LogMeIn…

The first thing he noticed about the upgrade is the size of it, approximately 3G. The download and initial install can be done while you’re still using the machine, then comes the inevitable reboot where the real work is done…

The second standout point was the update forced him to him to switch from a local user to a Microsoft Live login. Both Captain Support’s Mom and sister-in-law both use Hotmail/Outlook.com, so this did not present an immediate issue, but it was annoying. Perhaps there is a way to avoid this, but it was not immediately appareent to Captain Support… You can still create local users after the update of course…

The third annoyance was that of the two machines, one upgraded fine and kept all it’s customizations. The other upgraded OK, but seemed to lose some of it’s customizations, including Classic Shell. He was not sure if this related to the LogMeIn access or not. Fortunately, there was not much repair needed.

So after a bit of messing about, Captain Support had two Windows 8.1 laptops, that looked and felt just like Windows 8.0. 🙂

Whilst using the beta version of Windows 8.1, Captain Support noticed that his Citrix login for work was broken. Once the laptop upgrades were complete Captain Support noticed a problem at work and tried out the Citrix client on the production version of Windows 8.1 and it worked fine, so he was able to log in and save the day, or at least the backups of a dev system…

In the airport today I noticed that IE 11 on Windows 8.1 is reported to break some websites, including a number of Google services. Good job nobody uses IE these days. When I get a chance to contact Captain Support I will tell him what I read, in case the has to fly in and rescue his Mom and sister-in-law…

If any drama ensues I’m sure Captain Support will tell me about it, so I can pass it on…

Cheers

Captain Support (reported by Tim…)

PS. I wish I could fly like Captain Support. Aeroplane travel sucks…

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer. View all posts by Tim...