*Official* Alienware Official Windows 8 support thread [Questions and Discussions Here]

Did you install .net frameworks? and intel drivers? Bit weird it freezing, I run the barebones windows 8 install and its ok for me, rock stable, no major issues.

You havent installed your own 3rd party security software maybe?

 

Yep I installed .net framework an did not install any third party security. Today is day two after removing the alien autopsy and installing the Dell video drivers and no lock up so my fingers are crossed. I would still like to install the Alien Autopsy but until I figure out why it lock the system up when launched ill hold off.

 

Video drivers for intel i find the windows update version the most stable, maybe it was alien autopsy causing the issue, I don't use that on my laptop under windows 8 and its been stable for me.

 

My rig and specs are in sig. Running Windows 8 I think is the culprit of me not able to play games online without this terrible warping. It is NOT my wireless. I download at 3.5mb a second, I run net_graph 1 on steam games (CS:S, CS:GO and L4D2) and see my ping is great, FPS are insane, and I have zero choke. However I warp around every few seconds and it's unplayable. Anyone else experiencing this with steam based games and have you found a fix? It has effected my last defective system as well that has been replaced. I need help!

 

Can you try installing Windows 7 and see if that fixes it? You can image your Windows 8 setup on USB and restore it quickly if you decide you want to go back to Windows 8. If you have the same issues with Windows 7, then you'll have a pretty good idea it's something not right about the WiFi card.

I almost decided to ditch Windows 8 completely yesterday. Had it not been late in the the day, I probably would have. I had my Windows 7 USB stick in my hands and everything. I'm just getting sick and tired of something always not working correctly or simply being stupid with respect to Windows 8. There are too just many things to not like about it for me to ever be in love it. With Windows 7 it was hard to find fault with anything.

 

I keep being lazy after work getting rid of Win 8. I think I will just do so this weekend as i am spending more time trying to find a fix for something very few people have exposure to. I just played BF3 from Origin and it ran fine online. So it has to be some bug with Steam and Win8 which is more reason to just go to Win 7 and be done with it. Bleh.

 

Sick and tired is right. I couldn't take it anymore. I jumped ship and am enjoying an OS I don't have to heavily modify to enjoy. Windows 7, welcome home.

Now I just have to fix the pesky 1103 instability.


Sent from my Galaxy Note II

 

For $30 spare yourself the time and frustration and swap out that Killer 1103 for an Ultimate-N 6300 and be done with it. You'll be glad you did.

 

Looking for some tips on how to proceed and install Windows 7 on a 2nd harddrive. I have Win8 up and running stable, but would like to have the option to boot into Win7.

I've done quite a bit of googling, but not found anything useful yet. I suspect I need to disable something in Win8 and then the BIOS so that Win8 doesn't overrule all else on bootup but yeah. Stuck..

Should I simply remove the Win8 HDD and change BIOS to legacy and disable secure boot? and if I do that what happens when I put the Win8 HDD back in?

 

This is really simple, Brother Yeti575. Simply run Win7 Setup and point it to the HDD/SSD (or partition on the same drive) where you want it installed. Windows Setup will take of the rest and update the bootloader. Afterward, you will have a boot menu to select between the two operating systems after POST completes. You can choose the default OS as well.

Beware though... you may end up going back to Windows 7 if you use it fairly often. I was running the M18xR2 for over 9 months as dual boot and also the new 18 as dual boot, using Windows 8 as my primary OS. After booting into Windows 7 once in a great while (mostly for benching) both systems are back to Windows 7 only and I ultimately determined that Windows 8 was simply a waste of drive space. I may install Windows 8 on the 48GB of leftover space on my mSATA SSD just for the sake of random testing, but I don't see Windows 8 winning me back. I have 8.1 on another system and I would describe it as "meh" for the most part... more or less just a Win8 SP1.

 

Thank you for your response Mr. Fox ! Unfortunately I had no luck trying to boot off the Win7 DVD, well not without making BIOS changes. It would simply always boot into Win8 - ignoring that the boot disk options was set to boot DVD first.

So I disabled fast boot. That did nothing (as expected). Hitting F12 on POST brought up my boot options, including the possibility to boot off the DVD. However, upon doing so I would get an error message (sorry I already forgot what it was). As it seemed related to security I disabled secure boot.

It still would not boot from the DVD, so I enabled legacy boot. After that I was able to boot of the Win7 DVD and proceed with the installation fine.

Not sure if I missed something along the line, as I now don't get the option to choose OS via the dual-boot menu on bootup. If I now want to use Win8 I have to use the F12 option. It's no big deal, just got wondering why that is. Also, Win7 sees my 2nd HDD (with Win 8 on it) but not vice versa


Has taken most of the weekend just getting all 200 Win7 updates installed, look forward to comparing my Win7 benchmarks against my Win8's

 

No, you did not miss anything. Secure Boot is pure garbage... plain and simple. I am sorry I did not know you have Secure Boot enabled, otherwise I would have suggested disabling that technological abortion and saved you a lot of time. If you ever decide to do a clean install, change the disks from GPT back to MBR and change the BIOS to pure Legacy Boot (versus UEFI with Legacy Mode) before starting Windows Setup if the BIOS will permit you to do it. If Microsoft has their way, these options will be gone very soon. We may soon have one only option available and it's not the good one, unfortunately.

It's OK to press F12 and manually select the drive and I actually like that better in some ways, so if you are OK with it like that then I would just leave it that way. If it bothers you, then you can use EasyBCD and add Windows 8 to the boot options menu. I suspect you have two drives marked as "Active" and that is why pressing F12 and selecting the other disk works. Technically, you're not supposed to have more than one active disk in a system, but I have not found that it hurts anything as long as you know it and know what to do. It can cause confusion for some people.

 

Thank you for your time and help brother Fox, been of great help. Also, I may just end up formatting my existing pre-installed Win8 so handy to know. +rep !

 

No problems with mx17 R4 and windows 8 - However for any win 8.1 machine Sonicwall will not work. Really blows when you can't remote into work. - Just a FYI

 

Mr Fox, i was thinking of upgrading to Windows 8.1. I have been trying to do as much research as i could on my own. I have a few fundamental questions.

I have been reading up about UEFI and wanted to know your insight into it. Currently my 17 - R4 is running bios A11 which supports UEFI. My rig has stock Win 7 on it. Should i update the bios to A12 ? How do i go about installing Windows in UEFI ?

I have looked at various posts in the forum and they say i need to disable secure boot and enable UEFI in bios and that would be it. Format the drive i want to install the OS on and do the normal steps forward.

Is there something i am missing ? or should i take some extra care about ?

 

I am assuming you mean Secure Boot because you already have a UEFI BIOS. You can use it in true Legacy mode (my preference) or UEFI with the Legacy Option ROM, or Secure Boot. If you are considering Secure Boot, then I have to ask myself why because it provides nothing especially useful unless you are in a business scenario and need to have enhanced data security. Secure Boot simply introduces unwarranted complications and restrictions for most enthusiasts.

If you really don't mean Secure Boot, then there is no reason to care one way or the other. I run a dual-boot setup and Windows 7 is my preferred OS. However, I am using Windows 8.1 (just upgraded from Windows 8 last night) with both UEFI and Secure Boot disabled in my BIOS, so if people are telling you that you need UEFI enabled to use Windows 8.1 they are misinformed and should not be listened to. You may have also read that you can't switch after installing Windows and that seems to be more misinformation. I can switch my BIOS between Legacy and UEFI with Legacy Option ROM on the fly without any issues booting either version of Windows. So, unless there is something magical about my system, you don't need to set it a certain way during Windows setup. You can change it later if you have some reason to.

I am gun shy of BIOS updates any more. They keep introducing more and more garbage that can restrict end user freedoms. My vote is do not update your BIOS unless doing so holds promise of fixing a problem that you need to have fixed. In other words, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Windows 8.1 sucks about the same as Windows 8. I haven't found anything remarkably better or more desirable about it yet. Some of my Windows 8 aesthetic tweaks don't work yet because Windows 8.1 hacks are a work in progress. I don't have Aero transparency now with 8.1 and I despise the pastel look. For the most part it seems to be a big to do about nothing, with a couple of steps backwards on UI customizations that I lost upon upgrading. I'm very unimpressed.

 

Why dell did not update driver for windows 8.1 ?
Graphic driver for gt650m not working anymore and killer network driver also not working with windows 8.1

 

Dell doesn't update drivers. It's not the responsibility of any computer OEM to ensure compatibility for upgrades with an OS that they never sold with a particular system. The hardware component vendors support their products with driver updates until the are deemed EOL (end of life).

You would need to obtain Windows 8.1 drivers from NVIDIA and Killer/Bigfoot. It is not likely Dell will be providing a mirror for downloading them through support.dell.com and we don't even really need for them to do that. Just go here: Killer Gaming :: Solutions :: Wireless ...and here: Welcome to NVIDIA - World Leader in Visual Computing Technologies and you should be set.

 

That is what i am doing right now...my system working perfect now. TY

 

Mr Fox. a crystal clear answer, this should answer questions that a million more people will start to have once they get around to thinking if they need Windows 8/8.1 and begin to Google.

My current BIOS settings are Secure boot - disabled, UEFI - disabled & Legacy option Rom - enabled. I have not messed around with any setting in my BIOS and after your advice i do not intend to even update it. It aint broken

You are absolutely right to point out that a lot of material online says you can't switch between UEFI and Legacy ROM without re-installing windows. The only reason i even went over looking for UEFI setting is because it is supposed to drastically drop boot up time to about 8-10 seconds.

It appears to me as if your preference is just legacy boot and UEFI disabled. Is this the way to go forward ? should i install windows just the way i always have and if i need UEFI just goto the BIOS and enable UEFI, If i don't mess up a step doing this should help me get the Fast boot ?? or am i misinformed ?

And online research also says if i get a UEFI boot i will get Alienware log on screen automatically. Not sure how that works.

Thank you once again.

 

Just go ahead and install it like you have it already set. It should work great.

Although I am not a huge fan of Windows 8, I am also not a hater of it after I am done tweaking it. I have made it a good OS through tons of tweaks, but I think it is very unimpressive and not a very good OS the way it comes standard from Micro$oft. One feature I really like in Windows 8.1 is the "wallpaper integration" (for lack of a better term). Having my lock screen, desktop wallpaper and Modern UI Start screen all exactly the same gives the OS more of a planned feel as opposed to feeling like a mess. Here is an example of what I am referring to.

<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bwdqi25LDwZyVDNhbjYyZHFyRzA/preview" width='798' height="480"></iframe>

 

Awesome i shall do as told, will document things for myself. And help others when i see questions i have had

 

Mr Fox, i was going through your quick guide to install windows 8, you have a bullet saying.

• 
  Set the BIOS for RAID (not AHCI) even if you do not use RAID

i do not have a RAID setup, just one SSD for the OS and a second 1TB HDD.

do i still do this ?? how would it matter ?

 

Never mind i found this link http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...es-sata-iii-ssd-upgrade-raid0-discussion.html

which explains it all.

 

I upgraded from Windows 8 Pro to 8.1 Pro and it made me uninstall the ST Micro Accelerometer (which obviously was running fine on Windows 8 Pro.) The ST Micro Accelerometer isn't listed under Dell's Drivers and Downloads and I can't get it from the manufacturer's website.

Did anybody else run into this?

 

If you go to the normal Dell Support site some of the Windows 8.1 drivers are not being listed, but they are easier to identify at the Dell FTP site.

Here is a link: Alienware Windows 8.1 Driver Downloads | Dell FTP

I added a link for this to the opening post as well. Please note that Windows 8.1 drivers probably will not be available for older Alienware systems. You will need to check the hardware manufacturer web sites for those drivers.

 

Thanks for the link! Unfortunately it lists the same drivers as Dell's Drivers and Downloads for my system. I am seeing others online (mostly with Inpirons) having trouble due to Accelerometer when upgrading.

I was surprised I lost compatibility going from 8 to 8.1.

 

Yeah, that surprises me, too. I never would have expected that.

 

See this new sticky thread for Windows 8.1 support: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...upport-thread-questions-discussions-here.html