Reverting to W7 after two months with W8

JayteeBates

[H]ard|Poof
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Jul 21, 2007
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I tried - I used it for over two months but Windows 8 just isn't a good desktop experience for me. It had features I liked, the task manager is fantastic and it was a solid OS in general. However, the lack of proper Multi-monitor support from NV within Windows 8 just wore me down. Specifically with 3 monitors you either have 3 separate logical screens without SLI or you have one massive logical screen with SLI. There is no native way to maximize without the window covering all 3 screens without using something like Matrox PowerDesk which is still not 100%. NV claims that thier drivers interact with the Aero to get multi-screens working properly in 7 but that doesn't exist in 8 hense the failure to work properly.

On top of which the just plain square and garrish look of 8 windows I do not miss at all. If 8 had areo I wouldn't have gone back but alas maybe NV will get their drivers fixed eventually. Here is to hoping Windows 9 gets past the (self inflicted) Fugly asthetic growing pains of Windows 8.
 
So the "Confine maximized window to one screen" option in the NV Control panel doesn't work in 8? I've not yet upgraded or tested my sig rig with Windows 8 because I have heard of issues with using Surround and it is one of the things that does need improving in 8. What about using independent monitors while on the desktop and switching to Surround for gaming?
 
Word on the strasse is Windows 9 and later will be pushing the metro experience, so don't get your hopes high. Honestly, I secretly hope the metro/Windows 8 theme gets pushed indefinitely just to see the disappointed reactions from future generations. Then again I'm a kind of person who finds pleasure in pain.

Let the cries of frustration fuel me for generations to come.
 
This is the first I've heard of problems caused by missing driver features in Windows 8. Do the same issues exist with AMD cards?
 
Yep. Eyefinity and nvsurround do not properly support Windows 8. It's a major annoyance, one that I would have thought fixed by now, but apparently both nVidia and AMD don't really care about Windows 8 users. They seem to be taking their time getting those features out for Windows 8.

Since the games I play don't even properly support nvSurround or Eyefinity at the moment (Starcraft II and LoL), I just leave it in extended desktop mode.

"You're just a hater"

"You just don't like change"

"You'll get used to it"

I'm assuming you either A. did not read the OP, or B. are just simply trolling or C. both of the above.
 
Yep. Eyefinity and nvsurround do not properly support Windows 8. It's a major annoyance, one that I would have thought fixed by now, but apparently both nVidia and AMD don't really care about Windows 8 users. They seem to be taking their time getting those features out for Windows 8.

found intel drivers had the same issues, had to install 7 drivers to fix it
 
So the "Confine maximized window to one screen" option in the NV Control panel doesn't work in 8? I've not yet upgraded or tested my sig rig with Windows 8 because I have heard of issues with using Surround and it is one of the things that does need improving in 8. What about using independent monitors while on the desktop and switching to Surround for gaming?

If you go NV Surround you have one logical desktop so that option works in a strictly literal sense but not in reality. It maximizes across all 3 screens because logically the OS sees them as one big screen.

I was using independant monitors (all monitors active setting in NV panel) but that disables SLI. Switching between the two modes is an annoyance I wasn't willing to put up with any longer.
 
Uhm not sure I follow. I have a gtx 680 pushing 3 screens, not sli for gaming, but for photography work and it works fines for me. Maybe I'm not understanding the problem.
 
Uhm not sure I follow. I have a gtx 680 pushing 3 screens, not sli for gaming, but for photography work and it works fines for me. Maybe I'm not understanding the problem.

Likewise, I have a GTX 670 using 2 screens on W8, however the OP is talking about NV Surround that stretches the display across multiple screens.
 
Microsoft has their own version of Intel's "tick tock" with there OSes. One sucks, one is good, one sucks, one is good.

Windows 9!
 
Uhm not sure I follow. I have a gtx 680 pushing 3 screens, not sli for gaming, but for photography work and it works fines for me. Maybe I'm not understanding the problem.

Official NV Forums thread about W8 and Surround: https://forums./default/topic/522732/nvidia-surround/nvidia-surround-on-windows-8/

NV Surround makes your 3 monitors one contiguous screen to the OS. I.E. your native res becomes 5760x1080 instead of 1920x1080 on 3 distinct screens. I.E. when you look at the display properties you see one big screen labeled 1. So if you are running NV Surround and you maximize a window it maximizes to a res of 5760x1080. The task bar is across all 3 as well.

If you simply run no SLI and pick "enable all screens" it runs each monitor as 1920x1080 and when you look at the display properties window you see 3 screens labeled 1, 2 and 3.

Are there ways to almost make everything work - yes. http://www.wsgf.org/node/24452 But it still doesn't work as it did in Windows 7 at this point with existing drivers.
 
If you go NV Surround you have one logical desktop so that option works in a strictly literal sense but not in reality. It maximizes across all 3 screens because logically the OS sees them as one big screen.

I was using independant monitors (all monitors active setting in NV panel) but that disables SLI. Switching between the two modes is an annoyance I wasn't willing to put up with any longer.

Now I understand what your saying. Since I'm not using sli for gaming I wasn't sure what you were talking about.. now I do.
 
Microsoft has their own version of Intel's "tick tock" with there OSes. One sucks, one is good, one sucks, one is good.

Windows 9!

This has been debunked multiple times, and needs to stop already.
 
I have this same issue except in windows 7 too. The "maximize to one screen" option works fine for every application -- except gotomypc, which insists upon maximizing across all screens. Drives me crazy.
 
I have this same issue except in windows 7 too. The "maximize to one screen" option works fine for every application -- except gotomypc, which insists upon maximizing across all screens. Drives me crazy.

In Windows 8 - all programs do that =/
 
I'm assuming you either A. did not read the OP, or B. are just simply trolling or C. both of the above.

I read the OP just fine and was agreeing with him but thanks for your concern. Thus the typical statements we hear from apologists when someone has a legitimate complaint or frustration about Window 8 were placed in "quotes" to note sarcasm . guess I should've preceded it with "inb4" for the slower students

In any case its too bad the OP couldn't make it work for his hardware configuration but then the o/s was designed for tablets, with desktop PC's now seen as legacy by MS so not surprising to see this feature erosion/deprecation - lack of proper multi monitor support is a common complaint about Window 8.
 
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Didn't MS make a point of saying that WDM didn't change much between 7 and 8 and all drivers would be compatible. But this doesn't really mean much in practice I guess.

I really don't get why Nvidia and AMD are so crap at writing drivers. They have the DDK and OS bits well in advance (almost a year), MS works with them, and still on every Windows release it takes them months to get out decent drivers. Everyone ends up blaming the OS.
 
I read the OP just fine and was agreeing with him but thanks for your concern. Thus the typical statements we hear from apologists when someone has a legitimate complaint or frustration about Window 8 were placed in "quotes" to note sarcasm . guess I should've preceded it with "inb4" for the slower students

In any case its too bad the OP couldn't make it work for his hardware configuration but then the o/s was designed for tablets, with desktop PC's now seen as legacy by MS so not surprising to see this feature erosion/deprecation - lack of proper multi monitor support is a common complaint about Window 8.

I don't see how any of those comments have anything to do with lack driver features. Especially since those driver features are provided by AMD and nVidia, not Microsoft.

It was essentially trolling because his problems didn't really have anything to do with Windows 8, but more of lack of proper support from nVidia for Windows 8. This isn't a discussion about the Metro UI or other Windows 8 UI or feature changes.
 
Didn't MS make a point of saying that WDM didn't change much between 7 and 8 and all drivers would be compatible. But this doesn't really mean much in practice I guess.


This NEVER happens in reality. If code is changed, more often than not somewhere something is going to break. I would not put my faith in MS's claims, after the Vista fiasco I don't see how anyone can take their compatibility promises seriously at first glance.

I really don't get why Nvidia and AMD are so crap at writing drivers. They have the DDK and OS bits well in advance (almost a year), MS works with them, and still on every Windows release it takes them months to get out decent drivers. Everyone ends up blaming the OS.


They don't make crap drivers...unless you're on Linux I suppose. Having early access to the OS development process doesn't necessarily mean things are going to or will be gravy by release day. Working with a handful of testers is one thing, dealing with millions of paying customers on Day 1 and after is another thing. You could always make the blame game go both ways, but as per OP's original intent. If we are going to say promises should have fulfilled, I don't think the OP is very pleased with the promise MS made about their multi-monitor support. Hardly the blame of just the graphics drivers considering MS made a point to mention how Windows 8 would have the full attention of multi-monitor support. By admission they have accepted part of the blame should problems arise.
 
This NEVER happens in reality. If code is changed, more often than not somewhere something is going to break. I would not put my faith in MS's claims, after the Vista fiasco I don't see how anyone can take their compatibility promises seriously at first glance.




They don't make crap drivers...unless you're on Linux I suppose. Having early access to the OS development process doesn't necessarily mean things are going to or will be gravy by release day. Working with a handful of testers is one thing, dealing with millions of paying customers on Day 1 and after is another thing. You could always make the blame game go both ways, but as per OP's original intent. If we are going to say promises should have fulfilled, I don't think the OP is very pleased with the promise MS made about their multi-monitor support. Hardly the blame of just the graphics drivers considering MS made a point to mention how Windows 8 would have the full attention of multi-monitor support. By admission they have accepted part of the blame should problems arise.

Multimonitor support is not the same thing as eyefinity support, despite how closely related they are.

Eyefinity/nvsurround makes the OS think that it's looking at one large monitor. It's basically tricking the OS to think that the multimonitors are one monitor, and it will treat it as such. It's up to AMD and nVidia to make sure the proper features are supported.

In extended desktop mode, Microsoft did actually implement more multimonitor support features. So they did deliver on this front.
 
I don't see how any of those comments have anything to do with lack driver features. Especially since those driver features are provided by AMD and nVidia, not Microsoft.

It was essentially trolling because his problems didn't really have anything to do with Windows 8, but more of lack of proper support from nVidia for Windows 8. This isn't a discussion about the Metro UI or other Windows 8 UI or feature changes.

Thats flawed rationale. A lack of drivers for Window 8 is a problem for Window 8, doesnt really matter who dropped the ball at the end of the day the end user doesntn have a working solution and one less reason to upgrade when they already had a working solution in Windows 7. Same as a lack of apps in the appstore is a problem for the o/s, not simply a failing on the part of developers.

And who said anything about Metro UI?

My original tongue-in-cheek inb4 comments were a response to OP's last sentence "Here is to hoping Windows 9 gets past the (self inflicted) Fugly asthetic growing pains of Windows 8" because its the kind of line that usually brings the apologists out.
 
Thats flawed rationale. A lack of drivers for Window 8 is a problem for Window 8, doesnt really matter who dropped the ball at the end of the day the end user doesntn have a working solution and one less reason to upgrade when they already had a working solution in Windows 7. Same as a lack of apps in the appstore is a problem for the o/s, not simply a failing on the part of developers.

And who said anything about Metro UI?

My original tongue-in-cheek inb4 comments were a response to OP's last sentence "Here is to hoping Windows 9 gets past the (self inflicted) Fugly asthetic growing pains of Windows 8" because its the kind of line that usually brings the apologists out.

Because those comments are what "apologists" use to defend the Metro UI. Those comments have everything to do with the Metro UI and the different aesthetics of Windows.

None of those sarcasms fit the category of driver problems, and has everything to do with Metro and the new UI appearance. The "apologists" rarely defend the aesthetics (safely assuming this is about lack of aero and square corners), because we actually realize people like different things. The "apologists" defend the Metro interface, NOT driver problems.
 
Because those comments are what "apologists" use to defend the Metro UI. Those comments have everything to do with the Metro UI and the different aesthetics of Windows.

None of those sarcasms fit the category of driver problems, and has everything to do with Metro and the new UI appearance. The "apologists" rarely defend the aesthetics (safely assuming this is about lack of aero and square corners), because we actually realize people like different things. The "apologists" defend the Metro interface, NOT driver problems.

that's exactly what i got out of it for using it for a month, you pretty much summed that up for me
 
Win 8 does have some nice multi monitor improvements, but I can't really say they are that big - more like features that should've been implemented on day 1. It's quite clear the focus with Win 8 was on Metro, and that most certainly has no multi monitor support.

I also take issue with why it's so hard for AMD/Nvidia to write working drivers. It's been this way ever since Vista's release, it wasn't uncommon to find games/apps crashing months after retail release. This doesn't happen with any other class of drivers - storage, sound, network.

The problem is not that hard - you have final bits of the OS and the driver model, which trust me they do have, you setup a lab with all kinds of pc combinations, and you test your drivers. MS in fact has exactly this setup for WHQL certification, which is why certified drivers are stable. MS also provide a *ton* of tools for driver verification.

Instead, these companies want to release beta drivers with optimizations for specific games, because that's how they sell the hardware. These are hastily written and not tested enough, hence they crash. And that is the problem.
 
The problem is not that hard - you have final bits of the OS and the driver model, which trust me they do have, you setup a lab with all kinds of pc combinations, and you test your drivers. MS in fact has exactly this setup for WHQL certification, which is why certified drivers are stable. MS also provide a *ton* of tools for driver verification.

Instead, these companies want to release beta drivers with optimizations for specific games, because that's how they sell the hardware. These are hastily written and not tested enough, hence they crash. And that is the problem.

TBH their WHQL drivers are most the time no better than their beta drivers. Most of the problems seem to come from "unusual" systems like SLI/Crossfire/Eyefinity, or systems a year or two old which are less "clean", or problems that only appear in weird situations (I have drivers right now that will work with every single game fine, but 1 single game crashes the drivers after a hour...). There's way too many situations to test for MS or the GPU companies, though even though it seems like rampant problem, probably isn't that bad outside the enthusiast circles.
 
So I finally got around to installing Windows 8 on one of the drives on my sig rig. I can confirm what the OP was saying about Surround, the option for confining a window and the task bar to one screen aren't available in Windows 8, using the latest beta driver 313.96.

That said, I've had flakiness with those options in Windows 7, particularly with the task bar forgetting it's setting. Also one thing that I've noticed is that 3D Blu Ray playback seems to work better with the newer drivers. I've had issues with that with drivers past the WHQL driver from May.

So if you want to use the Start Screen and have this kind of a setup you'd probably not want to run Surround on the desktop and switch over to it for gaming. Not ideal as it does take same time to switch between the two modes. It took some time for NVidia to add these modes to Windows 7 as well. But with independent monitors I really do like Windows 8 with multiple monitors.
 
So I finally got around to installing Windows 8 on one of the drives on my sig rig. I can confirm what the OP was saying about Surround, the option for confining a window and the task bar to one screen aren't available in Windows 8, using the latest beta driver 313.96.

That said, I've had flakiness with those options in Windows 7, particularly with the task bar forgetting it's setting. Also one thing that I've noticed is that 3D Blu Ray playback seems to work better with the newer drivers. I've had issues with that with drivers past the WHQL driver from May.

So if you want to use the Start Screen and have this kind of a setup you'd probably not want to run Surround on the desktop and switch over to it for gaming. Not ideal as it does take same time to switch between the two modes. It took some time for NVidia to add these modes to Windows 7 as well. But with independent monitors I really do like Windows 8 with multiple monitors.

I've never had flakiness in W7 with those features myself - once NV got them working that is. 8 does handle multiple independant monitors well. Surround is just plain broken in W8. NV hooked into Aero to make it work in 7 so it no longer does in W8. It also doesn't appear they are overly concerned about it either. Kinda stupid I mean their $1000 cards don't work properly in W8.
 
if theyd put the registry entry back in to just disable metro id use it, sure
 
if theyd put the registry entry back in to just disable metro id use it, sure

Which won't work because there is no start menu built into the OS. You'll only have a desktop, no start menu.

If they did add the start menu back in, it will be intentional and thus have an easy to access setting.
 
I had a look for the registry entreis, i think they removed it with the retail release, it was only in the pre release versions I think, could be wrong but i did look for the entries many times before i got made and reloaded win 7 lol

@ Tsumi i think the registry change gave you the win7 start menu back if i read the articles properly
 
I had a look for the registry entreis, i think they removed it with the retail release, it was only in the pre release versions I think, could be wrong but i did look for the entries many times before i got made and reloaded win 7 lol

@ Tsumi i think the registry change gave you the win7 start menu back if i read the articles properly

That was only valid during the beta versions since the old start menu code was still there.

In the later beta and the final release, the old start menu code was removed completely, there is no way to restore it by a registry hack. You can't bring back something that doesn't exist in the code.
 
That was only valid during the beta versions since the old start menu code was still there.

In the later beta and the final release, the old start menu code was removed completely, there is no way to restore it by a registry hack. You can't bring back something that doesn't exist in the code.

Not sure its accurate that the start menu code was removed completely -- according to the StartIsBack developer it still exists in explorer.exe, it was just deprecated, supposedly because there were too many dependencies to be able to completely rip it out. According to their FAQ anyway.
 
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