Windows 8 Compatibility

The Release Preview of Win8 made available today supports FFXIV without any issue, after a few hours of running it today.

The fact that it seems identical to Windows 7, other than the ridiculous metro Start Page, means this may come as no surprise to some. I can't quite work out why it took an hour to 'upgrade' my Win7.

Just thought I'd make mention in case any folk were considering trying it out.

That's great news, and good to know, thank you for reporting!

Only odd numbered versions of windows ever seem to be worth using.

Original windows (version 3.11 and prior) windows 3 (windows 98), windows 5 (windows XP), windows 7.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Only odd numbered versions of windows ever seem to be worth using.

Original windows (version 3.11 and prior) windows 3 (windows 98), windows 5 (windows XP), windows 7.

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I was gonna keep quiet, but this comment made me speak up. What exactly is the advantage of windows 8 over windows 7 on a desktop without a touchscreen? It's my understanding that W8 has huge advances in usability for tablet PCs, but what advantages does it have for non-tablet PCs?

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I was gonna keep quiet, but this comment made me speak up. What exactly is the advantage of windows 7 over windows 8 on a desktop without a touchscreen? It's my understanding that W8 has huge advances in usability for tablet PCs, but what advantages does it have for non-tablet PCs?

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Windows 8 uses about 30% less system resources than Windows 7. I know a lot of people aren't that into the metro interface, but it is a lot faster than the last version in almost every way... including FFXIV performance.

Its a Preview Dev, there are others changes and optmizations here and there, plus some very neat management tools (check new task manager).

W8 is all about "being connected", they want to sync PC>Tablet>Phone all as one (and eventually Xbox)

Other than that, it has no major improvements especially not for games, there will be no DX upgrades or any better libraries.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Only odd numbered versions of windows ever seem to be worth using.

Original windows (version 3.11 and prior) windows 3 (windows 98), windows 5 (windows XP), windows 7.

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Slight tangent, but Win 1-3.0 were crap, 3.1 (and 3.11) were great, Win95 & Win98 were different releases of Windows 4 and similarly Win2000 & WinXP were Windows 5.
I think the idiom stands for Iron Maiden albums though.

Windows 8 is mostly a media upgrade. It's technical improvements are very minimal at best and I am just going to skip to Windows 9.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Windows 8 is mostly a media upgrade. It's technical improvements are very minimal at best and I am just going to skip to Windows 9.

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http://lifehacker.com/5841702/window...uch-everything

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Originally Posted by Ark_mage2

Windows 8 uses about 30% less system resources than Windows 7. I know a lot of people aren't that into the metro interface, but it is a lot faster than the last version in almost every way... including FFXIV performance.

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I'm not sure about that 30% number, and it looks like (at least for the moment) gaming performance it not quite up to what it is in windows 7.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/w...chmarked/19927

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Windows 8 is mostly a media upgrade. It's technical improvements are very minimal at best and I am just going to skip to Windows 9.

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I wouldn't call improvement brought by wddm 1.2 "very minimal".

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Originally Posted by Ark_mage2

http://lifehacker.com/5841702/window...uch-everything

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Which comes back to "minimal", these numbers are only by a few seconds. I won't spend 200+ dollars on an OS that is only a few seconds faster. It also hasn't shown gaming improvements either, unless I missed it.

Of course there will be improvements over Windows 7, that is a no brainer, but is the upgrade significant enough to make me want to upgrade? In my opinion, no. Vista > Windows 7 was a dramatic OS upgrade. When Windows does something like that again, I will upgrade.

Yeah, 30 seconds shaved off of 10 min worth of tasks. Most of that was during boot. Not exactly compelling for the price they will be asking for the OS.

Ehem... http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/31/30...y-code-removal

I'll be skipping Windows 8 unless the OS looks more like a desktop computer and less like a tablet.

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Originally Posted by Nahaara

Ehem... http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/31/30...y-code-removal

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I'm not sure how I feel about the removal of the windows button, but Aero is an unoptimized piece of crap that hogs resources like they are going out of style.

I think window 8 should have been a Window 7 SP2 but you know that just me lol

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I was gonna keep quiet, but this comment made me speak up. What exactly is the advantage of windows 8 over windows 7 on a desktop without a touchscreen? It's my understanding that W8 has huge advances in usability for tablet PCs, but what advantages does it have for non-tablet PCs?

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I don't know, that's why I made the comment. I've been told there are a lot of back-end (performance, resource management) improvements. Beyond that, I hadn't really heard much about win8 at all.

the original design of Windows (1) worked for the time. windows 95 was a stripped down badly butchered NT (2), 98 was much better (3), ME was LOL (4), XP was the biggest improvement to windows in a long time (5), Vista was terrible (6) Windows 7 made it a lot better (7) and now Windows 8.... well, we'll see if it breaks the pattern.

I wouldn't call a game that crashes every time UAC wants something from you compatible. Lucky 2.0 should fix that.

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Originally Posted by Deatheye

I wouldn't call a game that crashes every time UAC wants something from you compatible. Lucky 2.0 should fix that.

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so does windowed mode, fyi.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

so does windowed mode, fyi.

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UAC crashes can be avoided by disabling the 'secure desktop" (called dimming the desktop in win7) which causes UAC prompts to appear on the normal desktop instead. The secure desktop makes real, official windows prompts and warnings easier to distinguish from fakes by placing them on the dimmed screen which only the OS can access. But largely because it's on by default, i've never seen or heard of any malware that makes fake UAC prompts appear.

I love Windows 7 (64bit-Ultimate), but I wouldn't touch Windows 8 with a 100ft long pole for supporting a tablet UI on a desktop PC.

windows 8 FTL i hope windows 7 stays around like xp

Win8 made the mistake of forcing the tablet UI on a desktop system. They should have made Metro run as a Desktop application, not vice versa. And since ARM can't run windows programs anyway, there would be no mixup.

Metro is good on a touchscreen, but for mice, it sucks. I tried both the consumer and the release preview and it's a complete mess of metro intruding on aero and vice versa, like half of the control panel still being aero.

Oh and it refuses to see my wlan network while showing others :P

I did like the improvements they did to the system overall and windows explorer, less 3rd party application needed. But that's still not worth coping with the Metro UI. I hope win9 will have a split between desktop and tablet, else I guess I'll stick with win7 forever.

As for Aero hogging resources, that was true for vista, WDDM1.1 stops rendering aero once your application switches to fullscreen. And by fullscreen, I mean true fullscreen (exclusive mode), not that "borderless window" most people seem to use to stop ffxiv from crashing.

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Originally Posted by Zenaku

I think window 8 should have been a Window 7 SP2 but you know that just me lol

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No, it should have been but you see this is a world where people don't give a shit about how they spend their money. Gamers are more than happy to pay for the same game twice, I mean the $50-$60 on a game plus the god knows how many $100s you'll spend just to unlock data already present on the disk isn't enough, so why not charge people for OS updates (windows wise)?

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Originally Posted by Elexia

No, it should have been but you see this is a world where people don't give a shit about how they spend their money. Gamers are more than happy to pay for the same game twice, I mean the $50-$60 on a game plus the god knows how many $100s you'll spend just to unlock data already present on the disk isn't enough, so why not charge people for OS updates (windows wise)?

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Indeed. Release day DLC for $$ is without doubt the best money making trick in the bizz for single player especially right now. Never mind the often questionable amount of content provided in many DLCs provided later on. Theres alot of games i like and love, but not enough to spend 10 dollars on a weapon skin.

"Dark days are ahead" for pricing plans in part because people have shown a willingness to pay for it...

The tablet interface for Windows in my opinion is a complete unorganized mess. I have a hard time turning on my 360 because of the new, horrid interface they use. I understand being hip and flashy, but the interface looks like something a 3rd grader made with construction paper.

Some may like it, but I find it unbearable.

This thread is now a Linux thread.

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Originally Posted by Kerwin

This thread is now a Linux thread.

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That's cool w/ me... it'd be the best thing ever if game developers worldwide quit supporting DirectX and started supporting OpenGL so their games could run on Linux. >,<;;

I been reading up on Windows 8 and I decided that this is the first version I will pass on. I gotten 98, me, xp, vista, and now 7. Out of all these XP and 7 were the best. I like having the boot up screen and the start menu. I don't know why microcrap would remove these. I have had no problems with 7, so I'll stick with that.

Actually W8 includes a new way of handling Stereoscopic 3D that is native to the system, this will help GPU driver programmers improve 3D support for the ones of us that have 3D HDTVs (just like DirectX improved gaming back in the day it was released) and hopefully overall performance with the new WDD 1.2, being 30% (or more) efficient just by getting rid of the Aero interface and other useless stuff is also a plus IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Win8 made the mistake of forcing the tablet UI on a desktop system. They should have made Metro run as a Desktop application, not vice versa. And since ARM can't run windows programs anyway, there would be no mixup.

Metro is good on a touchscreen, but for mice, it sucks. I tried both the consumer and the release preview and it's a complete mess of metro intruding on aero and vice versa, like half of the control panel still being aero.

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No. Metro is overall a better interface. Explorer is clunky. Face it... most everything people use is located via a shortcut on THE DESKTOP. Metro simplifies this.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I was gonna keep quiet, but this comment made me speak up. What exactly is the advantage of windows 8 over windows 7 on a desktop without a touchscreen? It's my understanding that W8 has huge advances in usability for tablet PCs, but what advantages does it have for non-tablet PCs?

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The Metro interface is presently used on the Xbox360 as it's primary UI and the Xbox360 does not use a touchscreen interface. And I hate to break it too you a tablet with a touchscreen UI isn't much different than desktop mouse driven UI.

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Originally Posted by Mjollnir

The Release Preview of Win8 made available today supports FFXIV without any issue, after a few hours of running it today.

The fact that it seems identical to Windows 7, other than the ridiculous metro Start Page, means this may come as no surprise to some. I can't quite work out why it took an hour to 'upgrade' my Win7.

Just thought I'd make mention in case any folk were considering trying it out.

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Good to know i ran Win 8 CP & it had major network probliems with anything on the net wanted to take 7 days to download the ff14 updates..... good to see they fixed that reported probliem.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I don't know, that's why I made the comment. I've been told there are a lot of back-end (performance, resource management) improvements. Beyond that, I hadn't really heard much about win8 at all.

the original design of Windows (1) worked for the time. windows 95 was a stripped down badly butchered NT (2), 98 was much better (3), ME was LOL (4), XP was the biggest improvement to windows in a long time (5), Vista was terrible (6) Windows 7 made it a lot better (7) and now Windows 8.... well, we'll see if it breaks the pattern.

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Original design of Windows? Windows 1 couldn't even support overlapping Windows. Windows 2 solved this (and that's my limit of knowledge on 2.0). Windows 3 introduced "386 enhanced mode" which allowed multiple programs to run at once and removed the 1 MB memory limit. It was most widely seen as "that thing on my computer that let's me play "Solitare." The UI was still awkward, confusing (no, those icons do NOT represent actual files on your computer), and while it was considered Microsoft's best attempt at reproducing Apple's OS for their line of Macintosh computers on x86 machines, it was still seen as a pain by many to use and work with. Which is why DOS remained so popular until the introduction of Windows 95.

Windows 95 changed the debate between Macs and PCs from "hey, us PC users don't need a fancy graphical interface when we got a command line" to "okay we got a graphical UI now AND a two button mouse (that we never noticed or bothered with before cuz it was functionaly worthless)." I am not sure why you place it on such a low pedestal. Windows NT at the time was simply Windows 3.1 with a more robust kernel (that maybe oversimplifying it but no one ever cared about NT).

For reference, see this video and shortly after 4 minutes in, Gates says this himself (more or less). And yeah this is off-topic. But people here are neglecting Metro's UI like they did with the UI introduced with the Mac and Windows 95.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

so does windowed mode, fyi.

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fyi maybe people should stop talking about stuff and present it as facts when they never did it themself?
IT does not. At least not on Windows 8 and that's what we are talking about.
I'm running it in Windowed mode and it crashes with that stupod device lost error message everytime I try to run an executable.
If you are talking about a third party windower, thats another topic and you should have specified that. I'm talking about the integrated function to run the game in windowed mode.

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Originally Posted by Deatheye

fyi maybe people should stop talking about stuff and present it as facts when they never did it themself?
IT does not. At least not on Windows 8 and that's what we are talking about.
I'm running it in Windowed mode and it crashes with that stupod device lost error message everytime I try to run an executable.
If you are talking about a third party windower, thats another topic and you should have specified that. I'm talking about the integrated function to run the game in windowed mode.

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Hmmm, I haven't had an issue like that in ages. Perhaps there's a rescource conflict with that executable you're trying to run.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

1For reference, see this video and shortly after 4 minutes in, Gates says this himself (more or less). And yeah this is off-topic. But people here are neglecting Metro's UI like they did with the UI introduced with the Mac and Windows 95.

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I read an article yesterday that said MS devs are furiously ripping out code from windows 8 that could be used as a hack to access the windows button. I'm assuming that's the type of thing you're talking about, MS isn't standing for it this time. That could either end up a bad thing or a good thing in the end, we'll see.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Hmmm, I haven't had an issue like that in ages. Perhaps there's a rescource conflict with that executable you're trying to run.

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Really? I'm having it everytime I download something and execute it. UAC brings up a blue bar asking for execution of the file and you cant use any other interface till you answer it. It's no problem with installed stuff.
On windows 7 I deactivated UAC, but Windows 8 needs it activated or a lot of stuff doesn't work anymore.

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Original design of Windows? Windows 1 couldn't even support overlapping Windows.

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I lumped 3.11-prior together here, as microsoft has. If you include versions prior to 3.11, there are really 10 major home-use versions of windows and they should be calling the current one windows 9 and the next one windows 10. The mark of a real versions shift is at the point of the switch to the NT/95 style itnerface.

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I'm running it in Windowed mode and it crashes with that stupod device lost error message everytime I try to run an executable.

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I already explained how to solve that problem above if the crash is because of UAC prompts.

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On windows 7 I deactivated UAC, but Windows 8 needs it activated or a lot of stuff doesn't work anymore.

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Disabling UAC is a huge security risk. It's like telling someone the root password in linux. Most UAC crashes can be solved by disabling the "dim the desktop" (secure desktop) feature.

When you disable UAC, *ALL* programs run with administrator rights. "You want to rob my house? here's the key!"

Pretty much every program that is compatible with Windows 7 should be compatible with Windows 8, at least that is what I saw from the developer preview ages ago (still have to download the consumer preview.)

And another note, if Microsoft really do force us to use the metro interface, its just another reason to go to linux, atm my only reason for not switching to linux full time is compatibility of Windows, well I could use wine, but atm my laptop will not use the propriotory graphics drivers properly because of my BS hybrid graphics, if it did I would be on linux now and playing FFXIV through wine.

Microsoft's ideas of "we know how everything should be, and everyone else is wrong" and no options for customisation is what will kill them, Linux would be ahead of Windows now if everyone programmed for both of them I can gurentee it.