About Windows 8

As a lark, I installed the RTM version of Windows 8 on a spare drive
last night just to give the new OS a shakedown cruise, and it was an
unhappy experience.

I have five HDDs in my system. One is a 3TB drive (guid) with two 1.5TB
partitions. Three are 1.5 TB drives, and I have Win7 installed on a 256
GB SSD. This is all on my new P9X79 system described in another thread.

To start, I removed the SSD and replaced it with an old empty
NTFS-formatted HDD (250 GB) and then ran the Win8 installation disk.
Everything seemed to be going well, until I came to the part where I
choose the disk onto which the OS will be installed. Win8 told me it
couldn't install on the drive I'd selected -- the 250 GB drive. Say what?

So I started over, tried again -- double-checking to be sure I had
chosen the 250 GB drive -- and got the same error. But why?

Not ready to give up, I decided to remove all other drives from the
system and try a third time. And this time it worked! Hmmmm...

So now I had Win8 up and running, and it looked fine. Installation had
been a snap, Win8 had loaded drivers for both the onboard audio of my
new mbo, and for my new nVidia graphics card. All seemed to be going
very well, so I shut down, plugged all the HDDs back in, and rebooted.

And Windows 8 couldn't see any of the other drives. BIOS saw them, but
not Win8. Now the learning curve in moving from Win7 to Win8 may not be
as steep as moving from Win3.1 to Win95, but it sure seems that way.
Anyhow, I eventually figured out how to get to Computer Management,
which works just like it has worked since WinXP. It's easy to use; the
hard part is finding it.

And when I did find it, I saw that only the one drive -- the 250 GB boot
drive -- was listed. Win8 was seeing some unused "removable drive"
ports -- the same ones Win7 sees on my system -- but not the four big
HDDs. I refreshed: nothing. I scanned for new drives: nothing.
Actually, I'd seen this behavior before, back when I'd played with the
Win8 Beta. It was puzzling then, but I chalked it up to bad cable
connections or incomplete Beta or something and really didn't think much
about it because I wasn't going to leave the Beta running on my computer
anyway. But to see it happening again was really puzzling.

Eventually I gave up -- it was long past my bedtime -- and I took the
250 GB Win8 drive out of the case and replaced it with the 256 GB SSD
containing Win7.

And the system wouldn't boot. It just informed me that NTLDR was
"missing." Say what?

I mean, how could it be missing? This boot drive had been totally
removed from the system while I was playing around. Nothing could have
changed on it. So I scratched my head for awhile and decided to try the
old trick of removing all but the essentials from the system. And then
.... with the other four HDDs unplugged ... Win7 booted right up from the
SSD. So I shut down and plugged in one HDD. Success. Another HDD ...
success. And another. And then the big one, the partitioned 3 TB drive
.... and this time Win7 took a long, LONG time to start, but eventually
it did start and everything was back to normal, no data lost, system
humming along.

I've been puzzling through what happened, and the best explanation I can
come up with on my own is that Win8 somehow reset my hardware to make
the 3 TB drive appear to be the boot drive, or maybe it tagged the drive
itself to make it appear that way and in its long long boot process Win7
untagged it. Maybe? I dunno, I just dunno.

But I think I'll wait a few months, if it takes that long, to find a
discussion of this problem on the Win8 forums. I can't believe I'll be
the only person to experience this. And I'm sure there's an explanation
and fix out there somewhere -- probably that I'm doing something stupid
and if I'd just done things "this way" all would have been well. I
mean, if Win7 easily works with all my hardware, including a 3 TB drive,
I refuse to believe Win8 can't.

Final observation: I think Win8 is unsuitable for desktop computers.
It's not that it can't be used; it's just that using it requires too
much switching back and forth between its tiled interface and its
regular desktop. I mean, if you have a desktop display with no need for
a touch screen interface, why go to all the bother of dealing with those
tiles? Sure, everything takes some getting used to, but why bother when
there's no advantage to be gained? I fear Win8 may not be the
game-changer Microsoft is hoping for. But then I also fear I'm an old
fogy so set in his ways that I can't see the future. So I dunno about
the future of Win8. I do know that the present of Win8 isn't working
for me.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

Bill Anderson wrote:
As a lark, I installed the RTM version of Windows 8 on a spare drive
last night just to give the new OS a shakedown cruise, and it was an
unhappy experience.

I have five HDDs in my system. One is a 3TB drive (guid) with two 1.5TB
partitions. Three are 1.5 TB drives, and I have Win7 installed on a 256
GB SSD. This is all on my new P9X79 system described in another thread.

To start, I removed the SSD and replaced it with an old empty
NTFS-formatted HDD (250 GB) and then ran the Win8 installation disk.
Everything seemed to be going well, until I came to the part where I
choose the disk onto which the OS will be installed. Win8 told me it
couldn't install on the drive I'd selected -- the 250 GB drive. Say what?

So I started over, tried again -- double-checking to be sure I had
chosen the 250 GB drive -- and got the same error. But why?

Not ready to give up, I decided to remove all other drives from the
system and try a third time. And this time it worked! Hmmmm...

So now I had Win8 up and running, and it looked fine. Installation had
been a snap, Win8 had loaded drivers for both the onboard audio of my
new mbo, and for my new nVidia graphics card. All seemed to be going
very well, so I shut down, plugged all the HDDs back in, and rebooted.

And Windows 8 couldn't see any of the other drives. BIOS saw them, but
not Win8. Now the learning curve in moving from Win7 to Win8 may not be
as steep as moving from Win3.1 to Win95, but it sure seems that way.
Anyhow, I eventually figured out how to get to Computer Management,
which works just like it has worked since WinXP. It's easy to use; the
hard part is finding it.

And when I did find it, I saw that only the one drive -- the 250 GB boot
drive -- was listed. Win8 was seeing some unused "removable drive"
ports -- the same ones Win7 sees on my system -- but not the four big
HDDs. I refreshed: nothing. I scanned for new drives: nothing.
Actually, I'd seen this behavior before, back when I'd played with the
Win8 Beta. It was puzzling then, but I chalked it up to bad cable
connections or incomplete Beta or something and really didn't think much
about it because I wasn't going to leave the Beta running on my computer
anyway. But to see it happening again was really puzzling.

Eventually I gave up -- it was long past my bedtime -- and I took the
250 GB Win8 drive out of the case and replaced it with the 256 GB SSD
containing Win7.

And the system wouldn't boot. It just informed me that NTLDR was
"missing." Say what?

I mean, how could it be missing? This boot drive had been totally
removed from the system while I was playing around. Nothing could have
changed on it. So I scratched my head for awhile and decided to try the
old trick of removing all but the essentials from the system. And then
... with the other four HDDs unplugged ... Win7 booted right up from the
SSD. So I shut down and plugged in one HDD. Success. Another HDD ...
success. And another. And then the big one, the partitioned 3 TB drive
... and this time Win7 took a long, LONG time to start, but eventually
it did start and everything was back to normal, no data lost, system
humming along.

I've been puzzling through what happened, and the best explanation I can
come up with on my own is that Win8 somehow reset my hardware to make
the 3 TB drive appear to be the boot drive, or maybe it tagged the drive
itself to make it appear that way and in its long long boot process Win7
untagged it. Maybe? I dunno, I just dunno.

But I think I'll wait a few months, if it takes that long, to find a
discussion of this problem on the Win8 forums. I can't believe I'll be
the only person to experience this. And I'm sure there's an explanation
and fix out there somewhere -- probably that I'm doing something stupid
and if I'd just done things "this way" all would have been well. I
mean, if Win7 easily works with all my hardware, including a 3 TB drive,
I refuse to believe Win8 can't.

Final observation: I think Win8 is unsuitable for desktop computers.
It's not that it can't be used; it's just that using it requires too
much switching back and forth between its tiled interface and its
regular desktop. I mean, if you have a desktop display with no need for
a touch screen interface, why go to all the bother of dealing with those
tiles? Sure, everything takes some getting used to, but why bother when
there's no advantage to be gained? I fear Win8 may not be the
game-changer Microsoft is hoping for. But then I also fear I'm an old
fogy so set in his ways that I can't see the future. So I dunno about
the future of Win8. I do know that the present of Win8 isn't working
for me.


Is the 3TB drive GPT partitioned ? Or did you use
the special driver from the manufacturer (driver that converts
one drive, into two virtual drives). That 3TB drive could
be a problem in any case.

MBR partitioning, with 512 byte sectors, works to 2.2TB (32 bit sector
number). Your older OSes, might not like using 4KB sectors, and the
drive probably uses 512e emulation mode anyway, so still has an issue
at the 2.2TB mark.

Using GUID Partition Table (GPT), is fine, if it's supported. That
breaks the 3TB barrier, by avoiding MBR and the limitation of 32 bit
numbers. (The MBR is still present, but it's a "protective" MBR
so an older OS won't do something stupid to the GPT drive.)

*******

When I installed Windows 8, I used ClassicShell.

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/features.html

But currently, my Windows 8 has an issue with task priority, and
is no longer runs smoothly. I can't say I've added a lot of software
to that disk, and when ClassicShell was initially installed, I didn't
see any problems. And I still haven't figured out, what else might
have fouled up the install.

At least I could see all my disks.

Another potential issue, is conflicts over the usage of System
Volume Information folder. I have WinXP and Win8 on this machine,
and I turn off System Restore on WinXP, with the idea that it would
be safer to connect my Win7 laptop drive, or run with the Win8
drive. I've not read any details as to how Microsoft intended
SVI to work without problems in a multiboot environment. And
my memory is foggy, but I first may have run into problems, when
using the Windows 7 preview versions on my WinXP machine. That's
where I got the idea to just turn off System Restore. It's possible
SVI is used for anything Volume Shadow Service related. (Keeping
track of drive changes.)

*******

Oh, another thing. On Windows 8, my drives were spinning down, when
they were idle for a while. On next boot, CHKDSK would run, implying
a problem was being detected. When I went into the Windows 8 control
panel and disabled disk spindown, I stopped getting CHKDSK problems
and could switch between Windows 8 and WinXP (SR disabled), without
a problem.

And if the OS is still that un-polished, I'd agree with that
Intel dude, that Windows 8 just isn't ready. Maybe it'll be
another "good after SP1" kinda thing.

Paul

On 9/27/2012 1:54 PM, Paul wrote:
Bill Anderson wrote:
As a lark, I installed the RTM version of Windows 8 on a spare drive
last night just to give the new OS a shakedown cruise, and it was an
unhappy experience.

I have five HDDs in my system. One is a 3TB drive (guid) with two
1.5TB partitions. Three are 1.5 TB drives, and I have Win7 installed
on a 256 GB SSD. This is all on my new P9X79 system described in
another thread.




Is the 3TB drive GPT partitioned ?

Yes, as I said at the start, the 3TB drive is guid partitioned. Or guid
initialized, anyway, and then partitioned in Win7 64-bit under IDE, not
AHCI. I purchased and partitioned this drive back when I was trying to
get my P5Q Pro Turbo board to support it under RAID and realized it
wasn't going to work very easily that way. I didn't use any special
drive software provided on disk. Here's what I said back on May 18 in
my Convert RAID to IDE thread:

"Turns out the RAID controller wouldn't see all 3TBs of the new drive.
It would claim the drive was something less than 1TB, I don't remember
the size exactly.

"So...I ensured the new drive was initialized GUID, disconnected all
HDDs from the MBO, set BIOS to IDE, connected an empty spare drive,
installed Win7 64-bit on it, connected the new 3TB drive, and voila! I
was seeing all 3 terabytes (actually somewhat less, but we all know how
that goes).

"Then I split the drive into two equal 1.5TB partitions, disconnected
the spare drive with the new Win7 installation, set BIOS back to RAID,
re-connected all the drives (including the new 3TB drive), and I was in
business. The RAID controller had no trouble dealing with a 3TB drive
divided into two 1.5TB partitions."

Of course I'm not using RAID on my new system -- I'm all AHCI now. But
that drive wasn't initialized and partitioned using AHCI -- I used IDE
at the time I set it up. I wonder if that's where the problem lies?

Still, you'd think if it's running fine on an AHCI system under Win7 it
ought to do the same under Win8.

********

Well, this is annoying. I decided to do a little more experimenting
this afternoon, so I saved everything above as a draft and reformatted
my Win8 test drive and tried installing again.

That's when the solution to the "missing NTLDR" problem occurred to me.
Obviously BIOS had decided to assign a different drive as the boot
drive, and sure enough, I checked BIOS and that's exactly what was going
on. So I set the 250GB drive as the drive BIOS would boot from after it
had first checked the optical drive for a boot disk and voila -- Win8
appeared to load just fine on the proper drive. I left all drives
attached during the loading of Win8 in hopes that with them attached
during setup it would see them.

But after Win8 was installed and the system began its first reboot,
everything hung at the "press enter to boot from CD/DVD" message. The
boot process just stopped.

So I tried things with drives attached and without and the new
installation of Win8 never would boot.

So I gave up and went back to my trusty SSD with all drives attached,
making sure the SSD was chosen as the boot drive in BIOS. And right
after I did that, I lost the ability to enter BIOS.

The system is booting fine, but never with a post beep and never a
response to hitting DELETE or anything else. It just flies past the
Asus boot screen straight to the bootloader. (I dual boot.) I can
choose Win7 and everything runs fine. I mean, I'm here typing and I'm
having no problems. But when I reboot, I don't get an opportunity to
enter BIOS.

What on earth is going on now? I did see some flakiness just after I
flashed to the latest BIOS last week. For awhile I couldn't enter BIOS
then either. But then I tried pressing F8, don't remember why, and
suddenly BIOS was working again. No joy this time, though.

So weird. Ah the joys of playing with my computer.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

On 9/27/2012 3:49 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:


The system is booting fine, but never with a post beep and never a
response to hitting DELETE or anything else. It just flies past the
Asus boot screen straight to the bootloader. (I dual boot.) I can
choose Win7 and everything runs fine. I mean, I'm here typing and I'm
having no problems. But when I reboot, I don't get an opportunity to
enter BIOS.

What on earth is going on now? I did see some flakiness just after I
flashed to the latest BIOS last week. For awhile I couldn't enter BIOS
then either. But then I tried pressing F8, don't remember why, and
suddenly BIOS was working again. No joy this time, though.

So weird. Ah the joys of playing with my computer.


Don't know why, but I decided to try a different keyboard -- a spare USB
keyboard I've had sitting around a few years. So I unplugged my PS2
keyboard and plugged in the USB and rebooted and sonofagun -- I got a
post beep. And I got into BIOS.

And now I've plugged one of those little USB to PS2 converters into the
mbo's PS2 port, plugged my USB keyboard into that, and I'm still getting
into BIOS. I have adjusted the time allowed for pressing Delete at boot
to get into BIOS from 3 to 6 seconds, and I've reset my BIOS boot
options to have the system activate all USB ports at bootup instead of
just mouse and keyboard ports. That delays boot a bit, but I didn't
know what other adjustment I might make in order to make the boot
process slow down enough that it doesn't bypass the post beep
altogether. So why the PS2 adapter? I like to start up by pressing the
space bar. Yes, I'm too lazy to hunt up that little black power button
on the case. Sue me.

Anyway, the USB keyboard seems to have fixed things for now. This is weird.

FWIW I'll also mention the old BIOS had the .rom extension and the new
BIOS is .cap.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

"Bill Anderson" wrote in message
...
'I think Win8 is unsuitable for desktop computers.
It's not that it can't be used; it's just that using it requires too
much switching back and forth between its tiled interface and its
regular desktop. I mean, if you have a desktop display with no need for
a touch screen interface, why go to all the bother of dealing with those
tiles? '


Precisely, I don't want to scroll sideways on my desktop/laptop either.
Unfortunately, MS has said they are all in when it comes to win 8. It looks
to me like Win 8 is a bing marketing tool, since the tiles are bing apps,
and the OS is for tablets.

Maybe another company will step in with a proper OS.

On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:56:51 -0400, "geoff" wrote:

"Bill Anderson" wrote in message
...
'I think Win8 is unsuitable for desktop computers.
It's not that it can't be used; it's just that using it requires too
much switching back and forth between its tiled interface and its
regular desktop. I mean, if you have a desktop display with no need for
a touch screen interface, why go to all the bother of dealing with those
tiles? '


Precisely, I don't want to scroll sideways on my desktop/laptop either.
Unfortunately, MS has said they are all in when it comes to win 8. It looks
to me like Win 8 is a bing marketing tool, since the tiles are bing apps,
and the OS is for tablets.

Maybe another company will step in with a proper OS.

Agreed. If I were forced to choose I would go with Ubuntu rather than
Win8.

On 9/27/2012 7:17 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/27/2012 3:49 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:


The system is booting fine, but never with a post beep and never a
response to hitting DELETE or anything else. It just flies past the
Asus boot screen straight to the bootloader. (I dual boot.) I can
choose Win7 and everything runs fine. I mean, I'm here typing and I'm
having no problems. But when I reboot, I don't get an opportunity to
enter BIOS.

What on earth is going on now? I did see some flakiness just after I
flashed to the latest BIOS last week. For awhile I couldn't enter BIOS
then either. But then I tried pressing F8, don't remember why, and
suddenly BIOS was working again. No joy this time, though.

So weird. Ah the joys of playing with my computer.


Don't know why, but I decided to try a different keyboard -- a spare USB
keyboard I've had sitting around a few years. So I unplugged my PS2
keyboard and plugged in the USB and rebooted and sonofagun -- I got a
post beep. And I got into BIOS.

And now I've plugged one of those little USB to PS2 converters into the
mbo's PS2 port, plugged my USB keyboard into that, and I'm still getting
into BIOS. I have adjusted the time allowed for pressing Delete at boot
to get into BIOS from 3 to 6 seconds, and I've reset my BIOS boot
options to have the system activate all USB ports at bootup instead of
just mouse and keyboard ports. That delays boot a bit, but I didn't
know what other adjustment I might make in order to make the boot
process slow down enough that it doesn't bypass the post beep
altogether. So why the PS2 adapter? I like to start up by pressing the
space bar. Yes, I'm too lazy to hunt up that little black power button
on the case. Sue me.

Anyway, the USB keyboard seems to have fixed things for now. This is
weird.

FWIW I'll also mention the old BIOS had the .rom extension and the new
BIOS is .cap.


1. The BIOS problem seems to have gone away as mysteriously as it
appeared. At boot I get the Asus splash screen for about six seconds,
then I hear the post beep, then I have about three seconds to press
Delete to get into BIOS. It's working every time. I dunno what was
going on, I really don't. Coulda been a bad mbo connection, maybe, I
guess, though the mbo I was using was working perfectly otherwise. I
just dunno.

2. Windows 8 is now seeing all my hard drives, even the 3TB drive
that's partitioned in half. The solution was in "disk management." At
first installation of the system, Windows assigned C: to the OS drive,
and then D: E: F: and G: to the four removable drive ports on the front
panel of my computer case. They're various sizes of camera card
readers. With those slots assigned to the four original drive letters,
choosing to "rescan disks" in disk management had no effect when I'd
connected my four additional SATA HDDs. But when I reassigned drive
letters to those four card reader slots (I moved them down to S: T: U:
and V, then I could plug my HDDs into the mbo and Win8 would see them.
I tried just one disk first, and I had to "rescan disks" in order to
make Win8 see it. But upon reboot after that, Win8 saw the other disks
without having to rescan. It's interesting that Disk Management still
considers C: to be disk 0 and the card reader slots to be disks 1-4. My
HDDs are now disks 5-8, with my optical drive disk 9. And...more
puzzling still, Win8 seems to regard my HDDs as removable disks, no
different from a thumb drive. Whatever ... at least Win8 is now working
like a real OS for me. A bit peculiar, but real.

Now to install apps to see what works and what doesn't. At least
Thunderbird is working well enough for me to make this post.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/27/2012 7:17 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/27/2012 3:49 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:


The system is booting fine, but never with a post beep and never a
response to hitting DELETE or anything else. It just flies past the
Asus boot screen straight to the bootloader. (I dual boot.) I can
choose Win7 and everything runs fine. I mean, I'm here typing and I'm
having no problems. But when I reboot, I don't get an opportunity to
enter BIOS.

What on earth is going on now? I did see some flakiness just after I
flashed to the latest BIOS last week. For awhile I couldn't enter BIOS
then either. But then I tried pressing F8, don't remember why, and
suddenly BIOS was working again. No joy this time, though.

So weird. Ah the joys of playing with my computer.


Don't know why, but I decided to try a different keyboard -- a spare USB
keyboard I've had sitting around a few years. So I unplugged my PS2
keyboard and plugged in the USB and rebooted and sonofagun -- I got a
post beep. And I got into BIOS.

And now I've plugged one of those little USB to PS2 converters into the
mbo's PS2 port, plugged my USB keyboard into that, and I'm still getting
into BIOS. I have adjusted the time allowed for pressing Delete at boot
to get into BIOS from 3 to 6 seconds, and I've reset my BIOS boot
options to have the system activate all USB ports at bootup instead of
just mouse and keyboard ports. That delays boot a bit, but I didn't
know what other adjustment I might make in order to make the boot
process slow down enough that it doesn't bypass the post beep
altogether. So why the PS2 adapter? I like to start up by pressing the
space bar. Yes, I'm too lazy to hunt up that little black power button
on the case. Sue me.

Anyway, the USB keyboard seems to have fixed things for now. This is
weird.

FWIW I'll also mention the old BIOS had the .rom extension and the new
BIOS is .cap.


1. The BIOS problem seems to have gone away as mysteriously as it
appeared. At boot I get the Asus splash screen for about six seconds,
then I hear the post beep, then I have about three seconds to press
Delete to get into BIOS. It's working every time. I dunno what was
going on, I really don't. Coulda been a bad mbo connection, maybe, I
guess, though the mbo I was using was working perfectly otherwise. I
just dunno.

2. Windows 8 is now seeing all my hard drives, even the 3TB drive
that's partitioned in half. The solution was in "disk management." At
first installation of the system, Windows assigned C: to the OS drive,
and then D: E: F: and G: to the four removable drive ports on the front
panel of my computer case. They're various sizes of camera card
readers. With those slots assigned to the four original drive letters,
choosing to "rescan disks" in disk management had no effect when I'd
connected my four additional SATA HDDs. But when I reassigned drive
letters to those four card reader slots (I moved them down to S: T: U:
and V, then I could plug my HDDs into the mbo and Win8 would see them.
I tried just one disk first, and I had to "rescan disks" in order to
make Win8 see it. But upon reboot after that, Win8 saw the other disks
without having to rescan. It's interesting that Disk Management still
considers C: to be disk 0 and the card reader slots to be disks 1-4. My
HDDs are now disks 5-8, with my optical drive disk 9. And...more
puzzling still, Win8 seems to regard my HDDs as removable disks, no
different from a thumb drive. Whatever ... at least Win8 is now working
like a real OS for me. A bit peculiar, but real.

Now to install apps to see what works and what doesn't. At least
Thunderbird is working well enough for me to make this post.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

"Win8 seems to regard my HDDs as removable disks"

It could be, you're using the AHCI disk setting, Win8 used an AHCI
driver, and SATA hot-swap is supported. That might make the disks
"removable" in a limited sense. Even C: can be listed as removable,
but you can't actually remove it (Safely Remove would fail, as the
disk is "busy").

You'd think the card reader would also be an issue for
your other OSes.

Paul

On 9/28/2012 5:43 PM, Paul wrote:
Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/27/2012 7:17 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/27/2012 3:49 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:


The system is booting fine, but never with a post beep and never a
response to hitting DELETE or anything else. It just flies past the
Asus boot screen straight to the bootloader. (I dual boot.) I can
choose Win7 and everything runs fine. I mean, I'm here typing and I'm
having no problems. But when I reboot, I don't get an opportunity to
enter BIOS.

What on earth is going on now? I did see some flakiness just after I
flashed to the latest BIOS last week. For awhile I couldn't enter BIOS
then either. But then I tried pressing F8, don't remember why, and
suddenly BIOS was working again. No joy this time, though.

So weird. Ah the joys of playing with my computer.


Don't know why, but I decided to try a different keyboard -- a spare USB
keyboard I've had sitting around a few years. So I unplugged my PS2
keyboard and plugged in the USB and rebooted and sonofagun -- I got a
post beep. And I got into BIOS.

And now I've plugged one of those little USB to PS2 converters into the
mbo's PS2 port, plugged my USB keyboard into that, and I'm still getting
into BIOS. I have adjusted the time allowed for pressing Delete at boot
to get into BIOS from 3 to 6 seconds, and I've reset my BIOS boot
options to have the system activate all USB ports at bootup instead of
just mouse and keyboard ports. That delays boot a bit, but I didn't
know what other adjustment I might make in order to make the boot
process slow down enough that it doesn't bypass the post beep
altogether. So why the PS2 adapter? I like to start up by pressing the
space bar. Yes, I'm too lazy to hunt up that little black power button
on the case. Sue me.

Anyway, the USB keyboard seems to have fixed things for now. This is
weird.

FWIW I'll also mention the old BIOS had the .rom extension and the new
BIOS is .cap.


1. The BIOS problem seems to have gone away as mysteriously as it
appeared. At boot I get the Asus splash screen for about six seconds,
then I hear the post beep, then I have about three seconds to press
Delete to get into BIOS. It's working every time. I dunno what was
going on, I really don't. Coulda been a bad mbo connection, maybe, I
guess, though the mbo I was using was working perfectly otherwise. I
just dunno.

2. Windows 8 is now seeing all my hard drives, even the 3TB drive
that's partitioned in half. The solution was in "disk management."
At first installation of the system, Windows assigned C: to the OS
drive, and then D: E: F: and G: to the four removable drive ports on
the front panel of my computer case. They're various sizes of camera
card readers. With those slots assigned to the four original drive
letters, choosing to "rescan disks" in disk management had no effect
when I'd connected my four additional SATA HDDs. But when I
reassigned drive letters to those four card reader slots (I moved them
down to S: T: U: and V, then I could plug my HDDs into the mbo and
Win8 would see them. I tried just one disk first, and I had to
"rescan disks" in order to make Win8 see it. But upon reboot after
that, Win8 saw the other disks without having to rescan. It's
interesting that Disk Management still considers C: to be disk 0 and
the card reader slots to be disks 1-4. My HDDs are now disks 5-8,
with my optical drive disk 9. And...more puzzling still, Win8 seems
to regard my HDDs as removable disks, no different from a thumb
drive. Whatever ... at least Win8 is now working like a real OS for
me. A bit peculiar, but real.

Now to install apps to see what works and what doesn't. At least
Thunderbird is working well enough for me to make this post.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

"Win8 seems to regard my HDDs as removable disks"

It could be, you're using the AHCI disk setting, Win8 used an AHCI
driver, and SATA hot-swap is supported. That might make the disks
"removable" in a limited sense. Even C: can be listed as removable,
but you can't actually remove it (Safely Remove would fail, as the
disk is "busy").

You'd think the card reader would also be an issue for
your other OSes.

Paul


In my part 1 above, please pretend you are reading "keyboard" when you
see "mbo." That's what I meant to say. Please be patient with me as I
lose my mind.

And yes, I am using the AHCI setting and SATA hot-swap is supported.
Maybe that's what's going on.

As for the card reader slots -- they're no problem with Win7 or anything
previous. When installing a new OS I always have to reassign their
drive letters to get them out of the way of the real drives, but all
drives do appear with no special help from disk management.

After I finally got all my drives to show up, I played around a little
with Win8 and decided I could live with it someday if I really have to
-- which is all I was curious about anyway. The screen of tiles is what
it is. When I discovered how to display all the other tiles at once, it
began to remind me of an elaborate version of Win7's All Programs with
maybe even a little Control Panel thrown in. Everything's there once
you figure out where to look.

But there was another annoyance. After I'd experienced the thrill of
victory in getting my drives to show up, I replaced the Win8 boot drive
with my Win7 boot drive and to my surprise Win7 felt it necessary to run
CHKDSK on every single one of my HDD partitions. It found no errors and
everything is working fine in Win7 now, but still...

I think I'll leave Win8 alone for awhile until a few things get sorted
out. It didn't even have Windows Media Center. Yes, I've read up on
that and I realize a WMC add-on will be available soon. It just seems,
to me anyway, that Win8 isn't really ready for release.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

Bill Anderson wrote:


But there was another annoyance. After I'd experienced the thrill of
victory in getting my drives to show up, I replaced the Win8 boot drive
with my Win7 boot drive and to my surprise Win7 felt it necessary to run
CHKDSK on every single one of my HDD partitions. It found no errors and
everything is working fine in Win7 now, but still...


I had that problem. It happens, because Win8 spins down the hard drives,
during your Win8 session. Then, it doesn't handle the disks properly
at shutdown, and they all end up "dirty".

To stop that, you go to the Power profile and tell Win8 to leave the
hard drive spinning (no power saving options please). If the disks
can be convinced to remain spinning and ready to go, you'll no longer
see CHKDSK when the alternate OS boots.

Let's hope the release Win8 code has a fix for that!

Paul