Running Windows 8.1 Preview? Get the latest Patch Tuesday fixes right now

Windows 8.1 Preview Fixes







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Actually, after the updates today, this is the first time I've seen the watermark on my computer.

It depends on how you installed 8.1, but that was the fifth update today that apparently didn't apply to Daniel's PC and some other people's:  there was no notice anywhere that this was an evaluation that would eventually expire, so they added that via an update.

Same here, this is the first time it showed up for me but it makes sense considering that this isn't the RTM release.

It'll be there.

It looks awful too. I'm using the Bing desktop wallpapers, and it completely clashes.

wow... really? is it your first time with a beta version?
yeah it says that... its an evaluation copy and not a RTM release. none forced you to upgrade, stop crying over something that has always been there in beta versions. there are some ways to remove it, if you dont know how to... well its not Microsoft problem.

people who didn't get the watermark, should be thankful they didn't get it before.

I did the install of Win 8.1 via Windows market on the modernUI side. Maybe this is why I never got the watermark on my desktop or laptop. Nor did my son. My coworker did his from CD. Watermark'd.

I have to admit... The Windows 8.1 build is the most unstable build they had. I don't remember Vista beta being this unstable..

Search is the only bad thing about 8.1, just like win7 search was not that great. 8.1 is going back to how the suckysuck way 7 worked. that would be my only complain, which i dont think it will change in RTM. but I will just not use it like i didnt use it in 7.

Yeah their search options can greatly improve. Im also hoping that the synching for music across devices improve too.

8.1 has a lot of great improvements but the music app has major issues on 1 of our Surfii it won't even run after the update. It constantly freezes and crashes. Anyone else run into this? Looking forward to RTM and hopefully public availability in August.

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know if upgrading to the RTM version of 8.1 from the preview will wipe settings/apps/etc.?

Not sure about the settings, but all all your apps will be reinstalled (but this is done automatically so its not that big of a deal)

If i install preview version will my license stay or ill have to reenter it somehow?
I don't wanna risk losing my license.

Well, the only way to get the 8.1 Preview is via the Windows 8 store, so I doubt you'll have to reenter anything, but I could be wrong. Just speculating.

Because GB English is like Windows 3.11. Solid at the time, but eventually you want chips when you say chips, not fries. :)

It should incorporate definitions from UrbanDictionary ;) That would actually be quite scary given how many tame words apparently mean terrible things.

As a developer I'm a bit discouraged that so many core things have changed that cause issue with existing 8.0 apps. They are all for the better ultimately, like Grid and List View rendering, but being unable to publish 8.1 versions of apps that work great on 8, but break or degrade on 8.1 feels frustrating. Allowing early submission of 8.1 apps would make a huge difference.

You have to remember this isn't Windows Phone, everyone should get this update instantly for free, so we just have to branch and then get ready for release day...

Understood, but the result is apps that don't work correctly on 8.1, and no way to have 8.1 ready apps available when 8.1 goes live. Seems strange, especially since we were able to publish during 8.0 prerelease if approved. Right now we have had to go back with warnings in many apps that essentially say: "Here's some things you'll notice that don't work, or now have degraded performance" if you are running 8.1. :/

Quite honestly, given the number of API improvements, usability improvements, and the fact that it's free... you'd have to be dumb to NOT upgrade. In fact, if I were Julie Larson-Green, I'd declare it a mandatory upgrade much the same as a service pack.
Come to think of it, I've seen service packs break apps in the past too, so this really isn't that different or catastrophic.

I have no problem with having improvements "break" things. 8.1 is a better upgrade. I have a problem with Microsoft not allowing developers to submit 8.1 updates to their apps to take advantage of them, leaving them broken until post-release. See the difference?

"Fixes a license notification issue" - hopefully they don't mess up migrating users from win8 to win 8.1 final version. I upgraded my new win8 laptop to Win8.1 preview and would be really pissed off if they say I am not eligible for an 8.1 upgrade!
Overall I am very happy with Win8.1. It looks even better with those animated desktop and new tile sizes. IE11 is even faster and machine boots up faster. The only issue I had was with my wifi.

On new win8 laptops your product key is injected into the mobo, that means you could delete your hard drive or whatever you want and windows will not ask you for a product key when you reinstall. No worries about upgrading!

I guess the same holds true for Surface Pros? I put my recovery on a USB so if something should happen reinstall and im good because the key is deep in memory?

8.1 is cool. Wish Windows would stop resizing my desktop apps when in the 50/50 view though. My copy on my desktop PC doesn't open metro apps anymore for some reason. Odd.

Don't worry, it's still in preview stage, just like when you used the 8 previews. It will be fixed when it's released.

I know I'm off topic here but for rt tablets, the music ap has always been sluggish. Is the new 8.1 music app faster and more useable? I use a surface rt btw.

I'm running 8.1RT on my Surface RT. Two issues so far:
1. It doesnt detect my Lumia 920 when connected via USB (I know this will eventually get fixed)
2. Photos app does not integrate Skydrive, Facebook and Flikr photos (major disappointment) and from the chat going on in the microsoft support forums, looks like the RTM version may also lack this support.
Other than these issues, I'm loving 8.1RT so far (quite a few visible improvements for my usecases so far, biggest being ability to add SD card to media library directly, without having to mount it, and performance improvements in the photos app - much quicker at indexing and displaying newly added photos), and cant wait for devs to take advantage of the new features.

It didn't recognize my 822 either at first, but it started working after fooling around with the SD... but the 920 doesn't have an SD so...
Also the photo app only shows about 2 of my 12 folders with photos in them and when selected the folders are empty. Similar to the Xbox Music app not showing any of my collection.
Actually, being on a non-touch desktop, I avoid the Start screen apps as much as possible.

Not sure if it's just me, but I'm having all sorts of problems with scrolling.
IE11 - when scrolling on certain webpages with background pictures, the background picture repeatedly jumps down, then back up to where it's supposed to be. It shouldn't move at all.
Store - All sorts of glitches and artifacts show up on the pictures, text and boxes. Really odd...and it's the only thing I noticed this with.
Everywhere - Scrolling slowly is extremely jittery and jumpy - before it was very smooth
This is all the same regardless of whether I'm using my mouse or trackpad. Otherwise, 8.1 is awesome.

Also having these problems on my surface RT. It's especially bad in the native twitter app, to the point of being unusable.

Try this in Internet Explorer.
Select Tools > Internet Options > Advanced Tab
Scroll down and uncheck 'Use Smooth Scrolling'
Fixed the scrolling problem for me.

I'll try this out when I get home, hopefully it helps. Will update when I get it done.
EDIT: Just did it - fixed my IE11 problem at least. I wonder if there's some sort of Windows wide smooth scrolling or something? I still have that jitteryness on my start screen and everything. Very annoying...
Thanks for the smooth scrolling tip though!

Same here. Not sure why this isn't more widespread, maybe more users are using touchscreens instead, so they don't really experience the frustration of this. I've tried it with the built in Synaptics Touchpad, two Microsoft Mice (Arc Touch and Touch), and also my Logitech k400 wireless keyboard, everything has horrible scrolling except for IE and desktop apps.

It glitches my Acer Zenbook UX32a a LOT! Bluescreens galore and multiple freezes per 48 hours use. Also, IE glitches quite a bit more than previous version.

Don't get me wrong, I like 8.1, just wish it were more stable with my Ultrabook.

Maybe you should stop using Preview/Beta versions of software if you want stability. and just wait for the actual RTM version, if this version didn't have any kind of bug, im sure it would be RTM and not a preview version :)

When full screening a YouTube video doesn't anyone else monitor subtly flicker? It does this on two desktops in my home, but not my Surface RT.

I did two upgrade installs the second went a little smoother as it didn't leave a windows.old and kep most everything perfect. One thing MS needs to do though is remove SkyDrive desktop app and auto select sync all files and make some sort of easy to distinguish sync icon on the start screen. Otherwise I love 8.1. Any news on 8.2?

Really? Love the SkyDrive desktop app, especially while working on desktop! I really hope they don't remove this!

The battery life on my Surface RT has noticeably declined. Anyone else see this with 8.1?

Even after all these patches I still find it mega glitchy. Tiles randomly disappearing, video app constantly crashing, apps being reinstalled from my other PC even after turning the setting off - delete it and its back the next day. And the biggest pain is if I turn on syncing my tile layout and lay it all out on my surface, it totally messrs up tiles on my bigger PC screen - gaps all over the place. From how glitchy it feels, I was surprised to hear its going to rtm next month. In saying that, I'm loving it and all the changes and can't wait for rtm. My biggest issue is internet explorer, seems to break so many sites

Anyone else having problems with the music app on a surface? It always crashes without the ability to play something.
The funny thing is that it works perfectly on the pc.

Yea, unfortunately 1 of our 3 surfii has a totally non-functional music app that won't play and just crashes. WeIrd as it works on the others.

How did you get the 8.1 Preview installed on the Ativ 500T? I have tried a few times and always get the message that I need to update a component using Windows Update before installing the 8.1 Preview...the 8.1 website says that the newer Atom processors need a display driver update to install the preview. Did you get that from somewhere?

I had issue with 8 indexing my music , now With 8.1 problem gone but I can't use my midi controllers . My traktor f1 and S2 are no longer recognized when I plug in the USB , my audio6 sound card works , but my midi controllers now say incompatible.

Great. IE11 has been giving me a lot of problems and I was forced to do the unthinkable: downloading Chrome.

Anybody here with a surface pro started having wifi issues after updating to Win 8.1 preview? I never had wifi issues with my pro but after updating to 8.1 I started having "limited connectivity" issues. I tried rolling back the wifi driver to previous versions but that did not fix the issue. I was forced to revert back to 8.0 which was easy enough to do (just do a refresh).

I had to roll back to 8.0 from 8.1 due to licensing issues among others.  Maybe I'll give it another go but might wait.

So, installed the updates, asked me to reboot so I did. Dell XPS 10 won't boot back up (plugged in, USB with recovery in, power + volume up, power + volume down) nothing working. If I have to send it back in I think I'll just return it for good. I returned my first XPS 10 because 32 GB of storage was useless for storage (no, I didn't sink another $50 in an SD card yet).
I love Windows 8 and I'm completely addicted to OneNote on a tablet but this is frustrating!

Yay!!  A little persistance pays off!!  Before I went to 8.1 I created a USB recovery drive in case I wanted to go back to 8.0.  While I was on pthe phone with Dell Tech Support(which sucks BTW) the recovery process worked this time around.
No More 8.1 for me!! 

Liking it so far except for I have to restart after initial bout for my Network to work. That and IE 11 doesn't work with Citrix, so unfortunately I'm still using 8.0 mostly

I've heard lots of reports of bricking Dell XPS 10 with the update.  Is that true or is there any steps I can take to prevent it?

If you follow the instruction here, then you should be able to get it running on Windows RT 8.1. WARNING: Make sure to create a USB recovery flash drive. To be safe, I created two USB recovery flash drive and deleting the recovery information AFTER the second USB recovery drive is created.
1. Create USB recovery drive (DON'T delete the recovery image yet)
2. Afterward, insert in another USB flash drive, and create a second USB recovery drive, and delete the recovery image.
It's the first reply by Antonio Banderas on June 27, 2013:
So far, it's running fine for me including this latest updates.

I was speaking with a Dell rep and he told me it's not recommended for people XPS 10 tablets to run the preview.  That's why I went back to the original version.

Any of you ever experience selecting a particular picture for the lock screen and then another picture gets set?

Also I miss facebook/flickr/skydrive integration with photos. Plus it seems the photo live tile isn't working, even when,I select shuffle pictures on live tile

Im shocked they have it runing on a Ativ Smart PC, considering it was in the list of incompatible devices for the preview.

Just installed the Windows 8.1 Preview the other day.. Although I have found a few bugs in it, I think its actually more stable than Windows 8 Pro! Does anyone else feel this way?

Got 8.1 installed and noticed that my Skydrive files for the last two months dissappeared. Found a hidden folder called skydrive.old and found at least one missing file there.
Additionally, I made all the files available offline (BIG MISTAKE!!) and it immediately overwhelmed my c drive (program files only drive supposedly) and I now have a catastrophic failuer on my skydrive!!!
Any suggestions send them to me at dglosup@sbcglobal.net. Dell was unable to assist other than to help me move the .old folder to my D drive, so now at least I have some space on C.
I am unable to make the documents folder in skydrive on-line only again but WAS able to get the other two good (public and pics)
I think if I can configure skydrive to use D instead of C, all will be well.