Windows 8 Customer Preview - Not on your old laptop

Not fully cooked

Every once in a while I go the whole hog to test Beta software, this is software that has not yet been released as completed but at a stage where the manufacturer is confident enough to give the wider public a run of the product and obtain feedback that will allow issues, problems, bugs and other unforeseen scenarios to be ironed out.

Last week, Microsoft released the equivalent of a Beta for their next version of Microsoft Windows which they have with marketing aplomb called Windows 8Customer Preview.

Normally, people would think for such a new operating system, there will be such stringent requirements to run it but Microsoft seemed to lower the bar.

Hope at first

Now, Microsoft does suggest that we can install this on the same hardware that powers Windows 7, but is unlikely that many like me will be ready to jettison our main Windows 7 systems or laptops for software that is in flux.

However, if perchance one of our trusty but old workhorses can be brought back from the brink of obsolescence that would be wonderful.

So I looked through the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to see if my workhorse qualifies and this is what Microsoft says I need at the minimum.

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster – I have a Pentium M running at 1.7 GHz

RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit) – Planning to run 32-bit, I have 2 GB

Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit) – 80GB hard disk with 29GB free, planned a wipe, then install.

Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher – Supports this minimum.

It was my 7 year old laptop generically built by Compal, for many vendors who rebrand it for their line of products.

Backup always

As I am quite fastidious, I did not backup my laptop, I took an image of the disk using an old copy of Symantec Ghost running from my customised BartPE [A pre-installation environment that is a cut-down version of Microsoft Windows XP allow you to perform tasks like accessing your hard disk without the problems of open files.] boot CD streaming it over the network to another server. Backups are critically essential; my main systems get backed up every day.

This laptop however is mainly only used for Skype calls but for this situation, it was only right to take a disk image, just in case.

And so fast

Having obtained the ISO image, I burnt the image to DVD using IMGBurn a really neat and free tool and booted up my laptop with the DVD.

I could not get beyond the initial screen it was a Windows Recovery Environment screen suggesting “Your PC needs to be repaired”; it was an unexpected error with the error code 0xc0000260.

My PC had already passed the assessment test for installing Windows 7, so I thought; it was registering an indeterminate error.

Getting beyond that

I then found out I could run the Setup from within Windows XP Professional if I had Service Pack 3, you can determine that with pressing Window key + R to bring up the Run dialog box and type in WINVER – this will reveal what version of Windows you are running.

So, rebooting my laptop to Windows XP, I inserted the DVD and ran setup, over the next 90 minutes, I had the installation go through and complete. When my laptop restarted, I got that Windows Recovery Environment Error again.

This time I had to search for what Error Code: 0xC0000260 meant when installing Windows 8 Customer Preview.

The long and short of the tale is the code has changed from the version before the Customer Preview where according to comments Windows 8 did install without issues but now certain other checks are being made that makes the installation and start-up fall over at the Windows Recovery Environment.

Solutions and alternatives

The skinny on the matter is this.

Error0xc0000260 when installing Windows 8 Consumer Preview on an old laptop

Others had issues with installing it on their virtual machines, notably, VMWare and VirtualBox and the suggestion was to enable PAE/NX settings for the Virtual Machine or for hardware enable the PAE feature in BIOS – those features however are not offered on the Pentium M processor on my laptop, you can determine what kind of processor you have with CPU-Z.

In the end, we are waiting to see if Microsoft will offer a way to put new wine in old wine skins allowing us to revive our trusty old laptops with this new-fangled operating system.

Meanwhile, I restored the Ghost disk image back to my laptop and installed Windows 8 Customer Preview on a Virtual Machine created on Hyper-V on one of my other systems, a bit disappointed in the fact that I could not get my laptop a new lease of life but at least I get to experience the look-and-feel of Windows 8 – Quite so different, I’ll say.

My Professional Life: A Synopsis

My professional Information Technology life

It started in 1988, which is when I got my first job supporting Information technology installations that included hardware maintenance and repairs as well as the installation/support of software and the resolution of problems that arise from such deployments.

I trained as an Electrical/Electronics Engineer, learnt to program in Basic, ForTRAN 77 and Pascal but it was not long before I realised that most of the hardware components even where they could be fixed our customers preferred to replace faulty systems and have their systems functional in the shortest possible time so they could get on with their work.

This became the excitement of my whole career, looking for working, functional, cost-effective and enduring solutions to problems my customers have.

Addressing thorny problems

Most of my working life has had me in consultancy positions crafting methods and processes of getting disparate systems and applications to work together, the first of which in those days was mail-merging a Dbase III address database into a formal letter in Wordstar, working with Lotus 1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics for presentations, then being an expert for a legal publishing company working for Xerox Ventura Publisher, Dbase III, WordPerfect, CorelDraw and many other utilities.

When I worked for a further education college, I laid out the plan to migrate from the then expensive support structure and archaic network operating system of RM Machines to more open and cost-effective third-party systems running on Novell Netware 3.11 and more contemporaneous Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office software on the clients.

Server Support & Software Distribution

After that project, I ran Novell Netware environments for an actuarial firm and then for an insurance firm offering remote support to over 20 sites in the United Kingdom and abroad. By then, I was already Novell Netware Certified and was ready for my new assignment at an oil company where I deployed the first software distribution process using Microsoft SMS 1.1.

From 1996, I have designed, built, supported and trained people and teams in Microsoft SMS 1.1/1.2/2.0/2003 and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 in the finance, insurance, computer services, aviation, banking and electronic consumer goods industries.

Changing the organisation

Software Deployment for me has not just been a tool, it has been a method that extends to the improvement of the interaction that users in an enterprise have with the systems that can make them more productive in their work life.

The basic concept that has governed the work I do is optimising and perfecting the user experience such that what the user needs is available in a timely and affordable manner, meaning that the support frameworks have to be streamlined, the solutions have to be easy and the ideas have to be repeatable with respect to device, usage and access.

That is what makes my work fun and challenging, I always look forward to opportunities that are receptive of progressive change and it is my job to ensure that the process of change is as seamless and pain-free as possible.

This blog will serve as forum to offer ideas, bring together opinions and highlight different aspects of my career.

Social Media Engagement: Attributes observed playing games

Another observation

Obviously, it isunscientific of based a whole set of presumptions on an experience that hashardly lasted 24 hours, but one will be hard-pressed not to draw conclusionsalready.

As I returned homeyesterday from a lovely rendezvous with my growing circle of friends made fromsocial media activities that included the rather usual lunch that had a finelady exhibit her mastery of Nigerian cuisine, she not being remotely African, Ireminisced about the many people I have met in person through blogging,tweeting and on Facebook.

Scrabble in motion

The train journeyback to Amsterdam was uneventful until at one of the stops a passenger boardedand as he was fiddling with his phone as everyone who has a smartphone doesnowadays, out of the corner of my eye I saw he was playing a game that lookedlike Scrabble.

A few days ago, Idid a search on the Android Marketplace for Scrabble and I ended up with a wordpuzzle – WordGame – which had some addictive qualities working against the clock butnothing like the tradition game.

Rather than be apeeping Tom, I asked the man if the game was Scrabble, it wasn’t but it was a Scrabbleclone of sorts called Wordfeud.

Handling the little things

He said he wasplaying multiple games using different dictionaries with friends all aroundthat world and I thought, when I get home, I will try it out.

Wordfeud isavailable for use with mainly European languages on the iPhone, Android andWindows 7.5+ platforms with the programmers having the good sense to differentiatebetween English (US) and English (International) – they deserve the Nobel PeacePrize for just that alone.

There is a premiumversion that removes all advertisements whilst introducing other features. Theboard and game is intuitive enough and each language has a different alphabetset with weights and frequencies differing according to the selected language.

A really good imitation

It was not longbefore I saw the dissimilarities between Wordfeud and Scrabble, the scoring onthe board is different with the premium squares allowing for more interestingplay, the ratings on the latters also differ – it is amazing how much trivialinformation one can recall from years of playing traditional Scrabble.

It offers the basicmoves as play, swap or miss with the shuffle function that allows forrearranging the letters to form new words but no penalties for wrong words, youare alerted and allowed to reply your turn. There are helpers like WordfeudHelper and Word Fraud, yes, you can get help without your opponent knowing –such dishonesty, alarming indeed.

Tardy responsiveness

However, the reasonfor this blog is to highlight an interesting trait I have found which I dobelieve is a pervasive social media problem.

Apart from Skypecalls, most interactive engagement systems are asynchronous, very much likeemail, you send a message and you cannot pre-determine when a response will bereceived. In a phone call, there is usually an unstated length of a pausebefore either party enquires of the other is still in that conversation – thatis usually not available for Instant Messaging, Twitter, Facebook or games thatare played online.

For this purpose,Wordfeud has given each player 72 hours to respond in play before that playerautomatically forfeits the game.

Appreciating the situation

My question is whystart a game you will not conclude and why is there is no sense of commitmentto complete a game you have started, albeit with strangers?

In 8 games that Ihave started since yesterday, only one has been completed, 2 resigned before 10tiles had hit the board and one gave up before placing anything.

The other four havebeen in play for as much as 17 hours, one of which is quite near conclusion. Ihave decided I will rather be beaten than resign the game and I will mostdefinitely avoid a default.

Wordfeud hasoptions to alert, remind and prompt when it is my turn and I have switched allthose options on.

The interestingthing is in a short chat session with one of the tardy, she; yes, she has afemale username said she was still in the game but was simultaneously playingmultiple games – in other words, I had to be patient.

I would not know ifthe trick is to win but drawing out the game interminably, I am however gladthat Wordfeud does not allow you to resign if it is not your turn.

Playing vulture

If anything,besides the addictive qualities Wordfeud might bring to bear, it allows peopleto divide their attention in such a way that they are not committed, attentiveor engaged to the chagrin of some.

It could also bethat the players will rather default than resign or hope that the game isforgotten especially when they are performing badly in the game so as to snatchvictory from the jaws of defeat – not with me.

This vulture is apatient bird and regardless of the social media construct, I will ensure I amcourteous and responsive to all players that have been randomly selected –niceness should be pervasive, regardless of level of acquaintance, though, I dorecognise in certain forums, some people just seek to expose your evils.