1861

oh…that would have been nice to know beforehand! Thanks a lot though - I’ll give the installing of steam outside of program files(x86) a try and see if that helps.

Thanks for the help!

1862

Unfortunately, a lot of games like to not give you an option where to put saves these days :/ And some games seem to want you to drop mods in MyDocs, which…dosn’t work in Win8.

1863

I install everything in program files (x86), usually on my D drive. I just take ownership of the directories afterwards. Works fine.

1864

Sometimes just taking ownership of the install directory isn’t enough. The fact that the program files folders have permissions for TrustedInstaller can be enough to cause Windows to pitch a fit or for poorly written software to go tits up.

1865

Shrug, never happened to me.

1866

Yeah, I don’t get it either. I have both Steam and Origin in their default locations. Games install just fine in Win 8. I’ve never gotten a UAC prompt after the initial Steam or Origin install, either.

1867

Ditto. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with UAC (I skipped Vista, though).

1868

So I bought a lenovo x230t convertible tablet/laptop for my wife. I had to buy the windows 8 upgrade, wtf. So I look at the available metro apps, the selection is lackluster and lacking. The draw was the combination of tab plus a decent keyboard and processing power. As a tablet, it would be ok if there were ANY friggin’ metro apps. The other thing is a freakin’ metro browser that has an ad killer. Sure you want ads and an app store, MS wake TFU and realize that you need to provide something better than a windows xp experience.

1869

Apparently you can use IE’s built in Tracking Protection to block ads, even in Metro

1870

I have a separate Games folder for all that sort of stuff, with Steam tucked in there and the install folder, yadda yadda. Some games still throw an elevation prompt every time I run them. It hasn’t bothered me enough to try and track down why its happening; I suspect it has something to do with file names. Windows (7+) defaults to prompting for certain executable names (setup.exe, install.exe, etc).

1871

cool thanks I’ll give that a go

1872

Well, moving Steam to its directory outside of programfiles(x86) allowed me to actually play Medieval 2 with the retrofit mod, something that was unpossible beforehand, so it DOES help.

That said, seeing as Rome doesn’t work for me no matter what I do on Windows 8, combined with all the other issues, I’ve now written the company I bought it from to hear if its possible to install windows 7 on the machine instead.

1873

This is fucking retarded. I created two shortcuts to the same program/exe in order to start the program with different launch parameters.
Apparently you can’t have more than one shortcut to the same file in the Start Screen - Windows just displays the last one placed there.

So I go “Oh, that’s stupid, fine, I’ll place them into a damn batch file and create a shortcut to that.”
Well apparently Windows 8 will go ahead and read the goddamn .bat, figure out which exe you’re launching, and then only display the last one.

FUCK YOU WINDOWS. I WILL MURDER YOUR CHILD AND THEIR CHILD AND THEIR CHILD AND THEIR DOG. AND YOUR CAT. THAT TOO.

Exaggeration aside - apparently this limitation also exists for pinned programs in Windows Vista and 7’s start menu, and since the start screen is basically those blown up to full screen size, this was carried over. Still stupid though.

1874

I had this problem recently as well (in Win7). There’s some solutions posted online about using mklink to create alternate links to the .exe and therefore allowing you to have two. That didn’t work for me, so what I figured out was:

  1. Create first shortcut as normal.

  2. For the second shortcut, I did a pin to start on another file in the same directory. I think it could technically be any file, but this makes it easier. Once that is in the start menu, right-click and open properties for the second, then edit the target to whatever you want it to be (the original app in this case).

And I agree, this is really, really stupid limitation on the pinning behavior. I have no idea why it exists.

1875

Weird, would linking a batchfile that links to another batchile work? (Yo, I heard you like batchfiles …)

1876

Because the Windows 7 taskbar was designed to be hardened against people who suck at using computers. That’s why you need Taskbar Tweaker and the quick launch bar to get it back into a useful state.

1877

So, if the manufacturer of a new PC offers me a choice between Windows 7 and Windows 8, which is the better choice? This is for a home PC, so business apps aren’t an issue. The PC is used for email, gaming, light word processing (still using Office 97 with Windows 7!), and standard internet searching, shopping, etc. I don’t own a tablet–or even a smart phone–so interfacing with those isn’t a consideration. My general impression is that I’m likely to find Windows 8 alien and inefficient, although with a shorter boot time, but I don’t want to choose an obsolete OS, either. Thoughts?

1878

The reality is if you spend all your time with desktop-style programs, the only practical day-to-day* difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8 is that your start menu becomes a full-screen thing. “OMG TOUCH SUCKS ON THE DESKTOP” doesn’t matter when you’re on a desktop machine because mouse and keyboard.

  • Non day-to-day setting tweaking and maintenance chores are subject “who moved my cheese?!” screeds.
1879

I fully expect Windows 7 to last like XP.

1880

Bear in mind that Windows 8.1 supports Haswell power management much better than Windows 8 or Windows 7. So if it’s a new Haswell based system, go with Win 8, then the free upgrade to Win 8.1. (Even if it’s a desktop PC; you’ll see lower overall power usage.)