Microsoft streamlines Windows 8 setup process

Users of Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8 may soon have an easier time setting up Windows to run on devices for the first time, or upgrading from an earlier version.

 

Microsoft said it plans to build on the gains it made in improving the setup experience in its present flagship OS, Windows 7.

 

“For Windows 8, our goal was to continue to improve reliability while also improving the installation experience and raw performance. Not only did we want it to be rock solid, but also faster and easier to use,” Christa St. Pierre of Microsoft’s Setup and Deployment team said in a blog post.

 

She said most of the changes in the setup process will be in the interactive setup, especially for people who want to upgrade with “an absolute bare minimum of hassle,” and those who want to do a clean install but with more control of setup options.

 

The streamlined setup will be a new experience, optimized for ease-of-use, upgrades, and web delivery via download, she said.

 

Purchase and install online

 

While St. Pierre said Microsoft will continue to offer Windows in boxed DVDs, it will also make it easier for users to buy and install Windows online.

 

She said an advantage of buying online is that Microsoft will “pre-key” the setup image that is downloaded to a unique user, “which means that you don’t have to type in the 25-digit product key when you install!”

 

Streamlining

 

For Windows 8, Microsoft said Setup will first determine if a PC, apps, and devices will work in the new OS, then note which things a user wants to keep and then install the new OS.

 

It also added the capability for setup to resume automatically after certain actions such as resolving a blocking compatibility problem, which in the past would have required restarting setup.

 

Next, an integrated download manager provides time estimates, data validation, the ability to pause, resume, and re-download only parts of the file if something goes wrong.

 

“Additionally, because we have already scanned the PC to determine compatibility we know which version of Windows 8 to download – eliminating the need to ask questions such as which language or OS architecture to choose,” she said.

 

A user will have the option to choose what to keep if he or she chooses to upgrade from an existing version of Windows.

 

“The ‘Just personal files’ option is a new functionality, which allows you to get a clean install, but still keep your data without a separate tool such as Windows Easy Transfer,” she said.

 

Time to upgrade

 

St. Pierre said Microsoft has made several modifications to the upgrade engine to reduce the impact on upgrade times.

 

One modification is to move entire folders instead of individual files during the upgrade.

 

Another is to use hard links, linking to the actual data on disk in the transport location without having to physically move the file.

 

“If something goes wrong with setup and we have to roll back, we just need to delete the hard links, and the files are completely unaffected on disk,” she said.

 

Microsoft will also automatically delete the Windows.old folder - where the data from the old Windows version is moved – four weeks after a successful install.

 

Optimized download packages

 

St. Pierre said they had to find ways to compress Windows 8’s setup to a single-file size of 2.10 GB, a 9.5-percent decline from Windows 7’s 2.32 GB.

 

“After this optimized package is created we compress it using an improved compression algorithm specifically for Windows 8 setup, which provides an additional 28 percent savings. In this example (using the Windows 7 x86 ISO) the size of the download would be reduced from 2.32GB to 1.51GB,” she said.

 

Downloading is made flexible and resilient, using the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) as the default transport protocol to transfer files from the Internet to the local machine.

 

It will have the ability to pause, resume, and restart, and verify the bits that are downloaded in 10-MB increments.

 

Thus, she said that in Windows 8, customers do not have to install a separate download manager, mount the ISO to begin the installation, check the hash of the file for verification post-download, manually clean up unneeded files, or restart a download from the beginning should connectivity be interrupted. — TJD, GMA News