Do not allow the Windows 8.1 "upgrade" to happen!!

[Ettico]

I was running Windows 8.0 with no problems. Learned the trick of running CFS2 in windowed mode and was getting huge frame rates with everything maxed.

But there was a dark cloud on my CFS2 horizon. I kept getting messages urging me to accept a free "upgrade" to Windows 8.1. Having learned the hard way to not fix it if it ain't broke, I kept refusing the "upgrade". I even told them to stop asking. They kept asking, forcing a response.

Then I awoke one morning to find the "upgrade" was in the process of happening, without my permission unless I had inadvertently given permission during one of the frequent urgings. To make matters worse, I could see no way of cancelling the "upgrade". So I went ahead with it. Answered a lot of questions, OK'd a lot of stuff, etc.

After a seemingly interminable setup time had passed, which probably cost my hard drive a year of it's life, I ended up with 8.1, which, as nearly as I can tell, is identical to 8.0, with only one minor difference....

Yeah, you guessed it. CFS2, and ONLY CFS2, no longer works. It still starts and runs after some tinkering, but the graphics are all messed up. I've tried everything. Can't fix it. My other sims, CFS3 and FS9, work fine. But not CFS2.

So what I ended up with was a downgrade. A useless, time-consuming, infuriating downgrade. And the only way to roll it back, I'm told, is by invoking a factory reboot, losing everything and starting back from scratch.

I am seriously thinking about switching to Mac. Microsoft keeps messing around, but their stuff doesn't get any better. It just keeps getting progressively more aggravating and less stable and functional.

I have read that 8.1 is OK if it's a full, clean installation. It's the "upgrade" that causes the problems, I'm told. But why even bother with 8.1? There is no discernable difference, except for the software that no longer works with 8.1. For that matter, why even bother with 8.0, or 7, or Vista? What was so very wrong with XP, that required all these "upgrades"? Why can't nerds ever learn to just leave well enough alone?

I can run CFS2 on my laptop (Win 7), but with only half the frame rates I was getting on my PC in windowed mode. I had the frames, and they snatched them away.

That's what Windows 8.1, and, increasingly, Microsoft...is good for.

[arfyhun]

I posted in the CFS1 forum when I bought a new PC with 8.1 a couple of months ago how it screwed completely the operation of both CFS1 & 2.

I bought the PC from PC Specialist, a recommended builder here in England, for £540. I had asked my son to sort out the spec. as he knew what I required.

One request was for no operating system as I intended to purchase & install XP with upgrades via eBay.

When putting through the order over the phone the salesman chappy 'leant' on me to have 8.1 as the drivers would be 'a lot better for my games than XP'.

He is obviously a member of the Flat Earth Society,; brain removed and talking out of a**e sections.

I have been ripped off. 8.1= £79 down the drain.

I am not on line with my kit in order to deny 'upgrades' as apart from a lightening start-up the OS is shyte doing the one bloody thing I bought it to do; play CFS1 & 2.

I rang PC Specialist up to inform them how good 8.1 is and they offered to oversee my deleting 8.1 and the installing of XP if I wanted to install it. All heart...


Just two of the problems in CFS2;

Impossible for me to make the panel view the same as in XP (same monitor). Wiiiiiiiiide bodied Spitfires! Tried all the resolution possibilities.

At the end of flight the PC goes mental. Because the screen is full resolution, even making it smaller the 'minimise' button is the only one half-showing at the top-right of the screen. Minimsing to the taskbar and right clicking to close the game freezes the whole cat & caboodle leaving me with an eternally mouse-controlled blue spinning circle.

The only way out it switch off at the mains, which brings its own obvious problems. The kit goes mental when I fire it up again.

I now do not fly with the PC, I just play music on it. £540 well spent. I could have got a half decent band in for that money!!!!

I'm of the thought if I added a brick to the inside of the kit it could possibly be used as a door-stop. Any doorstop experts out there please advise soonest.

Do NOT get involved with Microshyte 8. It is a self-inflicted disease.

Graham.

[glh]

Ettico: You are exactly right. Windows XP works fine. I see no reason to upgrade as I am satisfied. I have been using it to run FSX Acceleration on my Dell GX270 desktop for 6-7 years and have had no problems. That machine is NOT connected to the internet so there are no forced updates to anything being installed -- and no virus either.

I bought that machine on Ebay for about $125 and added more memory and a 512MB GeForce 6200 video card. I guess another $100 for those parts for a total of $225 and it is still going strong.

It works for me.

As for your question "what was wrong with XP", the Microsoft business model is not too hard to figure out:

-- Issue and sell licenses for a Windows X.0 operating system, then issue (questionable) upgrades and service packs for about 4-5 years.

-- Then incorporate all those upgrades into a NEW, IMPROVED Windows X+1 operating system and sell licenses for the new system.

-- Repeat the process as long as the public keeps buying and no relevant competition appears.

[stoney]

That is exactly what happened me Ettico. Kept asking me to "up-grade" to 8.1. Well I didn't like 8.0 but didn't have a choice, my new machine comes with it. So... no thanks MS, I'll skip the 8.1 deal thank you. Then after prompt after prompt, one day the up-grade just starts installing whether I want it or not. WTF! And sure enough, as I feared, CFS2 and FS2004 had display problems big enough to make them both unusable.
Checking in with some other sim forums, it was suggested that I D/L the current vid card driver specifically for MS 8.1. I did and all the display problems went away. So you might try that and see if it helps. The MS site has drivers for most.

[Ettico]

At this point, I'm thinking about dedicating my laptop to the internet and the few practical uses I still have for the deeply jacker-infected cyberspace, and pulling my HP Pavilion off the net, rolling it back to XP, and using it solely for gaming and music.

Edited to add: I just saw your post, stoney. Thanks for the advice. I did try looking for an HP video card update without success. I didn't check Microsoft.

[kelticheart]

I was running Windows 8.0 with no problems. Learned the trick of running CFS2 in windowed mode and was getting huge frame rates with everything maxed.

But there was a dark cloud on my CFS2 horizon. I kept getting messages urging me to accept a free "upgrade" to Windows 8.1. Having learned the hard way to not fix it if it ain't broke, I kept refusing the "upgrade". I even told them to stop asking. They kept asking, forcing a response.

Then I awoke one morning to find the "upgrade" was in the process of happening, without my permission unless I had inadvertently given permission during one of the frequent urgings. To make matters worse, I could see no way of cancelling the "upgrade". So I went ahead with it. Answered a lot of questions, OK'd a lot of stuff, etc.

After a seemingly interminable setup time had passed, which probably cost my hard drive a year of it's life, I ended up with 8.1, which, as nearly as I can tell, is identical to 8.0, with only one minor difference....

Yeah, you guessed it. CFS2, and ONLY CFS2, no longer works. It still starts and runs after some tinkering, but the graphics are all messed up. I've tried everything. Can't fix it. My other sims, CFS3 and FS9, work fine. But not CFS2.

So what I ended up with was a downgrade. A useless, time-consuming, infuriating downgrade. And the only way to roll it back, I'm told, is by invoking a factory reboot, losing everything and starting back from scratch.

I am seriously thinking about switching to Mac. Microsoft keeps messing around, but their stuff doesn't get any better. It just keeps getting progressively more aggravating and less stable and functional.

I have read that 8.1 is OK if it's a full, clean installation. It's the "upgrade" that causes the problems, I'm told. But why even bother with 8.1? There is no discernable difference, except for the software that no longer works with 8.1. For that matter, why even bother with 8.0, or 7, or Vista? What was so very wrong with XP, that required all these "upgrades"? Why can't nerds ever learn to just leave well enough alone?

I can run CFS2 on my laptop (Win 7), but with only half the frame rates I was getting on my PC in windowed mode. I had the frames, and they snatched them away.

That's what Windows 8.1, and, increasingly, Microsoft...is good for.

Ettico,

you cannot find a more sympathetic reader than yours truly. In spite of the fact MS produced something as nice as CFS2 and some other stuff, their continuous, psychotic search for staying on top of the market, at the expense of the end users and the poor "end" technicians, called by the formers to resolve problems caused only by MS.

The job I once had. I quit assembling pc's, selling them and do assistance exactly when Win Millennium Edition came out. The amount of irresolvable problems due to bugs, more or less oversaw by MS, was staggering, ranging from incompatible drivers to hardware that could have ran, who knows for how many years still, but was rendered instantly obsolete by the new OS. Graphic cards, scanners and printers, to name a few.
Obviously, my customers did not give a shut about MS commercial choices. If a perfectly good pc which was working fine to the very moment the "upgrade" was installed, started having problems, I was in the customer's gunsight, not Bill Gates. While I knew perfectly who was the cause of both of our aggravations, some of my customers even arrived to accuse me that I did it on purpose, so that I could have sold them new hardware!

I simply decided my scope in life was not to make MS rich. From then on, and I know I am going to become the target lightning rod for several comments with this statement, I started justifying MS software piracy and cracking.
I certainly do not waste my time cracking protected software, yet I do not disdain grabbing it when the chance and the need comes along, providing it's MS stuff. My CFS2 CDs are sparkling new, I found the right executable to run CFS2 without inserting its CD since the beginning.

There must also be other reasons why virus and other assorted malware creators hit only MS products. There, another sign of how good MS products are: easy to infect, always in need of endless patches to cover programming holes, while Linux and Mac systems are impervious to such crap.
From my brief programming experience, I know for a fact that an application must be thoroughly tested before releasing it. Customer's money is good, therefore what they buy must be just as good, right?
MS chose a long time ago to dump testing costs on the shoulders of their customers, instead. This is how they test their new software, through worldwide customer's assistance requests and bug reports. Ever wondered why this absurd need of constant patching?

Take, for another example, this hideous policy of not providing new pc's with the original OS CDs of the pre-installed Windows, knowing damn' well how many times Windows can force the end user to do a HDD format and its OS re-install! Only the dealer has them, one cannot do it at home at zero cost. All of this has a name here: mafia.

The other famous scam was MS Genuine Advantage or whatever the heck it is called, an application that prevents hardware, not previously approved by the almighty lord of computer MS from working properly, while it purrs away when MS Genuine Advantage is not installed!

Ettico, the dark side of having Windows automatic upgrades activated bears the consequence of what just happened to you. MS can come in and do whatever they please to your computer, despite all of the worldwide privacy laws currently in force. The game is rather easy to spot: a) we scare the hell out of you with new virus warnings; b) we recommend that you keep automatic upgrades active, so that when a new security issue comes along you can get immediate updates and patches which, obviously, we cannot foresee before hand; c) we come in and do anything we like to your machine, whether you authorise us or not. It just happened to you.
If all of the above does not work, then we release a new version and we discontinue assistance with the previous one. Just like what they did with XP. In this country, all of the banks ATM software is XP based, guess who's gonna pay all of the conversion to the new touch-screen crap (just because we have to get ahead of Apple on the smart phone and tablet world market!)? And to do what wonderfully new? Absolutely nothing, simply ATM transactions as before. The poor bank customers will pick up the tab, obviously not the banks.

I adopted two solutions to all of the above. Ever since Genuine Advantage appeared, I turned off any automatic update in my computers, at home and at work. I then do carefully chosen manual updates, only when I deem it necessary, not when MS tells me to do it. At work, my old beloved XP-based pc died last year and we had to buy a new one. It had Win 8.0 pre-installed and, despite the dealer's strong recommendation to upgrade to 8.1, which had just been released, I never did it and, first thing first, I deactivated automatic upgrades in the Control Panel.
I then got AVG Free antivirus and kept Win 8 firewall active before my first online access. I covered Win 8 ridiculous touch screen tiles with freeware Classic Shell. I then proceeded to start working on it in full XP emulation and worked happily thereafter.

The second solution, which I adpted at home, is getting a low end computer on the used market. Go home, disconnect forever your main rig from the net and connect the used one instead with only Windows, a browser, an e-mail application and a free antivirus (in this case, even freeware MS Security Pack is fine) installed. Then transfer your downloads to your main rig via mem pens or cards, after they were thoroughly checked by your antivirus on your online pc. This marks the end of security patches need in your main pc, you can get rid of the antivirus and you can even turn off all of the connection-related services, to the full advantage of its gaming performance.

Thank you for the opportunity of this of mine. Over ad out.

Cheers!
KH

[Ettico]

kelticheart,

Thanks for the insight. I'm probably going to do a reboot on the HP and take it off the net. I'll still have a laptop online and wireless sharing between the laptop and the HP.

[Wayland]

Amen. Why pay testing costs in-house when you can get the customer to beta-test for you, and they PAY for the privlege to boot! What a marketing plan! MS should get the Golden Fleece Award for that. I went parallel 3 years ago. Laptop with Win 7 for anything online, and my antique steam-powered tower for all gaming, music, etc. Downloads come in on the laptop and get anti-virused, then to the desktop via flash drive. If I could run CFS2 in Linux I would kiss off MS tomorrow.

Steve

[Captain Kurt]

It seems like more and more of us are doing the same thing. I have a Win7 laptop for the internet, but I have an off-net XP tower I use exclusively for CFS2. I transfer any up or downloads between the 2 computers via a flash drive and run anti virus scans while on the flash drive before I will transfer anything onto the XP computer.

And just in case. I also have a spare XP tower stowed away that I bought used/refurbished for just $250. It's almost identical the my active XP computer, so I can keep CFS2 running for a long time yet.

[kelticheart]

Hi everybody!

Yesterday I was so taken by this issue I forgot to add another suggestion.

As I said, I duly downloaded and stored away all of MS updates for XP up until 2011. Last year, I had to do a drastic cleanup, format the HDD on my main rig and re-install XP Pro SP3 anew.
Since I installed XP already, both for personal needs and at work, at least a million times I thought about ways of cutting down install time. It usually takes me almost two days, on and off, to do a good job because a good restart implies a correct install sequence and well thought of. Some drivers must come before others, just like applications. I wrote down and printed every step, so each time I repeat the same actions, ensuring consistency and a fresh restart as if nothing happened before.

Well, last year I decided to leave all security updates out. Since, as Captain Kurt pointed out too, having a CFS2 dedicated pc, running XP and rigorously offline, seems the way to go to enjoy CFS2 for several years to come. No Internet, no need for security patches, as simple as that.

Besides sparing a sizeable install length of time, the end result pleasantly surprised me: the computer overall speed and performance increased, together with CFS2.
I still enjoy a reasonable CFS2 on a 11-year-old machine with the following specs:

• AMD Sempron 2.0Ghz processor on an ASUS mobo
• 2 x 1Gb Kingston RAM banks
• ATI Radeon 9250 SVGA card, with 128Mb of dedicated video RAM
• a 160Gb Maxtor EIDE HDD, partitioned to have a Windows virtual memory run on a different partition than C:\ (much faster!). S.M.A.R.T. monitoring reports its health is still 100% good and going strong. This, I think, thanks to the fact I always ran it with a specific HDD cooling fan. I make two identical backups on two external USB HDDs every weekend, i.e. three exact copies of CFS2 and every addon I ever downloaded.

The lowest possible end pc for today's standards. Yet, framerate never drops below 25-30 fps with all graphic options maxed out, unless I fill the sky with flak above a scenery with 200+ gsl objects.

I suggest to install XP SP3, leave out all of the security patches released after SP3 and install only Windows-related updates. Read the specs coming with each update, if they do not concern your pc or the applications you are running, leave them out as well. Software like Microsoft.NET Framework will weigh your Windows down a lot, the more agile Windows is the better CFS2 will run.

Keep to an absolute minimum the number applications on your CFS2-dedicated pc. Some applications load at pc startup portions of their executable code in the RAM for faster execution, it's less RAM available for CFS2.

Write down all of the steps you take and store them. They will be a precious, time-saving resource for next time.

It works for me.

Cheers!
KH

[Ettico]

The more I think about what MS did, the less I like it.

I had a working operating system - after laboriously figuring out how to make the damn thing work. Then MS invades my computer, rips it out, and replaces it with something inferior, destroying the functionality of my favorite sim in the process. This act of piracy will have to be rolled back, costing me many hours of time and aggravation. In addition, fixing the piracy will put more needless wear on my HD and shorten it's life.

And for what? I'm not going to give MS any money for hacking my system. If anything, my next computer is likely to be a MAC. So why did MS do it? I never asked for the buggy 8.1.

And the same principle applies to the hackers who have invaded my computers with vicious viruses. The hackers gained nothing. The winners in their silly little game were Cox and Norton. I paid Cox Tech $100 to clean a virus (which I ended up having to do myself, because the Cox hackers tried to jack me up for an additional $100 house call). And today I paid Norton a $75 renewal fee. Which blows, but at least I haven't picked up any viruses since I switched to Norton. Although Norton did let an extremely annoying and time-consuming redirect bug slip past.

Here is the bottom line: the ignorant, sociopathic virus-spreaders got nothing from me. All the money they forced me to spend went to Cox and Norton - which probably makes a hacker feel very proud, although I don't exactly know why.

And quite frankly, I wonder where these ignorant hackers are getting all these ingenious viruses. Then I look at the money flow...

I still use Cox internet, because it seems to be the best alternative for the moment. But I've canned Cox cable TV and phone service, saving myself a ridiculous $140 a month (the equivalent of 7 dinners and movies. New movies. Not ancient reruns.).

And I'm thinking maybe MS is next on my hit list. Then I'm thinking Norton may be next. And I'm thinking I can get by just fine on a few hours of wireless internet per month. Trusted essentials only.

Don't these hackers have any sense at all? They only exist because we let them. We brought their asses into this world, and we can take their asses out.

[Shadow Wolf 07]

I had a few extra ducats and went ahead and ordered a new laptop with Win7 loaded and haven't looked back. I still have a Win8.1 system that works with limitations though, and I hardly ever use it, Advice: If you can, replace the sucker!

[Ettico]

I had a few extra ducats and went ahead and ordered a new laptop with Win7 loaded and haven't looked back. I still have a Win8.1 system that works with limitations though, and I hardly ever use it, Advice: If you can, replace the sucker!

I had Windows 8.0 working perfectly, after a good deal of tinkering. Including CFS2, with frame rates from 100-250 fps with sliders maxed, and no bugs. So all I need to do is roll back to 8.0, which I can do with the push of a button, except I'll have to reload everything I have loaded.

It's fixable, but totally unnecessary. MS is just costing me time and aggravation for nothing. I will make sure that MS does not profit from it.

[Ettico]

I did the factory reboot. Now I'm back to Windows 8.0, with both CFS2 and CFS3 ETO Expansion up and running smoothly. Took me the better part of 3 days to get back to square 1, after what can best be described as a hijacking by MS.

Almost, but not quite as bad as the time a ransom virus which had been around for months slipped past McAfee, killed it, invaded both my computers, and I paid the Cox hackers $100 to clean it, which they could not do, but did not fail to double charge me, adding an additional $100 bogus charge. I ended up cleaning the virus myself with tools downloaded from the net onto a boomstick, and then it was a week before I could get Cox to remove the bogus charge, which they actually increased a couple of times during the tedious process. Getting rid of the bogus charge ended up taking several days longer than getting rid of the virus - a fact which I duly informed a Cox representative. Now, having cancelled Cox TV and phone service, I'm getting monthly invitations from Cox to return to the fold for an additional $100 per month - so they say. But the last time they said that, it turned out to be $140, and then went incrementally up from there, culminating in an unacceptable $200, triggering cancellation. I wonder sometimes if they think we don't notice these things. Well, I noticed. I'm down to $55 per month now, internet only.

I have "automatic updates" turned off now, but that hasn't stopped the periodic attempts to get me to accept a free "upgrade" to Windows 8.1 again.

So here I am, back at square 1, having lost many hours of time because of whatever it is that MS is trying to do with this 8.1 fixation.

[kelticheart]

I did the factory reboot. Now I'm back to Windows 8.0, with both CFS2 and CFS3 ETO Expansion up and running smoothly. Took me the better part of 3 days to get back to square 1, after what can best be described as a hijacking by MS.

Almost, but not quite as bad as the time a ransom virus which had been around for months slipped past McAfee, killed it, invaded both my computers, and I paid the Cox hackers $100 to clean it, which they could not do, but did not fail to double charge me, adding an additional $100 bogus charge. I ended up cleaning the virus myself with tools downloaded from the net onto a boomstick, and then it was a week before I could get Cox to remove the bogus charge, which they actually increased a couple of times during the tedious process. Getting rid of the bogus charge ended up taking several days longer than getting rid of the virus - a fact which I duly informed a Cox representative. Now, having cancelled Cox TV and phone service, I'm getting monthly invitations from Cox to return to the fold for an additional $100 per month - so they say. But the last time they said that, it turned out to be $140, and then went incrementally up from there, culminating in an unacceptable $200, triggering cancellation. I wonder sometimes if they think we don't notice these things. Well, I noticed. I'm down to $55 per month now, internet only.

I have "automatic updates" turned off now, but that hasn't stopped the periodic attempts to get me to accept a free "upgrade" to Windows 8.1 again.

So here I am, back at square 1, having lost many hours of time because of whatever it is that MS is trying to do with this 8.1 fixation.

Hi Ettico,

you have all of my solidarity, for what is worth because it does not save you from all the monumental aggravations you reported.

What I do not understand is why MS is trying again to tamper with your pc, since you turned off your "automatic updates" in Win8. It doesn't happen with mine here at the office. Probably because their system found an open door and now it has your IP.
I switched it off immediately, as soon as the new platform was delivered here by my company supplier, even before a new connection was configured. I imagine this is the reason why I never received any message offering the 8.1 free upgrade, but I am not sure 100%.

All of these "updates" are done automatically, I don't believe there are real people behind them. Why don't you try contacting your provider and see if they can change your connection address, in tech jargon your "IP", and see if this stops MS' pain-in-the-butt pitch?

Cheers!
KH

[Ettico]

Hi Kelticheart,

Well, I haven't seen the pain-in-the-butt pitch in a few days, and HP is now advising doing a "compatibility check" before upgrading to 8.1, to prevent the disabling of important software.

Trouble is, if you have the default "automatic updates" on, the "upgrade" to 8.1 can start automatically, and once it starts, there is no way to cancel it. And once it is installed, there is no way to roll it back except a clean reboot.

That's not exactly my idea of an "update". That's more like a hijacking.