In-Depth with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview
by Andrew Cunningham, Ryan Smith, Kristian Vättö & Jarred Walton on March 9, 2012 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Microsoft
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Windows 8
Windows Recovery Environment
The Windows Recovery Environment, or WinRE, has actually been around for awhile. It was first introduced in Windows Vista as a basic boot environment from which users could run tools like System Restore, Startup Repair, and the Command Prompt, and it could also restore a complete OS image created by Windows Backup.
This menu remained basically unchanged in Windows 7, but in Windows 8 it picks up Metro styling and also replaces the text-based menu that appears when you press F8 at Windows startup, one of the last bastions of the Windows 9x/NT era to make it into 2012 relatively unchanged.
The new graphical menu presents all of the same options as the old WinRE, as well as access to the new Refresh and Reset functionality—the main difference is that options for booting into Safe Mode are buried in the Advanced Options rather than coming up right when you press F8. When you choose a function like System Restore, the desktop-style tools included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 will pop up and walk you the rest of the way through the process. Most of the troubleshooting options require you to input the name and password for an administrator on the computer, to prevent tampering.
There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but the Metro styling is functional and attractive. See the screenshot gallery below for more.
Secure Boot and UEFI Support
After Metro, this is probably one of Windows 8's more misunderstood features, so let's try to break it down and demystify it: UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a replacement for the legacy BIOS found in most PCs. UEFI support has been around in the 64-bit versions of Windows since Vista, but it has only recently started to see wider adoption in PCs. In addition to being more modern and flexible than BIOS, UEFI supports a feature called Secure Boot, which can compare signatures in drivers, OS loaders, and other things against security certificates stored in firmware to verify that your computer is using a known safe bootloader rather than a malware bootloader. On both ARM and x64 computers certified for Windows 8, Secure Boot will be enabled by default to prevent these potential exploits. Note that this is an extremely brief overview of the functionality—you can read more on the Building Windows 8 blog if you’re interested.
Now, the problem people have with this new feature is that it can potentially be used to block any non-Windows bootloader from functioning, including those used in operating systems like Linux. By default, this is true, but you’ve got an out: in all x86-based Windows systems that ship with Windows 8, you should be able to add and remove security certificates from UEFI as needed (thus adding certificates that Linux needs to be recognized as a trusted operating system) or disabling secure boot entirely (making the Windows 8 PC act more or less like most Windows 7 PCs do now).
This will be slightly different for Windows on ARM—WOA systems will also support UEFI and thus the Secure Boot feature, but users won’t be allowed to add certificates or disable the feature, and OEMs will be disallowed from shipping updates or tools that unlock the bootloader (as some Android tablet makers have been known to do). You might not like this behavior, but the fact remains that this is how the vast majority of ARM devices work today. Linux advocates act as though Microsoft has taken something away in disallowing third-party OSes on WOA devices, when in fact they’re disabling nothing that hasn’t already been disabled on most competing tablets.
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Ryan Smith - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
The 10.2 driver "should" work fine with Win8. Obviously AMD isn't going to support it, but the basic graphics system requirement for Win8 is a WDDM 1.0 (Vista era) driver, which is what the 10.2 driver supports for AMD's DX9 cards.tipoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I installed 7 on an old desktop with a Radeon X1600 and it runs Aero fine. I think 8 has the same requirements, so in theory it should work.hadrons - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Secure boot implementation in ARM is different from X86 architecture in windows 8.I can't believe anandtech got it wrong.
please read this before you write about secure boot.
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/10971.html
Tuvok86 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
no reason to drift into the amd vs intel topic, I'm sure he had his reasons to test it only on Intel, but then I wouldn't call that "representative of most machines that people will actually be thinking about upgrading to Windows 8"Andrew.a.cunningham - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
We're just talking about raw performance here - x86 is x86.silverblue - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Actually, it is. Most people even bothered with Windows 8 will have Intel systems, and I doubt we'll see a mass market penetration for the ARM version for a while.snoozemode - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
To me it's so obvious. Run Metro in "tablet mode", desktop in "PC mode".dubyadubya - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Windows 8 should be renamed Tiles 1 since it is no longer Windows at all! Flame me if you want but MS employees have lost their fucking minds. Sure Tiles 1 will be nice on portable devices with touch screens but Tiles 1 has no fucking business existing on desktop PC's. What a bunch of dumb asses! Fuck!freedom4556 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
"but Tiles 1 has no *redacted* business existing on desktop PC's."I would say that this is true for enterprise environments. While they point out that domain admins can deny access to the Windows Store and that's great, they'd be complete loons not to, most domain admins I know (and I am one, too) are going to want to disable Metro entirely because our user base is jittery and codependent already as it is and Windows 8 is going to give them all a heart attack. What were they thinking? Windows 8 enterprise better look like windows server
R3MF - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
1. How does the Windows8 scheduler improve performance on AMD bulldozer/piledriver architecture?2. Will Windows 7 get DirectX 11.1?
many thanks