Does anyone else suffer from a myriad of niggles with W8 / 8.1 / S2012?


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This has been driving me up the wall, to be honest.

 

I don't know where the problem lies, it must be something with my hardware that just does not get on with any Windows 8 based OS - I've had issues with Windows 8, 8.1, 8.1 U1, Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2.

 

And the issues are widespread and varied.

 

Where to start?

 

Windows Updates under Windows 8 based OSs - there is a massive chance whenever MS release a batch of updates, installing them will leave me with an install of Windows that just presents me with flashing USB peripherals and flashing blank screens after the computer restarts to complete updates.  I do not use third party visual styles, I have not patched my system files, I do not use BitDefender free, I have tried disabling the malware boot protection and the driver certificate boot check as well.  It happens across all W8 based OSs.  It is not a single update, I have painfully tracked down several different updates that cause this behaviour.  The worst part is, after I do a clean install, an update that would previously break the OS no longer does, and one that worked perfectly fine before ended up breaking it instead!

 

Windows Search.  Windows Search on Windows 8 based OSs will randomly decide to stop searching stuff on my primary storage drive, which is a 1TB WD Black.  My OS are always installed on an SSD, so obviously I don't keep images and videos or documents on there.  It can be working fine for weeks, and then one day it will just no longer work properly.  In Windows 7 it works perfectly fine.  Rebuilding the index does not work.  Deleting the index does not work.  When this happens, I have to do without search until the next clean install.  Which is fine, there are third party alternatives that are quicker.

 

Dragging icons on my desktop started to cause Explorer.exe to stop responding.  This started three months ago and lasted until I went back to Windows 7, it's bizarre.  Drag something to the recycle bin? Explorer stops responding.  Right click and delete? Works fine.  Doesn't happen in Windows 7, happened to me in 8.1 and Server 2012 R2.

 

Wireless internet connectivity drops.  Again, across all Win8 based OSs.  This has persisted through two wireless adapters, a Netgear WNA 3100, and a new Edimax 7822UAC, which actually has a specific Windows 8.1 driver.  Again, the Edimax at least works perfectly in Windows 7.

 

Upgrading to 8.1 was an absolute chore.  It would get stuck part way through preparing devices.  Found a fix for that.  Then it got through that stage, restarted, and got stuck in a restart loop.  Clean install, upgrade to 8.1 straight away, eventually it works.  Update 1 was the same as the problem mentioned above, where it left me with an OS I could not log into - flashing USB peripherals, flashing black screens.  Safe mode presents the same problem.  Again, no third party themes, no registry mods to allow for context menu options (such as take ownership), no OS file patching.

 

Sometimes when I turn the PC on in a morning, one or two startup programs would just not load, for some reason.  No problems in event viewer, they just didn't load until I restarted.

 

Sometimes when I turn the PC on, the first boot freezes on the login screen.  I solved this by turning hibernate off.  This only seemed to happen on 8.1 and 8.1 U1.  Doesn't happen (or, hasn't yet) in Windows 7.

 

Sometimes when I turn the PC on, USB peripherals won't work until I unplug them and plug them  back in.  Again, happens in pretty much all Win8 based OSs, particularly Server 2012 and 2012R2, less often on 8/8.1.  Has never happened on Windows 7.

 

I have taken a lot of steps to try and fix these problems - they have persisted through BIOS updates, they have persisted through clean installs, they have persisted through an upgrade to a new SSD, new GPU.  The chipset and all other drivers supplied by ASROCK are up to date.  The only hardware that hasn't changed since I started having these issues, way back since the release of Win8, are the motherboard and CPU.

 

This isn't a complaint about Win8, I love the OS.  I am not enjoying being back on Windows 7, but for a month it's been rock solid now - something Win8 or any of its kernal-brothers never managed.  No little infuriating issues, no Windows Updates breaking the install.

 

I have done hardware diagnostics on the SSDs, on the HDDs, on the RAM, everything is perfectly fine.  My CPU is always overclocked to some degree, it passes 24 hours of Prime95 without error.  I have removed overclocking for a period of a two weeks before to see if it was causing the problems anyway, and I still had issues.

 

Has anyone else experienced anything like this with Windows 8? There must be something in my system that is just not compatible, and it must be down to the motherboard or CPU, but they're both pretty popular models and I've never seen anyone else complain about these issues?

 

i7-2600K

ASROCK z77 Extreme 4m

Crucial 1333Mhz DDR3

Corsair Force 3 SSD

Crucial M500 SSD

WDBlack 1TB

WDBlack 2TB

FSP 750W Aurum Gold

Gigabyte 770OC Windforce.

 

Sorry for the rant.

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My search also randomly stops working, it always searches for apps and programs, but 1 out of 3 times it won't search anything else, can be very frustrating and makes search almost useless.  

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Funnily enough several guys in my office experienced some interesting problems in the last couple of weeks, with updates on Windows 8.1.. two of my colleagues who are extremely happy with and enthusiastic about Windows 8.1 both managed to brick their computers simply after doing a Windows Update, and all the restores and last known good configurations wouldn't bring them back. After a few wasted hours of trying to get them working again they resigned themselves to a reinstall. 

 

Then I applied some updates to my 8.1 machine and was greeted after the reboot with a blank screen and just a network connection 'icon' blinking intermittently down the bottom left of the screen. Bizarre. I rebooted the machine again, thinking my PC had gone the same way, but thankfully it came back up OK and has been OK since then. 

 

Server 2012 R2 seems to be a lot more solid on the patching from what I've seen so far. 

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Have you tried disabling the various C states for CPU power saving in BIOS ? I've read about those causing problems on some systems under 8, and being fine in 7.

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I've had problems with 8.0/8.1 the likes of this on Intel Core2 age equipment. Crashes, BSOD's, failing to start services, network connections that never come up, network connections that drop out. Many of the issues that you have described (but not all). To date I've not seen these behaviours on any i3/i5/i7 generation equipment with the exception of touch screens suddenly deciding not to work any more until the system is rebooted. That happens once a month on everything I've played with from a Core2 to a Surface Pro and Surface RT.

With Server 2021/R2, I've seen less issues but I've only played with it on Xeon 5000 series and above hardware.

So from my point of view, I think it's a legacy hardware issue. Microsoft haven't got their legacy drivers right or are relying on Windows 7 drivers pushed down from MS update to work when there are a lot of issues that needed really need to be resolved.

Put 7 back on the equipment and you never see a hint of a problem, so it isn't actually the hardware itself.

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Have you tried disabling the various C states for CPU power saving in BIOS ? I've read about those causing problems on some systems under 8, and being fine in 7.

 

This is something I'll have to look into.

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Server 2012 R2 seems to be a lot more solid on the patching from what I've seen so far. 

My 2012 R2 has not been able to process new updates since the first batch of updates (installs, reboots, rolls back), and I my backups were done shortly after installing and shortly after the first windows update, so neither state would be a good restore. I've tried every "fix" I could find, but nothing works, and some of them made things worse. I really wish Windows Server had System Restore  :/

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Interesting that some similar problems are coming to light from others.

 

By far the most frequent problems I had were caused by Windows update leaving the install unusable.  A system restore in this case would allow me to log in, but the OS would be completely broken afterwards.

 

I have now, once again, tried to install Windows 8.1 directly rather than installing 8 and then upgrading.  So far so good, Update 1 is installed, all drivers installed.  Seems OK.

 

I'm just worried about the next batch of updates, and whether or not the OS still works tomorrow after the computer has been off overnight.

 

I left the Windows 7 install on the other SSD just in case.


I've had problems with 8.0/8.1 the likes of this on Intel Core2 age equipment. Crashes, BSOD's, failing to start services, network connections that never come up, network connections that drop out. Many of the issues that you have described (but not all). To date I've not seen these behaviours on any i3/i5/i7 generation equipment with the exception of touch screens suddenly deciding not to work any more until the system is rebooted. That happens once a month on everything I've played with from a Core2 to a Surface Pro and Surface RT. With Server 2021/R2, I've seen less issues but I've only played with it on Xeon 5000 series and above hardware. So from my point of view, I think it's a legacy hardware issue. Microsoft haven't got their legacy drivers right or are relying on Windows 7 drivers pushed down from MS update to work when there are a lot of issues that needed really need to be resolved. Put 7 back on the equipment and you never see a hint of a problem, so it isn't actually the hardware itself.

 

I don't really have any legacy devices, by those terms.  The 2600K and Z77extreme4 could be, I guess, if you mean it to say that they were both released before Windows 8 came out.

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just one i've in some computers where Java is installed but simply didn't worked in any browser; turned out it was an AV issue, because it didn't disabled Defender and so both of them were acting up with Java.

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The only thing I've experienced so far is an occasional bug where the start button and charms cannot be invoked with the mouse. Restarting the explorer.exe process returns behavior to normal. I've had this happen on Windows 8.1 updated via the kb's, and also a clean install with the recently-released integrated ISO.

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