Windows 8.1

  • Thread starter Thread starter Clanger
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If you're interested in installing Windows Media Center on Win8.1, it can be done. You have to use the "Win10 trick" to do it. Follow the instructions there.

Note that you cannot remove Powershell in Win8.1 for the WMC installer to work. (Since it uses Powershell to install WMC.)

Perhaps once WMC is installed, then you can remove Powershell. (I suggest using the Windows Feature to remove it. That way, if you need it back again for some other trick, Windows can reinstall Powershell for you. (Whereas if you remove Powershell using NTLite, it's gone forever.))

There is also at least one other Win8.1 component that you cannot remove for this trick to work. (Apparently I removed it in a later, more aggressive build. Am slowly adding back stuff now to find what it was.)

Update: You will have to install LAV filters into Win8.1 so that WMC can display your TV program.
 
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Post a link in Kas's what to remove topic to your post. I know its w7 but there isnt seperate topics for 8 onwards.
 
Good idea.

I think that the other necessary Component for WMC to install is "Secondary Logon."

I'm pretty sure that the bad guys can use Secondary Login to hack your system. So I tried taking it out of Win8.1. But I had left it in in Win7, albeit with its Service set to Manual. When I put it back in, the Win10 trick WMC installer worked again.
 
Component notes say Secondary Logon is needed for stuff, i suppose Run As Administrator. To check keep it but disable the service. If it borks summat reset to default startup type.

Kas did ask me if it was worth starting a paralel topic for 10, i said probably but its gonna be additional work and time. Thats why i ask peepes to post 8+ things there, even if its just a description and link to another topic. Forums are very grafmented so even just using it for links to 7 and non 7 things its great as a bookmarker/linker/directory topic.
 
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A few tricks for anyone who tries Win8.1. (BTW, I just ran a render benchmark on Blender in Win8.1. It was twice as fast rendering the BMW benchmark. Whether that's due to a fresh install of an OS - and consequently a fresh install of Blender, I don't know. Will have to see later if my video editor is any faster.)

First, if you have a network connection when you install Wiin8.1, you will be asked (forced?) to get a Microsoft Online Account. (Somewhat like having to register with Google's Play Store if you want to download stuff.) There are ways past this "request" to get an Online Logon. But the easiest thing to do is to simply unplug your router during install. Then Win8.1 Setup will default to a local account, like good ol' Win7.

If you're testing in a VM, then pull the virtual plug on the Virtual NIC. (VBox makes that easy. Don't know about the other VM's.)

Now, perhaps as a result of not having a Microsoft Account, when you try to add a new User to Win8.1, nothing happens. (Although that could be because I had removed something critical with NTLite by the time I found this problem. Update: The latter. Apparently it's because I removed the Metro Start page, 'cause when you go to create a new user in a stock Win8.1, the Metro style page flips open for the new user info.)

No problem. Drop to the Administrator Command Line and type
Code: 
net user [{new-account-name} {new-account-password} /add

That will create a new (Limited) User account for you.

(I can't change the pictures tho. So it seems like I must have removed too much using NTLite. Update: Two things: I found that Win8.1 won't let you "personalize" it until you've Activated it. And second, probably because I removed Metro.)
 
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There is also a new swapfile (literally) in Win8.1, in addition to the already well known pagefile.sys.

From what I read on the 'net, this new swapfile is to help Metro Applications paint faster when switching.

Since I don't have any Metro Apps, and since I don't plan to every have any Metro Apps, it seems like I should be able to kill this new swapfile.

(It's 'only' 250 MB - but some here obsess about bloat.)

According to this link, the way to do it is

Run regedit.exe, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management, create a 32Bit DWORD SwapfileControl and set it to 0.

I haven't tried it. (Yet.)
 
Ive got a select bunch of HKLM tweaks and pagefile etc that i need to get into a base is and with no apps and an answer file setup is quick from usb3.

I will upload them when they are done. I will arrange them into a batch file so they can be added when you mount the registry in ntlite.

ControlSet001 works too.
 
It seems that the Library from Win7 days is kinda gone from Win8.1. But still Microsoft insists on forcing us to see My Documents, Music, Videos, etc. in File Manager (File Explorer?). Like I would want to have 20 TB C: drive to back up all the time that has not only my OS on it, but thousands of Gigs of video too. (All in inefficient (for video) 4 kilobyte clusters too!)

Anyway, here's a way to remove these folders.

Perhaps NTLite can offer to do this (if it doesn't already).
 
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Clanger said:
Kas did ask me if it was worth starting a paralel topic for 10, i said probably but its gonna be additional work and time.
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I asked if should i ask to open a new thread in the sense of Win 10 components needed to keep for something because you have suggested to add Win 10 components to the Win 7 thread.

Anybody can start a new thread for Win 10 needed components as i won't have time for a long time and i'm working with 7 only.
 
Anyone can but they havnt up till now. 10 changes every 6 months so a 10 all builds topic is pointless, i got what i needed from this topic so now its 8.1 allcomers welcome. I know what is like, i certainly cannot commit to what i did before but there is still a need tobe filled and the only way we can currently do that that is to use what we have already and open them up. Its much easier for users to search in 2 topics then see links in those to rellyvant links.
 
pmikep said:
It seems that the Library from Win7 days is kinda gone from Win8.1.
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This is from my standard install. I would keep Favourites for an online system because desktop and downloads are regulary used for downloads. I could remove recent places and wonloads from an offline system because i wouldnt need them.
Capture.PNG
 
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Libraries came back on mine... Perhaps after installed WMC? But the icon is at the bottom of the list, so it doesn't bug me.
 
nuhi, I suggest that the spaceport.inf driver be locked under Compatibility as Recommended. perhaps under a hardware list called Win8.1. (Although I found that the Microsoft Storage Space Controller is useless for me. Mostly I was obsessing about it because it was an unknown in Device Manager.)
 
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I just ran a test of video editing in a nicely 'Lited Win8.1. Unfortunately, it wasn't any faster than running in Win7. (I have noticed that disk I/O is faster in Win8.1. But according to the Windows Task Manager monitor, there's not much hard disk use while rendering video. SoWin8.1's faster I/O isn't helping here.)

However I did notice that my video editor was a little "jerky" sometimes in Win8.1. I suspect it's due to Windows 8.1 Core Parking, as Clanger pointed out a few posts up.

So I found a freeware program called CPU Core Parking Manager 3 (just updated to v2.1.4.0) that allows me to adjust the cores' parking. And to adjust how the CPU governor scales. (So that the CPU comes up to speed faster.) The only downside I've found with the Manager is that it isn't reporting my top frequency correctly on my old AMD quad core. (It says 3.2 GHz, whereas everything else says 3.8 GHz.)

(As an aside, and as an engineer, while Core Parking sounds like a good idea to save energy, I have to wonder how CPU's handle it? I mean, if I have it right, the Cores talk to each other about who's going do what work, and there are things like in-chip caches that hold certain data for certain Cores. So when Windows, on its own, decides to park cores, it seems to me that the Processor has to shuffle things around all of a sudden so that the unparked Cores do all the work. And/or perhaps a thread fails in mid-process, and has to be redone? Would be better, I think, if the CPU itself parked Cores, not the OS.)
 
(I updated the Preset. I found that I had removed a few system fonts, and I found that some components were needed for PC Settings to work in the fly out menu.) FWIW, here is an edited Preset with my Removals for Win8.1.

Notice that there are no Updates in this Preset. That's because I had already run the OEM Win8.1 through NTLite to integrate a Service Stack Update. And then I ran it again to integrate about 100 Updates. SoI had pre-processed all Updates before beginning Removals.

The same for fonts, languages and keyboards. I had removed those earlier, so their removals don't show here.

Also, be advised that, in my Preset, I had to remove all the Storage Drivers so that my AMD RAID would install. So presumably you will want your Storage Driver left in. And of course, my hardware is different from your hardware.

So mostly it's the other removals that you might be interested in.

Some comments:

I left SMB v1 in, since it can be removed using Features. (And so added back if, for some reason, I "needed" it. (In quotes because Microsoft tells us not to use SMB v1 anymore.))

I also left Powershell 2.0 in, since, as I posted earlier in this thread, it's needed for the Win10 trick to install WMC. Powershell can also be removed using Features.(And so added back if I ever need it again for a whacky trick install of something.)

I left spaceport.inf in, although I found that most of us don't need it. But it bugged me to see the yellow question mark in Device Manager if you don't keep it. (It brings along a service too.)

I left in Ease of Use stuff, only because I wanted the High Contrast themes. (It turns out that Microsoft lets you adjust more parameters with High Contrast themes,so some people have made Win7 look alike themes that you can run and customize more than the standard themes.)

But it's easy enough simply to copy any High Contrast theme to Windows]Resources\Ease of Access Themes. If you keep Ease of Use in NTLite, then it forces you to keep all sorts of other Ease of Use stuff too. (Narrator, Magnifier, etc.)

I found that I had to keep Store in so that some of the GUI things in Win8.1 worked. I would rather not have Store. But that's the way it is for now.

Update: Speaking of Store, you'll notice I didn't remove any Store Apps. That's because the version of Win8.1 I used didn't have any. YMMV.
 
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pmikep said:
That's because the version of Win8.1 I used didn't have any. YMMV.
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hehehe :cool:

What i would do is compare the size of the store apps and powershell and see which one to keep. Use an edition that already has wmc because you can do serious damge with powersmell so wmc maybe safer to keep and an attacker cant do as much damage with it than with PS. Store apps are deads easy to take out and save over 500mb.
 
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I just checked on a clean install, my existing pagefile disable removes that smaller swapfile and my hibbernation works too, havnt had a problem yet. I restart after adding them and those space hogs are gonski.

IM currently working on installing programs without running the installers. Install and harvest any registry changes with RegFromApp, save, backup the programs folder. Combine and convert any reg file with Reg Converter, copy the programs folders from C:\Programs and run the bat file/restart. All working well sofar. Most stuff i got is either protable or can be run protable. Theres a few things that integrate into the shell like 7zip and unlocker, hashtab and mediatab so i need to "fake" install them.
 
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After installing Win8.1, I had gone into regedit and killed the Library entry at the top of Explorer. Then it came back, although at the bottom of the list, after installing KB updates. (That happens in Win7 too. But I just log into Admin and rerun a .reg that I use to remove Library from Win7.)

For this install of Win8.1, I didn't use "remove libraries.reg" like I had in Win7, 'cause I didn't know if it would work. Guess I'll try it now in a VM to see if it would have worked.

libraries in Win8.jpg
 
Have a look at Winaero Tweaker, it has tons of options that you can harvest with RegFromApp. If you foul up or something you didnt like there is a full reset option.
 
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