Category Archives: Microsoft Windows 8.1

Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 9, Disable Help Tips in The New Interface

My time with Windows 8 was fun. I found numerous hacks to make the most of my experience. The most fun I had was with pressing Alt + F4 during Windows 8‘s psychedelic color-flipping welcome screen to skip it altogether. Now, In Windows 8.1, pressing Alt + F4 during the initial setup won’t do you […]

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KnowledgeBase: Important Issues in Windows 8.1 (Release Notes)

At the same time Microsoft released the Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 bits to TechNet and MSDN subscribers, they also released the Release Notes for Windows 8.1 on a page on the Microsoft Download Center. On this page you can a document (*.docx format) with the critical issues, that have currently been identified, […]

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 8, Start Screen App Pinning

As we discover more and more of Windows 8.1, it becomes clear this Windows Operating System has some tweaks to facilitate the adoption of it by end-users of Windows Operating Systems prior to Windows 8. In this series, I’ve already shown you how to force a specific Start Screen Layout. I’ve also shown you how […]

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 7, Managing Start Screen Theming Centrally

While I’ve covered the fixed Start Screen Layout feature in Windows 8.1 in the previous blogpost in this series, there’s even more control for administrators to make the Start Screen on Windows 8.1 devices uniform throughout the organization. Today, we’ll look at two more settings. We’ll look at forcing a specific Start Screen background and […]

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 6, Start Screen Layout Management

As part of the new Windows 8 Interface in large networking environments, Microsoft allowed for some customization of the Lock Screen, the Start Screen background and the Logon background. I’ve described these settings as part of my five must-have Group Policy settings to create an uniform look for your Windows 8 clients. Windows 8.1 allows […]

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 5, Managing SkyDrive

You can really tell Windows 8.1 was designed with tablet users in mind, since it offers a lot of new features specifically for people using Windows on these types of devices. One of the more intrusive features is the SkyDrive integration. SkyDrive allows users to store their files and settings in the Microsoft cloud and […]

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Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 now available to TechNet and MSDN Subscribers

While Microsoft announced TechNet and MSDN Subscribers would not receive access to Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 before October, the Release to Manufacturers (RTM) bits of these two Operating Systems can be downloaded by them today.

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 4, Automatic App Updates

In this series, I’m asking the questions to determine as an admin if your organization is ready to go to Windows 8.1. Today, I’m looking at the ability to automatically download and install updates for Windows 8 interface apps. One of the more prominent new features of Windows 8.1 for organizations. Automatic App Updates are […]

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 3, Return of the Start Button and Boot to Desktop

With the right hardware and enough time to plan the Windows 8.1 deployment within your organization, it’s time to start looking at the many new Windows 8.1 features you might (or might not) want to take advantage of with your organization. One much anticipated feature of Windows 8.1 by Windows 8 users is the return […]

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Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 2, The best hardware for the job

When your organization is running on PCs with Windows versions prior to Windows 8, you might want to look at new hardware to run Windows 8.1 on. While you can still run Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 on a 1GHz processor with 1GB RAM, the impact of running Windows 8 on underwhelming hardware to the […]

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