Microsoft Releases Windows 8 Developer Preview 266
New submitter Tonyd0311 writes "Microsoft has just released the Windows 8 Developer Preview in both x86 and x64 formats. The download includes an SDK for Metro-style apps, and 28 example apps. It also has 'developer preview' versions of Expression Blend 5 and Visual Studio 11 Express."
Too late (Score:2, Insightful)
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Really?
Our small group has developed a few mobile apps, and we've done well enough on markets that don't have Apple's huge user base. Building a reasonably decent app for us have sold well when ported to Palm's market. Though now it's all but dead, the windows market will make a lot of people a lot of money before critical mass lands. Pushing prejudice aside, and not taking into consideration some groups already considerable investment in the marketing strategies and loyal customer base for the iOS plat
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Really?
Yes, really.
the windows market will make a lot of people a lot of money before critical mass lands.
No, they won't. When Android was catching up to iOS no money was made by anyone until critical mass was reached. Most users on mobile platforms do not pay for any applications which makes critical mass very important.
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You are correct the android market is no where near a profitable venue for developers. I happen to use a great cross platform tool kit but refuse to even compile a copy for android. By the time I press the compile button and upload the apk to the market I have already wasted more time than it is worth.
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Win8 will also run on ARM; just not this preview release yet.
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incorrect.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4771/microsoft-build-windows-8-pre-beta-preview/1 [anandtech.com]
the window's 7 like desktop is only there for compatibility with programs not made for the metro ui. it provides only a task bar and desktop. the old start menu is gone. launching it will result in being kicked back to the metro ui. also on the right side of the desktop will be a metro ui panel.
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As it stands Windows 8 is still in its infancy. The build in Microsoftâ(TM)s demos is 1802, a pre-beta and not feature complete version of the OS. Microsoft needs to balance the need to show off Windows 8 to developers with a need to keep it under wraps until itâ(TM)s done as to not spook end-users. The result of that is the situation at BUILD, where Microsoft is focusing on finished features while unfinished features are either not in the OS or are going unmentioned. For comparison, at PDC 2008 the Windows 7 interface was not done yet, and Microsoft was using the Windows Vista interface in its place.
You shouldn't assume anything based on that beta preview. It's not complete and it's missing complete features, the ones being start menu. This beta is mostly for tablet manufacturers and app developers so they can start experiencing with the new Windows. When Windows 8 will be released, and most likely in the upcoming betas, it will have all the usual things in desktop too. Do you honestly think that Microsoft would abandon their largest market area, ie. business users for something that only works with ta
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Do you honestly think that Microsoft would abandon their largest market area, ie. business users for something that only works with tablets?
Yes, absolutely no chance that MS would inflict some random unintuitive user interface on their business users that completely discards well over a decade's worth of experience with the existing GUI, for no good reason except that it 'looks modern', and with no option to revert to a 'classic mode'. They'd never do anything that crazy!
http://blog.schauderhaft.de/2009/01/08/the-ribbon-sucks/ [schauderhaft.de]
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I was going to say Windows 7 as the ribbon, while a chore to relearn and definitely not as intuitive or informative as every previous version, isn't as bad as some have made out.
Windows 7 itself, on the other hand, is akin to Bob in usability. It's as if the programmers got together and said, "How can we make it more difficult for people to find what they need? How can we hide every usable function and feature by burying it in the most obscure and non-logical place? How many ways can we change what we've
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In other words, it's not a beta.
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Windows 8 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows 8 (Score:5, Funny)
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Ah, slashdot, giving a honest opinion about Microsoft's product
Don't blame us Slashdotters.
Your own marketing team is shooting you in the back because you didn't gratuitously say "Windows" often enough. Windows.
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Shockingly, I expect they do. However, I expect that "North Korea" is a plain old troll.
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And do you know what kind of things they do, then?
Things like http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/08/30/0627206/Microsoft-Wants-Your-Feedback-On-Its-New-Python-IDE [slashdot.org] .
And do you know what Slashdotters do in return?
Act like children.
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It simply couldn't have anything to do with your past trolling history.
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Oh, what did he do in the past?
Say other positive things about Microsoft?
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Joke aside I spun the preveiw up in a VM and it wouldn't install. But that might be me messing up virtualbox...
You have to set the vm default setting to 'Windows 7', that could be why it's not installing.
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There is no real difference between people devoted to creationism and the Linux devotees. Really. It is religion. It is sad.
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I tested it earlier today and I think it looks great. The boot time is insanely fast, the metro UI is better than I thought and you can still easily change to the normal Windows shell.
I found that too, the interface will take a bit of getting used to if you wanted to use metro with a mouse and keyboard but i found just jumping to the desktop view for desktop apps was fast and fluid. I'd like to try it on touch hardware.
On a side note why is parent modded troll?
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How long does it take you to get to the normal windows shell?
Is it loading the full OS or just enough to run Metro apps?
Whew! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was starting to worry that we'd have to go a whole 12 hours before we got another Windows 8 story.
Re:Whew! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whew! (Score:4, Funny)
Did you guys hear that Windows 8 will have a Bitcoin mining application built into it? You can also refinance your mortgage and buy Uggs boots.
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Given that there are two more days of BUILD, you'll probably see more of this.
I predict the next story will be about the windows app store [twitter.com] policies [neowin.net].
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Yes, can we please go back to the daily cycle of Linux, Google, piracy, and random gadget stories? Two stories about a major overhaul of the most popular desktop operating system in the world is way too much.
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Seriously? Why do you bother coming here at all? Windows 8 is the hot topic at the moment because these last 2 weeks there have been movement at the OS that could potentially make up more than half of all computer OSes (or won't if you believe the Slashdot comments or your own eyes). This is how News works. Something happens, it is reported on, often this generates hype for a few consecutive weeks, and then the stories drift off in the ether until the next major milestone.
Don't like geek news? Don't read it
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Seriously?
Uh, no.
This is Slashdot. We make fun of Slashdot here. Don't get your panties in a bunch over a perceived slight to your favorite software.
Time-out? (Score:2)
Can anyone inform what the time period on this is? 128 days?
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That should be cracked soon. Give the guys 5 more minutes and it should be on all the torrent sites.
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It doesn't have activation, so there's nothing to crack, really. No point torrenting it, either, since you can just download directly from MS (serviced by Akamai, I believe).
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Windows? Buggy?
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It's probably buggy
Microsoft labels this release as pre-beta, after test driving it for about six hours (non-continuous), "probably," would be a ghastly understatement of the OS' current state.
Re:Time-out? (Score:4, Informative)
It will expire on 3/11/2012. So 6 months, as usual for Windows pre-releases.
To be fair to MS (Score:5, Interesting)
They at least are showing there is more than one way to develop a touch-enabled and touch-optimised smartphone. I'm on the fence as to whether it's the correct UI for the desktop, but anything that makes life simpler for the few relatives still holding out and not going Mac is a boon to me.
Redmond definitely didn't "photocopy" this UI, and I like the look of it - fresh, well thought out, and novel. You're not taking away my iPhone just yet, though :)
Simon
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Well, Microsoft has been doing tablet PCs since Windows 3.0 so they do have some experience...
Doing it wrong for 20 years is nothing to brag about.
Win8: way better than expected (Score:3)
So, in June the marketing guy says to me "you should go to the Microsoft dev conference this year", and mind you this is one week after I've finally cut over to Linux as my primary OS.
Well. as I sit here reading Slashdot on my free Samsung win8 tablet, I have to say I'm impressed. This thing may not be an iPad but it sure is better than the android tab I brought with me!
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There's nothing wrong with a netbook if what you want is a netbook. A tablet is something a tad different.
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Well. as I sit here reading Slashdot on my free Samsung win8 tablet
Not win8. They're called W-Eights, and for very good reason...
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"Metro." They did this before. (Score:3)
I remember back when this "Metro" was called "active desktop". Your family members would gunk up their desktops with a dozen widgets, then go hunting for more until their system was useless. On my own system, it has always been one of the first things I disable, as it serves no real purpose, and complicates the use of traditional applications in various 'interesting' ways.
Windows cannot be simply limited to an app store, so half the banner ads on popular websites will quickly become devoted towards offering persistent applications on your system - also known as spyware - now tailored to fit into a giant box in the center of your screen.
I don't need my icons to take up 1/16th of my screen - it's a rather bad use of what I'd like to be productive time. Even with various media-consumption pads and consoles, I find it a horrible design to limit my view to a random assortment of large candy boxes.
And I really, REALLY don't think this heralds any positive new era of application development. A whole new layer of specialized docking, with its own special UI process, making cross-platform work that much more of a mess... I don't mind the learning the complexity, it's just the reasons for the added workload seem to be more to feed Marketing than actually accomplish something meaningful, which always holds some existential angst.
Ryan Fenton
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Active Desktop was way ahead of its time. These days the active desktop system would work rather well.
Re:"Metro." They did this before. (Score:4, Interesting)
This think of this as a good thing. All native desktop environments are going to the big harry fad of tablet computing. WHEN the fad fizzles out and people stop buying consumption devices and companies realize that they have to to start making -productivity- tools again, their desktop platforms will be dead and anyone developing interesting and usable UI systems will be doing so on the web instead.
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Oh, the irony. Do you know what Active Desktop is called today?
KDE Plasma Desktop.
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So don't install those apps.
Anything else I can help you with?
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You don't need icons to take up 1/16th of your desktop; however I think if I spent more than a few seconds, I could dig up several studies that 90% of consumers use less than 8 applications on a daily basis (internet, facebook, twitter, email, instant messaging, word, excel, calculator - or similar! take your pick!).
Win8's metro/active desktop won't be for the power user, but this is definitely the direction things are going to head for consumer laptop/netbook/tablets in the future. This is the appl
Productive time?.. (Score:2)
I don't need my icons to take up 1/16th of my screen - it's a rather bad use of what I'd like to be productive time.
Ehem.. you talk of productive time... and you are reading slashdot? Worse... you are commenting as well!..
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I remember when disabling Active Desktop freed up 16MB of my 32MB of RAM.
Yeah, except it wasn't (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe if you got your head out of MS fanboy land for a while you would have noticed that the general opinion about KDE4, Gnome 3 and Unity is NEGATIVE on slashdot. There was no praise and now that even the old stable desktop gnome has gone there is a lot of protest.
So your idea of funny is that people who protest about useless gunk on Linux desktops also complain about useless gunk on the Windows desktop...
Don't quit your day job to do standup... oh you don't have a day job. Funny that.
Walled garden (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad software made for Windows 8's default "Metro" interface will only be available through Microsoft's App Store [geekwire.com]. Win32 programs will still be available from other sources, but Metro apps will not.
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I count that as a feature. Let's keep all that crap together in one place so it's easy to avoid.
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This community is so out of touch. It's not 1998 anymore. It's okay to stop personally hating "M$".
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No, it's not.
Even if Microsoft, against all expectations, produced a usable OS, it still must be destroyed, because Microsoft always cuts off all possible directions of progress unless Microsoft is in full control of them.
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s/Microsoft/Apple/g
FTFY
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First and foremost, Microsoft is not entitled to anything -- neither "selling shit", nor being immune to other people's hostility toward it. If it seeks to destroys whole areas and branches of software development, it's everyone's right to defend those areas against those attacks.
Second, Microsoft seeks power over users, and the whole free software movement is against giving such power to anyone, least of all notorious abusers such as Microsoft. Deal with it.
Third, Microsoft's actions are nowhere close to o
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and your point is what exactly? other than that you're an anonymous idiot, which isn't even signal, just repetition of a well-known fact?
and how does wanting to make profit equal wanting to dominate the market? that's the problem, you see, they don't just want to sell us stuff period, they want MOAR.
you can mock all you want, but the fact is, when you're the host, cancer you don't cut out gets the last laugh, just before it dies in a puddle of "stupid long-term model".
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Vista.
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oh really? and what, exactly, changed? feel free to roll over, but you'll need arguments if you want to convince people with half a brain of following in your lack of footsteps.
Swipe in from the right (Score:2)
You swipe in from the right to get a "start" menu.
How is that intuitive?
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On a tablet, you'd actually just click the physical "Home" button to do that, same as iPad. On a laptop or a desktop, you'd move the mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen, or press the "Windows" button on the keyboard.
You can do it through the swipe-from-right "charms" menu mainly because it is easier to do so when you're holding the tablet in landscape and operating it with thumbs, but it's not the sole way to do this.
I wonder how many downloads they from Linux users (Score:2)
I wonder how many downloads they from Linux users.
Is it too much to hope for a Slashdot-effect and then mail Microsoft and ask them for the stats?
Just a thought.
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Trying to slashdot Akamai would be a bold attempt, but rather futile.
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I've sshed in to my home server from work, and used wget to download the iso. I certainly couldn't do the same task remotely by command line using a windows system, and work would frown on me downloading a 5 gig iso using their network.
I'll run it in a vm to take a look, but I doubt there will be anything interesting enough to move me from linux
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x86? (Score:2)
You would have a hard time finding a new PC today that ships with Windows 7 32-bit (and isn't the 32-bit-only Starter edition). Why not drop it and make all our lives easier? Legacy systems can use Windows 7 or VMs.
X86 ... (Score:2)
REALLY?
When Win 7 should have been x64 only, they tell me Win 8 will be x86 too? Gahhhh, why won't they drop x86 already?
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Gahhhh, why won't they drop x86 already?
For much the same reason that Linux is still available for DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, S390, etc. Granted, it doesn't make business sense for Microsoft to support that many architectures, but barring it being prohibitively difficult to design which I imagine it is not, maintaining support for the x86-only community is likely to increase sales to those who wouldn't otherwise be able to upgrade.
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Physical Address Extensions.
Microsoft don't support it in desktop windows and probably can't because of crappy old drivers that fall over if it's enabled. And it's a horrible kludge anyway.
Of course the push for ARM will further delay the appearance of 64-bit Windows programs because developers won't want to be developing for 64-bit Windows and then find it falls over when they recompile for 32-bit ARM because someone did something stupid.
Desktop PCs (Score:3)
Words fail to describe how truly and completely awful the interface, task switching and metro UI are for normal Desktop PC usage.
If I hit Search, I want my regular search box, one click away from the app I was already using. I do *NOT* want to then after searching, have to click START to return to the metro UI, then DESKTOP to bring up the Windows desktop, then click my program to get back to where I was. Nor do I want to hit the Application Scroller button and rotate through to the correct application. Might be great on a tablet PC where you can just "hold a finger down" and bring up a task list (no idea if you can, just presuming they'll follow something Mac-like in that regard). But on a desktop, this is truly hideous.
If the interactions I've experienced in testing so far even remotely resemble the end-product, I'll be giving Windows 8 a miss. In that case, if Windows 9 is similar too, I'll finally be forced to kick the Windows habit I've had for 15-odd years.
... and the hype for Windows 8 has begun ... (Score:3)
.
It is going to be Windows 8 all the time here.
The problem is that Microsoft software always looks best before the official release. What we see of Windows 8 before the launch will be carefully orchestrated and controlled by Microsoft. Even Windows Vista looked good before the launch.
Think about it....
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.
Sometimes.
"Always looks best before the official release" is just insane. Have you ever installed a beta in your life?
Many, many times. But I was not talking about actually using the product, I was talking about the perception created about the product by Microsoft's extensive grass-roots efforts. Just look at the unabashed gushing that is already occurring here over Windows 8. It's Windows, for Pete's sake, not the Second Coming. How can the actual released version of
Microsoft,why the Metro UI as default on desktops? (Score:2)
Is it sooo difficult to have the Metro UI on tablets and the classic UI on desktops? As a desktop user, I am not going to run Metro apps, because the mouse works better than touch in most cases.
So why do you have the Metro UI as the default for desktops? it doesn't make sense.
running in a linux vm? (Score:2)
Has anyone had any success running this in a linux vm?
I downloaded the 64-bit version, but my attempts to run it in qemu[*] don't yield happiness ... it gets as far as writing "Window Developer Release" or something on the graphics screen, and then after a while it starts puking out weird messages (some numeric codes, and a message "you must reboot; hit the hardware reset key") in a loop and then reboots.
__________
[*] qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu core2duo -m 2048 -hda qemu-hda.disk -cdrom WinwsDeveloperPrevi
How do you keyboard-navigate the Metro Start page? (Score:2)
The Metro style UI is definitely optimized for a mouse and for touch screens. Does anyone know how to navigate the Metro Start page using a keyboard?
Intuitively, I figured that you could just use the arrow keys to move around, but they do nothing.
Tablet interface (Score:3)
The move towards tablet-style interfaces as a default makes me cringe. And seriously, the shut down option being hidden by default? C'mon, GNOME devs.
Oh, wait? Were you guys talking about Windows 8?
Re:The real question is (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. [microsoft.com]
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The answer is ... (Score:3)
yes. [tinypic.com]
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Shouldn't there be an ARM format for WP8, or does MS expect phone vendors to use Atoms or Nanos for their phones?
Win8 will run on ARM, but this particular developer preview only comes in x86 and x64 editions.
(there's no WP8, so far at least)
I recall reading somewhere that they wanted a 64-bit CPU
You will need to install the 64-bit version of this if you want to play with developer tools (SDK, Visual Studio, Expression, SDK). The OS itself does not require 64 bits.
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Do you expect them to randomly have kernels for whatever ARM device you might have? All of the clunky "niceties" that we have on x86 that allow generic Linux and Windows kernels to install on pretty much any PC don't exist in the ARM world, so there's no point in posting ARM binaries unless it's in the form of a flashable image for a target device.
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ever hear of cpu architecture? as long as the binary's are built against arm v7 which the latest arm chips can run it will run on any device. also the chips come with a standard powervr gpu(except nvidia's tegra) so again drivers will be much simpler then x86/x86-64.
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It is unlikely that Win8 for ARM will be available for purchase or download (ever). ARM is a CPU, it isn't a platform spec. This means that the OS (drivers and stuff) must be modified specifically for each tabled/mobile vendors hardware. If ARM ever becomes a standardized platform, that might change. Until then, the only way to get Win8 on ARM will probably be to purchase an ARM device with Win8 pre-installed. This probably also means that you will have to depend on your vendor for OS updates. A little like
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MIPS is huge in many embedded fields. It dominates the wifi router space, for instance.
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You are right; 2012 will definitely be the Year of Linux on the Desktop(tm) because Windows 8 comes with a new Start menu.
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2000 = the fucking best, but you forgot that
XP = crap, its 2K with a vomit theme and fucking stupid wizards to wipe your ass every time you click something, and when it first came out it was the cumdumpster of all hackers, yea you could send a pop up message box to anyone on the internet, took years to unfuck, SP2 is when it started to be respectable but still ran like a dead dog compared to 2k
So much agree. I don't know why even in Slashdot XP is often praised while forgetting that it was basically just 2K with extra bloat, bugs and security risks. I was a Linux man all the time of XP as it sucked so much.
In my bag, 2000 and 7 are the solid ones, others pretty much crap.
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It was a combination of having SP1 and a setting registry key, EnableBigLBA, that you needed. I don't know why it was so important to correct you, I'm a pedant, sorry.