Ableton and Windows 8

[H20nly]

as most of the new stuff is simply geared towards touch-friendly devices..
I'm probably gonna stay on win7 until I get a touchscreen..

And for people who intend to get some touchscreen device it's good to know there's Windows8 and Windows8 RT which uses different kind of CPU and is NOT compatible with earlier Windows SW.
So when deciding which device to get makes sense to check the OS in case compatibility means something.

this is important.

Windows 8 RT is just iPad or Android mode for all intents and purposes. RT is useless IMO. let Apple and/or the Android blokes have their padlet niche... Windows 8 and/or Windows 8 Pro is a true operating system... the best of both worlds, without the finicky self serving limitations of phone/tablet OSes.

[arachnaut]

This is a long series of notes on my installation of Windows 8 Pro on Christmas Day 2012 up to the present.

I had Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit) and I did an in-place installation of Win 8 Pro from the upgrade DVD.

I ordered the free Media Pack upgrade during the install and added it when the key arrived.

Prior to the install I ran the upgrade advisor to see what I might need to change. The upgrade assistant was not very accurate, it claimed I needed to uninstall Guitar Rig 4 (but not Guitar Rig 3) and that was not actually necessary as I found out later. I also misinformed me about Perfect Disk 12.5.

12/25/2012
----------

Backup System
Make DVD catalog of Windows 8 DVD using Locate32 (in case I need to find files on the DVD later)
Start install at 7:00 AM
Installer requires uninstall of Acronis 2011, Bluetooth Suite, Intel Network Connections
and PerfectDisk 12.5.
Uninstall Perfect Disk, and so on..

The uninstall of Acronis tools required the use of the ATI Cleanup utility
which also required the uninstall of Acronis Disk Directory Suite. This was a
very labor-intensive process, and it required devcon.exe. Then it required a
fairly elaborate search and destroy of registry fields.
I also uninstalled Virtual Clone Drive.

After this I restarted and got a BlueScreen Stop 0x0000...007b crash.

Restored system with Acronis rescue DVD and tried again.

I find Acronis fltsrv.sys was still around after the various uninstalls and
cleanups so I searched carefully for the registry fields and cleaned them
up. Acronis software people should be ashamed of this barbaric, sadistic
uninstall process.

Ran CHKDSK on all drives after reboot.

Backed up System with Acronis 2013 bootable rescue DVD in case I needed to get back to this point again.

Now it is 12:33 PM on Christmas Day and I got the Win8 DVD in-place installer
to proceed. The installation went on without incident and completed at 1:45. I
see the new personalization stuff and so on... I am asked for the Wireless key
(apparently it got lost in the migration).

I see that one of my audio tools didn't migrate - LoopBe30 Internal MIDI ports, so I re-install it.
Run Windows Update
Set up account picture
Tweaked some stuff
Turned off content indexing on C: drive (Windows Search not needed on that drive).
Ran Chkdsk on all drives
Backed up system

Installed upgrades: Retrospect 8 and UltraEdit 18.20

12/26/2012
----------

Check out my account and Administrator account and decided things were OK to proceed
Ran Disk Cleanup to remove C:\Windows.old
CHKDSK /F /R C: (full disk check and bad block locator)

Intel IAStorDataMgr terminated with unhandled exception - disable it in Services
Went to Black Viper site to see what Win8 services I could disable - disabled several
Turned off some Windows Features: Telnet Client, Simple TCP Services, MSMQ server, WCF services, .NET 3.5
Fixed up some bad font issues

Run boot-time defrag of C: with PerfectDisk
Defrag Registry with PerfectRegistry
Update Perfect Registry
Run Driver Detective to look for new Windows 8 drivers
Driver Detective needs .Net 3.5 Framework so I add it back to Windows 8
Update Driver Detective
Update LatencyMonitor for audio checks
Run Driver Detective - it recommends NVIDIA 310.70 drivers so I install them

Restart

Uninstall old Windows 7 MS tools (freeing a ton of space):
MS Network Monitor
MS Visual Studio 2010
Debugging Tools for Windows 7
MS Silverlight SDK
MS SQL Server
MS Debugging Symbols
MS Win7 SDK Driver Kit
MS Performance Toolkit
MS Windows SDK 7.1

Restart

Run Perfect Registry
Clean up old Revo Uninstaller backups (they were for Windows 7)

Restart

Run Perfect Disk to defragment the system drive

Remove Windows Media Player - I don't use it and it is indexing all my sample libraries which are enormous
Set up Winamp as my media player

I can't run .bat files in my user login, but I can as Administrator.
I do a Google search for solutions and try some to no avail. But I find if
I rename the .bat files to .cmd they run OK, so I do that. I spent a lot of
time on this and finally gave up. Eventually I found the solution on the Windows 8 forum:
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/84 ... s-8-a.html

12/27/2012
----------

Install new JMB36X 1.17.65 driver based on Driver Detective advice
Updated KeePass
Logged in as Administrator and checked things out, tweak screen, etc.
Logged in as my user
Defragged disk
Backed up system with Acronis 2013.

12/28/2012
----------

Tested Retrospect 8. Things were not good. To make a long story short, I ended
up uninstalling it and re-installing. Had some problems with Intel IAStor driver
(RAID), probably due to new JMB driver. I don't use RAID so I uninstalled the
Intel RAID stuff. Re-install Retrospect 8.

Retrospect 8 InstaScan claims it needs interactive services and this system
does not allow it, so I disable InstaScan service. Clear out old Retrospect
backup sets and test the backup stuff. It complains about the new
swapfile.sys so I disable backing that up.

Update Logitech SetPoint for Keyboard and Mouse.

The SetPoint Tray Icon is supposed to show things like Caps Lock ON, but it
doesn't, so I disable the Tray Icon.

At this point, Windows 8 meets my approval. There is only one major issue left -
the Network drivers for WIFI are not available. I set up Driver Detective to
monitor for this, until then I will make do with whatever kludge is installed to
keep networking working. My Home network is set up as a public network and I
can't change any Network stuff until I get that fixed.

So now it is time to make a full system backup. I start with Retrospect backing
up on one 2TB drive, then I will do an image backup with Acronis to another 2TB
drive. The last time I did this the image backup was about 1.5TB, I hope it
still fits on a 2TB drive...

Start back up all my drives with new Retrospect 8 - this will take a while...

12/29/2012
----------

Retrospect backup still running... Event Viewer shows no errors or warnings so far.
While it is backup up, I write this log from my notes in case others may find it helpful.
To be continued...

12/30/2012
----------

I finished all my initial backups and consider the system stable.

I just need Win8 official drivers for my WiFi - none are available yet for any product as far as I can discover.

There are Beta releases, but I don't want that.

I'm really liking the many improvements in Win 8:
1) the copy progress graph with capacity to pause a big copy and resume later
2) built in ISO support - mount an ISO as a directory
3) all-in-one Task Manager
4) File History, Spaces, Library improvements,...

and I'm finding more as I go.

I still have not set up one of those APP accounts and I don't use the start screen for much.


01/07/2013
----------

I've not had many problems these last few days, so I tried to turn on the Apps and set up an email account, this was a disaster, and I described it here:
http://www.eightforums.com/user-account ... post171092

01/10/2013
----------


Now it is several weeks later and I've had lots of time to play with Windows 8. Here are some things I fixed or worked on:

I upgraded my keyboard and mouse because they did not have Windows 8 drivers! Go figure. That fixed the SetPoint problem.

The key for the Win8 Media Package arrived so I enabled that in Win8. That's makes my system display as 'Windows 8 Pro with Media Center'. I don't have a TV or any use for that so I will just let it be there for the future, I haven't even started Media Center yet.

I tried to enable the Microsoft email account, but I ran into problems outlined here:

http://www.eightforums.com/user-account ... count.html

I have not used any Windows 8 APPs yet and I unpinned them all from my start screen.

I added the Classic Shell to start up my system on the desktop and get me back the start button. I made a simple skin for it, described here:

http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewt ... ?f=17&t=17

I solved the Acronis 2013 problem, as outlined here:

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/38423#comment-121954

I tried to remove 8dot3 shortnames. The process was not successful, as outlined here:

http://www.eightforums.com/software-app ... moval.html

The only problem remaining is that I lack a proper Windows 8 driver for my WIFI USB adapter, but the Win 7 driver seems to work OK.

There are 2 errors I see in the Event list after a restart. One is a DHCP error probably due to the Win 7 WIFI driver. 'The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load' is due to the WUDF driver starting later manually. I'm going to ignore these for now.

A few boot drivers fail to load:
"The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) did not load:
dam
EhStorClass
JSWPSLWF"

dam is Desktop Activity Monitor - not needed for me
EhStorClass is for Extended IEEE 1667 Support - things like smart cards
JSWPSLWF is the Win 7 driver for my WIFI adapter, no Win8 drivers are available yet.

I keep checking the Netgear site for Win 8 drivers. There is a Beta available, but reports I've read about it are not encouraging. I downloaded it, maybe some day I'll try it out.

I've encounter zero problems with any audio application - Live 8 (32-bit), Live 9 BETA (64-bit), Sonar X1d and X2a (64-bit), NI Komplete, Omnisphere, Alchemy, Zebra, etc.

01/12/2013
----------

Just a heads-up to all you Chrome users.
There is a new version (24) just out today.

I upgraded from version 23 and after the relaunch or restart, I get constant browser crashes.
If I use the older version I get a bad profile message and have to re-create my whole profile again.
I tried to restore just the profile, then I got registration errors when I start Chrome 23.

Rather than continue to fight that, I just restored my C drive partition from yesterday and I'm back in business.

See this for more:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/# ... IguMNnQ7kJ

After I restored my system, Google Update ran again and updated Chrome again.
So I did another restore, and disabled the WIFI until I could install these counter-measures:

Google Update for Enterprise - Google Help
http://support.google.com/installer/bin ... wer=146164

Now its updates are disabled for good unless I let it proceed.

What a silly policy to have - silent auto-update by default, and an administration hassle to turn off.

1/15/2013
---------

Everything appears stable at the moment.

I get a few errors in the Event Viewer after a restart:

1) a DHCP error due to the Win 7 Netgear driver (but network works fine). This is due to the Netgear driver starting up slowly and not getting the network addresses ready for the rest of the startup.
2) a message from volmgr that a crash dump initialization failed - that's because my page file is on the D: drive.
3) a message about performance monitor counters not initializing properly - I haven't looked into that yet.
Message reads: The Open Procedure for service "ASP.NET" in DLL "C:\Windows\System32\aspnet_counters.dll" failed. Performance data for this service will not be available.

[arachnaut]

By the way, I forgot to mention that I just use the Windows 8 desktop, with the Classic Shell as Start Button replacement.
I have not used any Apps yet and have not seen any need to use the normal Windows 8 Start screen as I have no touch devices.
Although I find Windows 8 very comfortable now, I think I would advise anyone who is going to upgrade their older system to wait for Service Pack 1 for Windows 8, whenever that comes out. You may find it difficult to get drivers for older components.

[Forge.]

hat about sound drivers? I didn't see ASIO4all there, can you use on board sound without hideous latency?

or do you have another sound card?

[arachnaut]

hat about sound drivers? I didn't see ASIO4all there, can you use on board sound without hideous latency?

or do you have another sound card?

If you mean me, I use Saffire Pro 14. 48kHz, 256 samples. No problems.
I'm using the Saffire Win 8 drivers, Mixcontrol 3.1, and standard Windows Firewire driver.

I have not had any problems with any audio product in Win 8. The Saffire drivers were the only thing I had to upgrade.

[Forge.]

hat about sound drivers? I didn't see ASIO4all there, can you use on board sound without hideous latency?

or do you have another sound card?

If you mean me, I use Saffire Pro 14. 48kHz, 256 samples. No problems.
I'm using the Saffire Win 8 drivers, Mixcontrol 3.1, and standard Windows Firewire driver.

I have not had any problems with any audio product in Win 8. The Saffire drivers were the only thing I had to upgrade.

thanks. Have you tried the onboard sound at all? I'm really just wanting to know because pretty soon I will be making a new video series for Live 9 and will need to give people pointers on setting up audio interfaces. I have a mac, and I do have Win 7 on Boot camp, but the driver thing with that is a story of it's own. I really just need to know if my usual comment of "While I advise you to get a proper audio interface, you can use the onboard sound with decent latency with ASIO4all" or some such. I have found a couple of bits online saying it still works, but I was just looking for some real world Ableton examples.

[arachnaut]

No, I've disabled the motherboard audio in BIOS. I don't think I ever used it, even when I had Windows 7.

The Firewire unit uses an ASIO driver, but not ASIO4All, it's a Focusrite driver.

Here was the last latency check I made (in Windows 7, using Sonar). It appears to be slightly better in Windows 8, but 'dpclat' doesn't work in Win 8. The audio threads appear to be better spread about the 8 cores in Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, where Core 1 always seemed higher.

[3dot...]

I don't see any reason why Asio4all wouldn't work
Everything I've tried so far transferred fine from Win7...

[Forge.]

thanks.

well I just need to check really.

[arachnaut]

I just ran a LatencyMon run on Windows 8. Same setup as the previous. Here are the results:

[Quiggers]

windows are doing the tablet dance as every major OS has a desktop shared with tablet interface.
OsX with IOS
Android with linux (when will Live support this? Bitwig have promised)
Win8 with Win8rt

people expect all their devices to harmonize, and do account syncing,
windows is way behind in this regard and it is do or die time for them.

BTW, I'm predominantly a windows user but i dabble in Linux

[EricBuist]

Hi,

Switching from Windows 7 to Windows 8 was smooth. Startup time is a bit faster, task manager is better organized and the Explorer now has a ribbon like in MS Office 2007+. Metro is pretty useless in my opinion, but at least it is easy and quick to get out of it. There is nothing especially revolutionary in Windows 8, however.

Live 9 64 bits worked, but with some annoying glitches. First, it would not launch at all, doing absolutely nothing. Installing Live 8 aside of Live 9 fixed this for a time, then the launching problem came back. After many trial and errors, Live 9 got screwed up and Windows 8 was telling it could not execute tha application and to contact ehe application's supplier. I had to reinstall Live 9, then it works for now.

I need to set my display to 150% larger (increased DPI), otherwise fonts for many applications are too small and mouse pointer is tiny. Even largest Windows mouse pointer is too small for me (I am visually impaired). On Windows 7, this setup was working fine, but on Windows 8, as soon as I click some knobs or faders in the Live 9 Window (also tried in Live , the knob/fader crank to its maximum, the mouse point jumps away and nothing can move the knob/fader except if I do it with the keyboard (probably would work with a controller as well). I tried to change compatibility setting to disable scaling just for Live, but the option is grayed out, maybe for all 64 bits applications. I could not find any solution other than creating myself a secondary account with normal DPI setting and use that for Ableton Live. Fortunately, there is a builtin zoom in Live. But mouse pointer is too small in that setup, which makes the use of the program a bit annoying. At least it works and I would not roll back to Windows 7 for this.

Hope this helps.