In-Depth with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview
by Andrew Cunningham, Ryan Smith, Kristian Vättö & Jarred Walton on March 9, 2012 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Microsoft
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Windows 8
Refresh and Reset
One of Windows 8’s most appealing new features for enterprises is something Microsoft calls “refresh and reset.” It adds the ability to automatically roll a busted Windows install back to a pristine state. The “refresh” functionality rolls back changes to system files and installed desktop applications (unless you create your own recovery image; more on that in a minute) but preserves user data, and the “reset” functionality reverts Windows to its freshly-installed state. This is analogous to the appliance-like “reset” or “restore factory defaults” functions present in many smartphones, tablets, MP3 players, and other electronics capable of storing customized settings and user data.
Refresh and reset, accessible from the “General” section of the Metro settings and from the WinRE recovery menu, both use the same image-based technology used by Windows Setup to do their thing. Since Vista, Windows install media has included (1) a collection of files required to enabled booting from the media and (2) a large, monolithic .WIM image file that is uncompressed and copied to the hard drive during install—this contrasts with the setup process for Windows XP and earlier versions, which expanded and copied individual files from the install media to the hard drive. Microsoft also offers a number of tools (many included in the Windows ADK) to let end users and IT admins create their own, customized .WIM images, which can be used to deploy a custom Windows installation to many computers quickly.
So, to continue the Windows Setup analogy, “refreshing” the PC acts as an upgrade install, replacing the operating system while preserving user data. Metro-style apps will also be preserved, but installed desktop apps will be removed and a list of them will be placed on your desktop in HTML format for reference—Microsoft’s reasoning for this behavior is that malicious desktop apps are more likely to be the cause of serious problems than are Metro apps from the Windows Store’s “walled garden”.
“Resetting” the PC acts as a clean install that blows away all user data, especially useful if a PC is being repurposed or sold or otherwise transferred from one party to another. The reset option also gives you the option of erasing the hard drive securely so that sensitive data won’t be at risk.
Recimg: Creating Custom Recovery Images
There’s one more major component to the refresh feature, and it’s probably the most interesting one—using the Recimg command-line tool, users can create snapshots of their systems to use as the reference point for a refresh. These snapshots, which are really just the same .WIM images used by Windows Setup, will store settings, drivers, and both Metro and desktop applications, and can be created at any time and stored basically anywhere, including the Windows partition.
These recovery images can even be used to replace factory restore partitions—suppose that you buy a cheap Windows 8 PC, as many people will do, and it comes with the requisite sea of crapware and no recovery DVDs or USB sticks. Thanks to Recimg, you can uninstall that crapware, update drivers, install programs you actually want, capture an updated crapware-free image, and then delete the old recovery image/partition from your hard drive to save the space. Relatives who have broken their PCs can then use the recovery image to revert their PCs to an unbroken state without losing their personal data.
Sounds useful, right? Let’s talk a bit more about how to use recimg.
First, you’ll need to run the Command Prompt as an administrator—otherwise, Recimg won’t run. From here, you can launch recimg with one of five different switches:
- Recimg /createimage <directory> will create a new install.WIM image containing your installed drivers and programs to a directory you specify. The easiest way to do this is to store it on a local hard drive, but an external drive will also work as long as the external drive is plugged in when you initiate the refresh). The size of the .WIM file will vary based on what you’ve got installed, but images usually start at 3 or 4 GB and work their way up from there.
- Recimg /setcurrent <directory> will set the install.WIM image in the specified directory as the one Windows will use when refreshing your PC. If you run Recimg /createimage but don’t use /setcurrent afterward, Windows won’t know to use your image.
- Recimg /deregister will deregister the currently set recovery image. If a previously-created recovery image exists, Windows will revert to using it. If no image exists, Windows will ask for you to insert install media when you try to refresh the PC.
- Recimg /showcurrent tells you where your current recovery image is stored.
- Recimg /? tells you all of the stuff I just told you.
The primary downside of Recimg is that it can’t be used to reset a PC, only to refresh. My test PCs always asked me to insert Windows install media to use the reset functionality—OEM PCs that ship with Windows 8 may behave differently, but we’ll have to wait and see.
That aside, Recimg and the refresh/reset functionality do a solid job of making OS reinstallation a bit simpler—Windows Setup isn’t very hard now but it, combined with the challenge of reinstalling apps and drivers, has made reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows more of a pain than it needs to be.
Storage Spaces
Windows 8's new Storage Spaces functionality allows users to pool different physical drives together into one large logical drive, not unlike the now-discontinued Windows Home Server Drive Extender. You can pool drives connected by just about any common interface, including USB, SATA, and SAS.
Once you've created a storage pool using two or more drives, you can then set up one or more "spaces" that will be seen by the operating system as a logical drive which can be formatted, partitioned, and used just as a physical disk would be. To provide redundancy, you can either apply the "mirrored" attribute to your pool, which makes sure that a copy of every file in the pool is stored on at least two different physical drives, or the "parity" attribute, which uses some drive space to store redundancy information—in the event of drive failure, this information is used to rebuild your pool and enforce mirroring. Microsoft notes that while the two redundancy options are similar, the "parity" attribute is best used for large sequential files or less-frequently-accessed content, since it has a higher random I/O overhead. As with any redundancy technology, you'll give up maximum drive capacity in exchange for data integrity, so weigh your priorities carefully when you create your pool.
When creating a new Storage Space, you can specify a maximum size larger than the amount of available physical space—the system will prompt you when the storage pool needs more drives to work with. Microsoft calls this "thin provisioning," which means that drive capacity is only reserved as you store data to the drive rather than all at once. You can also expand the maximum size of the Storage Space at a later point if necessary. Creation of these spaces can be scripted using PowerShell.
My experience with Storage Spaces was a bit spotty—it didn't seem to want to recognize some of the USB sticks I plugged into my computer, and it wasn't clear why. It may be that there are some unspoken speed or hardware requirements that a couple of my drives just weren't meeting. Once I did get it working, though, it worked as designed—as you can see in the screenshot above, I unplugged one of the drives from the pool I had configured to simulate what would happen in the event of drive failure, and the redundancy features ensured that I was still able to access all files I had copied to the pool. One could then reconnect the drive or add a new one to the pool to restore redundancy.
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Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I work with applications like Maya, Photoshop etc. and find my productivity has not been effected at all in Windows 8. Most of the complaints about Windows 8 are grossly exaggerated, by users who cannot easily adapt to change. MS needed to do something big to insure relevance into the future, prepare for new hybrid devices, and entice a new generation of users, and for the most part every feature of the old start screen is still present. The desktop still exists, and explorer has more features than ever. Those "power" users would have probably been using the keyboard to activate and search through start menu, and now they still can, with same number of key presses (yes a context switch, but only for a second, or as quick as you can type and press enter).That said I'm hoping for a lot of tweaks that improve the features and direction MS are already going in - That's what I'm focusing on my attention on.
ananduser - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Fair review, impressed by Win8, don't care about GUI sensibilities, I never criticized any OS for subjective GUI peculiarities.Battery issues might also stem from lack of custom drivers that are the norm in laptop land. Anyway I might be wrong seeing as they should work in W8. Maybe they do but don't use W8's touted power saving features.
Why always bring the subject of OSX price vs Win's price ? OSX is an upgrade, it has a requirement that you detain the previous version. Win is sold as a stand alone product(upgrade options exist as well). Now, ever thought about "you get what you pay for"(mac fans always love this phrase) ? W8 will bring out of the box built in hypervisor, storage spaces and incredibly huge hardware support(among many others). Also you can virtualize W8 in any VM. OSX lacks all that and has less hardware support, in fact has hardware restrictions. Bottom line Windows costs more because IT IS WORTH MORE.
PS: Did you really need 2 imacs and a mba to test W8; one Apple PC wasn't enough ?
Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
"but there’s still no way to use a different wallpaper for each desktop, something that OS X has supported forever"Actually you can in Windows 8. Go into Personalize>Click Desktop Background>Then you can right click pictures, and say set as monitor 1, or 2
Braden99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
"but there’s still no way to use a different wallpaper for each desktop, something that OS X has supported forever"Actually you can in Windows 8. Go into Personalize>Click Desktop Background>Then you can right click pictures, and say set as monitor 1, or 2
superPC - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I see that most of you complains about the new start screen. well my father asked me to installed windows 8 on his laptop and he's much happier than he ever was with that laptop (it use to be a vista machine). it loads up in less than 40 seconds (not using SSD old core 2 duo machine with just 1 GB of RAM), shuts down in less than 30. it's super responsive and just plain fast (eventhough i've already installed all of his regular software suite). and he loves the new metro browser and apps. full screen apps looked lovely he said. he even likes metro because "it's more informative and searchable than the old start menus". honestly, windows is not aim at people like us the power user, it's aim at the rest of them: casual users. and if my dad, a 25 year veteran casual user of windows can live with metro than most of us obviously can too.p05esto - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
That's great that it's dumbed down, but my question is WHY are you here on anaddtech? This is a site for real computer users who don't want it dumbed down.MS needs to allow advanced users to turn all the Metro crap off and use the OS just for launching their development apps. We don't want ANY of the crap found on the start screen or the hidden corners or whatever. I don't understand why MS is removing all customizability, it's been getting worse ever since Vista. Even in Office, why force the stupid ribbon, why not let power users use regular menus? I don't get why they force everybody to follow the same strict path. How hard can it be to allow people to bypass the metro start screen and put back the start menu with all their apps?
Oh, and bring back the option to organize apps in the start menu into folders so I don't have to look through 50 apps to see all my graphic editing programs or video programs (I liked putting them into broad folders of apps). Win7 eliminated that possibility. And bring back the SMALL and condensed task menu of apps. In Win7/8 they use these large icons with too much space on the sides...why? I found a registry hack to make them smaller and compact, but why make the large and cumbersome task bar area thre default? It befuddles me.
smilingcrow - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
p05esto: “My question is WHY are you here on anaddtech? This is a site for real computer users who don't want it dumbed down.Oh, and bring back the option to organize apps in the start menu into folders so I don't have to look through 50 apps to see all my graphic editing programs or video programs (I liked putting them into broad folders of apps). Win7 eliminated that possibility.”
Win7 does allow you to organize your apps into folders on the start menu (after you click on All Programs) but it is not as simple as with previous versions. As you are a ‘real computer user’ I will allow you to find that info for yourself; which will be easy now that you know that it is possible which is the hardest info to get.
bigboxes - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Right-click task bar -> Properties -> Task bar tab -> check "Use small icons"freedom4556 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Most of the improvements your dad talked about could be attributable to simply clean re-installing an old Vista install and then running updates. The switch to seven would likely have had a similar effect on performance.Sabresiberian - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
An operating system, particularly one as ubiquitous as Windows, should appeal to ALL users, not just the lowest common denominator.There is a difference between making things easier to use for the non-technical person and dumbing down, and sometimes Microsoft loses sight of that.
Reading this article, I don't think Win 8 is necessarily "dumbed down" in it's interface, but I'm not entirely convinced. I do know, I'm not going to live with an OS that requires me to interface with it through big squares on a solid-color background.
I have a lot of trouble understanding why I would want to buy an "app" to begin with, since many of them seem to be nothing more than bookmarks. I seem to have been able to do without them for all the time I've used computers to now, I don't see why using a smart phone or tablet requires them, or even makes those devices better. I don't understand why we can't just have icons like the previous versions of Windows that we can touch to activate, if we want to activate them by touch and have the hardware capability.
This article has allayed some of my fears, and there is clearly enough reason to update from Vista to Win 8 on my next build, providing I can get rid of the yugly (yugly: you'-glee, as in "so ugly it's beyond ugly, it's yugly") interface. My second computer uses Win 7, and I'll have to be very impressed with Win 8 to switch from it when I rebuild a second computer.
Most people in the world that interface with computers are not technically inclined; many of them aren't all that capable in any case. It's good for these things to be easy enough to use that most everyone can use them, just please, please don't penalize ME in the process.
It will take a lot for me to give up DirectX, but I would do it, if it becomes necessary.
;)