Updating to windows 8.1 heads up

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I saw a recent post saying that updating windows 8 to windows 8.1 caused some difficulties booting opensuse afterwards - so I am posting details of the problems that I had, in case it helps others.

I am running opensuse 13.1 rc1 and firstly backed up my data. My system also has windows 8 with a uefi set-up with a number of separate data partitions. The update to windows 8.1 creates an additional recovery partition (some sort of roll back facility I assume)) which bumps up the other partitions so for example sda3 becomes sda4. If you leave you opensuse system to automount the windows partitions - it goes a bit wappy after updating windows to 8.1.

I would recommend that before updating to 8.1 the windows partitions are not set to automount. Once the windows update has been completed then just change the opensuse settings to automount the newly numbered windows partitions as required.

2

On 2013-10-22 21:46, dth2 wrote:

> other partitions so for example sda3 becomes sda4. If you leave you
> opensuse system to automount the windows partitions - it goes a bit
> wappy after updating windows to 8.1.

Which does not happen if you mount by-label, for instance.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

3

On Tue 22 Oct 2013 07:46:02 PM CDT, dth2 wrote:

I saw a recent post saying that updating windows 8 to windows 8.1 caused
some difficulties booting opensuse afterwards - so I am posting details
of the problems that I had, in case it helps others.

I am running opensuse 13.1 rc1 and firstly backed up my data. My system
also has windows 8 with a uefi set-up with a number of separate data
partitions. The update to windows 8.1 creates an additional recovery
partition (some sort of roll back facility I assume)) which bumps up the
other partitions so for example sda3 becomes sda4. If you leave you
opensuse system to automount the windows partitions - it goes a bit
wappy after updating windows to 8.1.

I would recommend that before updating to 8.1 the windows partitions are
not set to automount. Once the windows update has been completed then
just change the opensuse settings to automount the newly numbered
windows partitions as required.

Hi
I gave up and wiped windows 8 from my system, I never used it as it was
only to try out secure dual boot. I do note that the /windows/winsxs
directory is like btrfs snapshots, but at least I can delete snapshots.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 11 SP3 (x86_64) GNOME 2.28.0 Kernel 3.0.93-0.8-default
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4

Interesting. Thanks.

In my case, opensuse is on a separate physical disk, so I probably will avoid those problems. I don’t auto-mount the Windows partition.

The suggestion then would be, after the Windows update, boot from a live CD or DVD or USB (could be the rescue media). Then edit “/etc/fstab” after manually mounting your main root filesystem.

It might also require rebuilding grub.cfg, which can be tedious. Perhaps hand editing “grub.cfg” will suffice to get the system booted, then regenerate it once it is booted. I’m not sure whether a “mkinitrd” would also be required – that might depend on the configuration.

5

I upgraded Windows from 8 to 8.1 on two different machines, but didn’t face this problem. :expressionless:
The only minor issue was that Windows put it’s own bootloader on top of the boot order list (it became the first active entry in the boot menu of the UEFI firmware). :
In both cases, though, I was able to easily change the boot order from the UEFI firmware itself.

6

dth2 wrote:

> I am running opensuse 13.1 rc1 and firstly backed up my data. My system
> also has windows 8 with a uefi set-up with a number of separate data
> partitions. The update to windows 8.1 creates an additional recovery
> partition (some sort of roll back facility I assume)) which bumps up the
> other partitions so for example sda3 becomes sda4. If you leave you
> opensuse system to automount the windows partitions - it goes a bit
> wappy after updating windows to 8.1.
>

I have an HP box with a GPT disk and this is not a problem. I did some
checking and GPT specifies that the order is maintained regardless of the
order of partition creation. On mine, I opened up a block of memory between
Windows and my existing openSUSE installations. I got the same “recovery”
partition during the 8.1 update and even created 2 new partitions in which
to test 13.1. parted now shows the physical oder on the disk as 1, 2, 3, 4,
5,12,13,6,7,8,9,10,11 where the orignianl order was 1-11 - just what the GPT
docs specify. That’s +1 for GPT over MBR legacy partioning.

–
Will Honea

7

I updated to Win 8.1. It was a mistake. I am already regretting.

It would not allow me to login, unless I first create a Windows account. And apparently, I am supposed to login to the box using that Windows account in the future.

I have no interest in having a Windows account. At one time, I had a microsoft account and they had my email address. And I regularly received unwanted email. I have no interest in repeating that.

While in the screen for creating a windows account, there seemed to be no escape. There was no way that I could find to reboot. CTRL-ALT-DEL did not do anything.

I just powered the **** thing off, in frustration.

I guess my choices are:

  1. Give in, and create an unwanted windows account;
  2. Restore Win 8 from the last backup;
  3. Just delete all of the **** and make this a linux only box.

My inclination is toward 3. I don’t like Win8 anyway, and only kept it to learn first had the problems of dual-booting Win8 and opensuse.

Yes, it did create a new partition.

Here’s the partition table before installing 8.1 (using “gdisk -l /dev/sda”):


Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         1026047   500.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   2         1026048         1107967   40.0 MiB    FFFF  Basic data partition
   3         1107968         1370111   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved part
   4         1370112         2394111   500.0 MiB   2700  Basic data partition
   5         2394112       973574143   463.1 GiB   0700  Basic data partition
   6      1926782976      1953523119   12.8 GiB    2700  Microsoft recovery part

And here’s the partition table after the install:


Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         1026047   500.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   2         1026048         1107967   40.0 MiB    FFFF  Basic data partition
   3         1107968         1370111   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved part
   4         1370112         2394111   500.0 MiB   2700  Basic data partition
   5         2394112       972857343   462.8 GiB   0700  Basic data partition
   6       972857344       973574143   350.0 MiB   2700  
   7      1926782976      1953523119   12.8 GiB    2700  Microsoft recovery part

As you can see, they split of a 350M portion from the end of partition 5 (the main Win8 partition), and made that into partition 6. The old partition 6 now became partition 7.

This did not affect my opensuse installation, which is on a separate physical disk. The boot order was changed to favor Windows, but that was easy enough to change back.

8

By default grub2 will search for partition by filesystem UUID. So it should continue to work. Of course numbers will be different and it will be confusing.

Where it can bite - if you use something like /dev/sda2 as your boot device (i.e. where core.img is located). That would make next attempt to grub-install to fail.

9

Just what I’m thinking
I never use mine either. It sucks anyway.

10

I booted into Windows again, to have another try at getting around that problem.

It apparently did not like my having powered it off. So it restored to the previous Windows 8 (without even asking if I agreed).

That was easier than restoring from a backup, so I will just leave it that way.

The additional partition created for 8.1 is still there. It did not undo that part.

11

It is not necessary to own a Windows account to use Windows 8.1.
It’s possible to use a local account: when you access the first time you are presented with that option, although I have to say that it’s not easily visible. You can ever change the way you access the OS via the account menu. I switched from local to Windows account and viceversa.
In my opinion, the outlook.com site is not bad, though. I use it regularly and never had privacy related problems.

12 
It would not allow me to login, unless I first create a Windows account.   And apparently, I am supposed to login to the box using that Windows  account in the future.

I came across the same problem but if click to create a ms account there is option to log on using the local settings

13

nrickert wrote:

>
> nrickert;2593097 Wrote:
>> I updated to Win 8.1. It was a mistake. I am already regretting.
>>
>> …
>>
>> I just powered the **** thing off, in frustration.
>
> I booted into Windows again, to have another try at getting around that
> problem.
>
> It apparently did not like my having powered it off. So it restored to
> the previous Windows 8 (without even asking if I agreed).
>
> That was easier than restoring from a backup, so I will just leave it
> that way.
>
> The additional partition created for 8.1 is still there. It did not
> undo that part.
>

Somewhere, don’t ask me how to get to it, there is a a menu item to remove
excess backups. It’s buried in some location with other administrative
tools and I happened to stumble onto it. I removes all but the last 2
restore points, AIR. At least that’s what it did for me.

I did find a use for W8 here. Something in 13.1 is playing games with the
wireless adapter. Lsusb identifies it as “Ralink corp. RT3290 Wireless
802.11n 1T/1R PCIe”, the system uses “rt2800pci” as the driver. After a
cold start or boot to W8, all is fine but after booting 13.1 it may or may
not work - or even be seen as a network device - by NetworkManager. The
only way to get it to work again is to either shut down or boot to W8.
Somewhere there is a feature of the chipset not being properly handled

Years back, I set up a yahoo email account. I use that as a catch-all
account and check it once in a while. The rest of the info I gave MS was
appropriate to their current cloud focus: blue sky only. Others I know have
a “black hole” email server - it’s write only :wink:

–
Will Honea

14

Thanks. If I try that again, I’ll look there.

By the way, use “QUOTE” tags for quoting, not “HTML” tags.

15

Yes, I could have done something like that. I did not want to.

When I got an Android phone, I created a gmail account.
If this had been a Windows phone, perhaps I would not have been bothered by having a Windows account for cloud backup.

For a desktop computer, it seemed unreasonable to require that I have a Windows account.

16

The functionality of windows-8.1 creating an additional recovery partition is not appealing to me.

On my 256GB SD drive (on my Ultrabook which dual boots windows-8 and openSUSE) I shrunk the windows-8.1 ‘c’ drive to ~65GB and kept the OEM windows ~10 GB recovery partition. openSUSE pretty much has the remainder (with the exception of a few other small partitions, such as the EFI).

The idea of windows-8 either (1) reducing its own c: drive or (2) stealing space from the openSUSE partitions, is not appealing to me.

The mean reasons I kept MS-Windows on this PC were:
(1) provided a boot that I know functions with the EFI/GPT on the Ultrabook’s hardware (and subsequently I have proven openSUSE also works on same)
(2) provide an OS which is easy to use if a BIOS update comes along (as there is no GNU/Linux, nor DOS, support for updating the BIOS on this Ultrabook).
(3) since the OS is paid for as OEM, provide a comparison OS for assessing potential hardware hiccups (not a strong requirement)
(4) provide a Windows OS to run an MS-Windows application provided by the place where I work (which I need to use for work), which only runs in Windows (does not run in wine, albeit it does run in WinXP inside Virtual Box). The other two windows apps I occasionally use (VirtualDub and autostitch) all run ok under ‘wine’.

I suspect I will ponder the availability of 8.1 for many months before I attempt a windows-8.1 update, if at all. Given I don’t use Windows nominally (other than the one custom office app which can also run in a Virtual session) I’ll likely stick with windows-8 (primarily to retain the capability to maintain the BIOS).

17

I agree, but it’s needed only if you want to automatically interact with the Microsoft cloud applications: mail, calendar, contacts, skydrive, onenote and so on (now based on outlook.com).
Otherwise, it’s possible to use a local account without having a Microsoft one…

18

I’m pretty sure it is not going to steal space from an opensuse partition.

If you look at the gdisk output in my comment #7 above, you will see that there is a big chunk of unallocated space. The 8.1 update did not try to use some of that.

I expect that it will either take space from the end of your main Windows partition, or it will complain that your main Windows partition is too small.

For myself - I’ll seriously consider deleting windows entirely. I don’t actually have a use for it.

Your point about BIOS updates is interesting. I currently have BIOS version A09 from Dell. Before trying the Windows 8.1 upgrade, I applied the Dell A10 BIOS update. It froze the system, and left the old BIOS version in place (after a power off and reboot). That looked like a Windows bug. The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), as I recall, contains a bootable version of DOS (open DOS), which could probably be used to apply a BIOS update. Dell, and some other manufacturers, usually make their BIOS upgrades runnable from DOS as well as from Windows.

19

On Thu 24 Oct 2013 01:16:03 PM CDT, nrickert wrote:

oldcpu;2593202 Wrote:
> The idea of windows-8 either (1) reducing its own c: drive or (2)
> stealing space from the openSUSE partitions, is not appealing to me.

I’m pretty sure it is not going to steal space from an opensuse
partition.

If you look at the gdisk output in my comment #7 above, you will see
that there is a big chunk of unallocated space. The 8.1 update did not
try to use some of that.

I expect that it will either take space from the end of your main
Windows partition, or it will complain that your main Windows partition
is too small.

For myself - I’ll seriously consider deleting windows entirely. I don’t
actually have a use for it.

Your point about BIOS updates is interesting. I currently have BIOS
version A09 from Dell. Before trying the Windows 8.1 upgrade, I applied
the Dell A10 BIOS update. It froze the system, and left the old BIOS
version in place (after a power off and reboot). That looked like a
Windows bug. The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), as I recall, contains a
bootable version of DOS (open DOS), which could probably be used to
apply a BIOS update. Dell, and some other manufacturers, usually make
their BIOS upgrades runnable from DOS as well as from Windows.

Hi
For my HP systems, BIOS updates are done via UEFI. Just label a USB
device HP_TOOLS, use cabextract on the exe file and copy the
files/structure over and on power-on it detects the labeled device and
performs the actions required.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 11 SP3 (x86_64) GNOME 2.28.0 Kernel 3.0.93-0.8-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!