Windows 8 problems.

[SomeRandom778]

Hi all,

I'm having a couple of problems with my PC after upgrading to Windows 8:

1: After upgrading my PC to Windows 8 I noticed that system info, and windows activation don't seem to agree on the activation state of my copy of windows (picture attached) , is this going to be problematic in the future? and is there a known way to fix this issue?

2: When I click the "Shut Down" button in Windows, everything seems to shut down OK, but when i turn my PC back on, it says "Resuming from Hibernation" even when i clearly clicked shut down, so in order to access the BIOS on start up i have to turn off my PC by unplugging it from the wall so it will start up properly. Is this likely to be a something within Windows, or a setting somewhere in the BIOS?

My system config:

ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP

Intel i5 3550

AMD HD7850

OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD

WD 1TB Blue

Any help would be much appreciated :)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n3673[/ATTACH]

[Samdb]

Whenever you tell Windows 8 to shutdown it goes to sleep. This allows for faster boot times. If you want to shut it down so you can access the BIOS you will need to create a shortcut which will allow you to shut down the computer, however this takes longer to shut down and boot up compared to doing it the way described before.

[GoodBytes]

Oh boy.. not this bug again... I guess Microsoft didn't fix it since Windows 7. For some reason, the upgrade process of Windows screwed something up. Which is strange, because since Win7, the upgrade process really just clean install Windows, and transfer user level registry items from the old Windows to the new, so that programs are properly registered to the system.

Now this is just my personal guess on the reason why this occured, I could be 100% wrong, so don't quote me on this: Perhaps you use a regsitry cleaner on the previous version of Windows and it deleted important relationship between registry items, which the installed got confused and screw up during the upgrade process. You possibly had a rootkit level DRM installed on your system. Or possibly you forgot to uninstall your security software (Anti-virus) before upgrading, and that screwed up the process.

I don't know if it will cause a problem later one.. people, with WIn7, simply backup their stuff, and wipe clean, and re-install Windows 7.. well in your case Windows 8.

As for the shutdown process, something is screwed up. It is normal that Windows 8 (its a new feature) partially hibernate itself (hibernates unchanged drivers, Windows core, basically all that doesn't normally change on a day to day basis), for much faster startup. But for some reason your system detects that it fully hibernated. Usually when the shutdown process is screwed up its a BIOS/EEFI configuration problem.

-> Make sure that you have the latest BIOS/UEFI installed on your system

-> Make sure that (assuming you don't have RAID), that your SATA controller is set to AHCI mode

-> Make sure that all S# states are properly configured in your BIOS/UEFI... if you don't know what they are, simply load the BIOS/UEFI default settings, from the BIOS/UEFI menu, it will restore everything.

-> Make sure that you have ALL your drivers installed. Do not assume that the device works, that its "good enough", as it could be using Windows generic drivers, which are getting more and more powerful every version of Windows.

If that doesn't help... then you are in for a small project:

-> If you have UEFI system, make sure it's enabled to that mode BEFORE installing Windows 8. You may required to convert your MBR partition to GPT if its not already. You can use GParted (free) bootable partition manager, to to do the switch. This will also allow you to support instant boot (well, actually to support this feature, you also need your graphic card FIRMWARE to be updated to be GOP ready. Once in GOP mode, the graphic card will not be able to work on normal BIOS systems. Hence why graphic manufacture don't do it. But you don't upgrade to GOP, than no really a problem.. Your system will boot much quicker, but won't be instant, as it will have to wait for the GPU to boot first, and then the UEFI will kick in)

This is instant boot:

If your system doesn't fully support UEFI, then teh reverse will take place, where the boot process will be much slower.As you'll have to wait for each step to time out and switch mode to BIOS. In such case, you want to delete the 2x partitions that Windows setup will add to the selected partition, convert back your partition to MBR with Gparted, and set your UEFI back to BIOS mode.

See here, on how to clean install Windows 8 with a an upgrade disk. (This new feature was added since Windows 7, for cases like yours, and people who got new HDD/SSD):

http://lifehacker.com/5984278/how-to-do-a-clean-install-of-windows-8-with-an-upgrade-disc

[SomeRandom778]

It turned out that windows deactivated its self a few minutes after i posted this on here and i could not reactivate.

I've done a "custom" install from the activation disk, but when I checked the registry the "MediaBootInstall" value was already set to 0, and windows was already activated (and it says so in both locations). Is it likely to stay this way? or is it going to deactivate its self again later?

If it deactivates again, i will probably just go and buy an OEM Windows 8 disk from my local PC store, just to get the job done so i can use my PC properly again.

[GoodBytes]

Interesting.

No, you should be good. At worst, it will happen again, activation will fail, and ask you to do a phone activation. Microsoft will give you the override code, and you'll be good from now on. But, I doubt it will come to that.

The bug you encounter wasn't really every debug by people.. people simply immediately just re-installed Windows, or simply don't come back to post their update after solution suggestion.. so it could be that they saw what you saw, and it got activated, and never bothers to keep anyone updated.

[SomeRandom778]

Just another update. The activation has failed again (Error code 0xD0000033) and I cant see anywhere to do a phone activation.

[GoodBytes]

Go to the Start Screen and type: slui 4 in the search field and then hit the "Enter" key.

This will bring up the Activate by Phone dialog window. Follow the steps provided by the window.

[Dragontail]

If you dont want hibernation, just turn it off, usually help with odd problems when booting.

open a command prompt in admin mode and typ

powercfg /h off

and you will save some space on C: also :)

Hope you find a solution

/D-tail

[SomeRandom778]

When I select my region (Australia) it throws up the same error as when i tried to activate (0xD0000033) and doesn't show the numbers that i am required to enter on the phone to activate.

I think im just going to buy an OEM disk, because im pretty sick of this upgrade thing. But thanks for your help. :)

[GoodBytes]

I would do a clean install first (I mean you are going to clean install in any case): http://lifehacker.com/5984278/how-to-do-a-clean-install-of-windows-8-with-an-upgrade-disc

If you do it via a USB flash drive, assuming its a faster one, it should takes only a few minutes to do. In my case, 6min.

[Dragontail]

Try a clean install with your upgrade key, worked for me with 2 computers, just a tip!

[SomeRandom778]

Ive tried that twice. and its failed both times.

[DePhoegon]

If you bought it digitally, you should be able to DL the disk image & burn it. to do a clean install. Though Make sure the image is clean & from MS. From what I can tell they have a full disk image to do a clean install from.

Though If you keep having the errors, then You should contact MS as windows is clearly thinking you are using invalid keys and is deactivating it self.

I'd Never suggest to use any image for a windows disk that doesn't come directly from a physical disk you can verify is the real deal, or from MS servers directly. *Not trusting any 3rd party servers or hosting to DL the OS disc image to avoid problems*

[SomeRandom778]

Ive managed to fix the problems a while back, but im not sure how, after purchasing am OEM disk, and installing from that, it failed to activate again, after that  i took out my storage drive and everything seemed to activate just fine, and has stayed that way ever since, even after putting the hard drive back in, which is rather odd... but at least its fixed.

 

Only problem is now i decided to upgrade my other PC to Windows 8 using the upgrade disk that never activated on the other one, but its not telling me that its already activated on another PC, even though it never actually activated, im hoping that a call to Microsoft will resolve this issue.