Thursday, September 15, 2011

Windows Developer Preview or Windows 8 for developers available

On 14-9-2011 the first build of Windows Developer Preview is showed to the world. The Windows Developer Preview is a pre-beta version of Windows 8 for developers. Windows 8 is build on Metro, the User Interface we know from Windows Phone 7. That way it's usable on desktops, laptops and tablets, with touch interface!

In this blog I show you the installation & look and feel. Support for ConfigMgr 2007/2012 functionality follows later. First download the ISO from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/
I've created an virtual machine with 1 CPU, 2GB RAM and 20GB Disk. That's enough for having a smooth running virtual machine. The ISO can be mounted with a virtual CD/DVD-drive for installing Windows 8.

When the error message "This 64-bit application couldn't load because your PC doesn't have a 64-bit processor" is shown, enable "Virtualization" or "Hardware Virtualization" in your BIOS to get it working.

When using Virtual PC download the 32-bit version of Windows 8. Virtual PC can only handle 32 bit guest systems. I've download the 64-bit version and used Oracle VirtualBox to install Windows 8 and capture screenshots.

The installation is approximately done in 10 a 15 minutes. During installation the following screens are seen:
Looks the same as Windows 7 installation..

Finalizing your settings/ Preparing your PC

Windows 8 is already up and running, yeah!

Windows desktop is still available as TILE

When installing an program/tool a popup opens

This is the default screen when restarting..

A start menu in Metro UI is also available

Tiles can be managed by a ribbon with menu options

Nice to see in Windows 8 is the choice to switch between the Metro User Interface (UI) and the classic Windows (7) desktop. Known functionality as Control Panel, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are still available. New installations adds new tiles on the Metro UI. 

All tiles can be fully managed by an ribbon, which comes available when right-clicking a tile. When starting a tile/application, go back to the leftdown corner to access the start menu. That way going back to the Metro UI is possible. The application remains available that way.

Next time I have a look at more functionality and ConfigMgr support. Stay tuned for more!

3 comments:

  1. Hello Henk,
    did you found out if the win8 installation works with SCCM 2007?
    I am trying to install, but i get always the 0x80004005 error.

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  2. Still haven't time for that yet. As soon there's time I will post my results. This for deployment in ConfigMgr 2007 and 2012. Stay tuned for more.

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  3. I was receiving the same error, I found that I needed to add the windows serial key to the task sequence step "Apply Windows Settings".

    The serial Key you need apply is located in the Windows 8 Installation media, under the sources folder, in a text file called PID.txt. Copy the serial number from there and place into the task sequence step.

    Also as for using SCCM 2007 to deploy a windows 8 image i am not sure you can do that as the WinPE/boot images are different in sccm 2007 and sccm 2012. SCCM 2007 uses version 2 of WinPE where as SCCM 2012 user WinPE version 3

    ReplyDelete