November 2013
Beginner to intermediate
950 pages
34h 26m
English
Content preview from Windows 8.1: The Missing ManualBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Before You Begin
Most of the work involved in installing Windows 8.1 takes place well before the installation software even approaches your computer. You have some research and planning to do, especially if you want to avoid spending a five-day weekend in Upgrade Hell.
For example, you must ensure that your PC is beefy enough to handle Windows 8.1. You also have to decide which of two types of installation you want to perform: an upgrade or a clean install. (More on this in a moment.)
If you opt for the clean install (a process that begins with erasing your hard drive completely), you must back up your data. Finally, you have to gather all the software bits and pieces you need in order to perform the installation.
Hardware Requirements
Before you even buy a copy of Windows, your first order of business should be to check your computer against the list of hardware requirements for Windows, as published by Microsoft. Windows 8.1, as it turns out, requires some fairly decent memory, speed, disk space, and, above all, graphics-card horsepower. Most 2004-era computers (and earlier ones) aren’t up to the challenge.
A lower-powered computer can run Windows 8.1. It may feel slow, but you’ll get all the other security and feature enhancements.
The hardware requirements include a 1-gigahertz processor (or faster), 2 gigabytes of memory (or more), 20 gigabytes of free hard drive space (or more), and a graphics card that has “DirectX 9 support with WDDM 1.0 driver” (check the packaging or, for laptops, ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.