Windows 8 RP – drivers, heat, airplane mode, and pinning documents to start

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Hi,

I have four Windows 8 issues for those in the know:

1. DRIVERS: Action Center doesn’t mention any problems with drivers, so can I assume that Win8 installed the best drivers? Can I trust Action Center and Win8 drivers?

2. HEAT: My laptop seems to get hotter than on Win7. I’ve checked the task manager and indexing has finished and the CPU usage is typically at only 2% and Memory at 27%, so it’s not that. I wonder if the heat is from a bad driver or something?

3. AIRPLANE MODE: I’m using airplane mode for wireless networks. Interestingly, the wireless light on my laptop doesn’t need to be engaged. Does that mean my wireless adaptor is always on even if I switch to airplane mode? I thought the wireless light had to be on if the adaptor is on. BTW, I prefer using airplane mode so long as it doesn’t leave the adaptor on in the background all the time.

4. PINNING DOCUMENTS: Can you pin a file shortcut (not an app shortcut) to the start screen? I put some app shortcuts into a start folder and they appeared on the start screen, but document shortcuts didn’t work.

Cheers.

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1) The Win 8 default drivers seem to work very well in most cases. Most cases, not all! There are devices that will require Win 8 specific drivers from the device manufacturer’s. It’s difficult to say ahead of time whether your setup will work with the default drivers or not.

2) I suppose your heat buildup could be coming from the Graphics adapter. I would check with your graphics adapter manufacturer to see about drivers. NVidia, AMD and Intel have all issued drivers for Win 8.

3) Cannot answer the Airplane mode question. I have not used it. I will have to investigate this.

4) It appears that is not easily accomplished. Since I spend my time on the Desktop UI, I do not know if this is possible.

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I cannot find a way to do it. But we are not alone:
http://superuser.com/questions/336048/can-i-put-documents-onto-the-windows-8-metro-start-menu

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You can see if this posthelps to pin documents to Start Menu. It’s not really straight forward. I would simply use the Desktop UI for that.

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Ted Myers,

1) Yep, the Win 8 default drivers work surprisingly well. I only needed to download one driver – for the touchpad.

2) I have an inbuild graphics card and an nVidia card on this laptop, which I never use but maybe the system is using that somehow, so I will try that driver.

3) The airplane mode can be fiddly too. It works fine, but when the connection is not working and you run the troubleshooter, it tells you to manually turn on the wireless adapter. Then you can be caught in a loop between airplane and the manual adapter switch. You just keep fiddling till it seems to work out.

4) Yeah, pinning doc shortcuts is too fiddly to bother. I had a good reason to do it, but I forgot!

rmonroe36,

Yeah, It’s too much fiddling to get the doc shortcuts working. I presume MS will simplify it in the final version, cos that would be useful for tablets and phones.

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I had to download and install my Touchpad drivers as well as I was having a problem with my cursor jumping around while typing with the default drivers. Glad you have solved most problems.

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The new NVidia drivers don’t work for hybrid graphics. But I realised that I could just disable the NVidia card and keep the onboard intel graphics driver since I never use the NVidia because it uses too much power. So that’s solved.

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