Upgrading from Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2010 to Windows 8.
For Windows end users, Microsoft has given them the best upgrade procedure I have ever seen in the past 15 years. Not only are the prices fantastic but it is easy and quick to get.
That is great news for everybody but there is a slight hitch for developers. You cannot use the upgrade license - You need to get an OEM / Disc version of Windows 8 and you will avoid this screen .... Seen when running the upgrade assistant downloaded from the internet
Many people would have had access to Windows 8 long before this release either from Release candidate or MSDN Subscriptions. So did I, and I had a chance to mess around with the new UI of Windows 8 and experience Visual Studio 2012. But not everybody was keen on the idea to jump into all these new things at one time.
Project managers expressed the usual distress in the entire upgrade process. What about all the Visual Studio solution conversions? What if something crashes in the middle of an upgrade? Is it compatible with our oldest software of VS2005?
Use a Retail disc not upgrade path
In a virtual machine environment I setup a fresh Windows 7 SP1 with Visual Studio 2010 full install.
I put my Retail Windows 8 Disc in started to the install procedure ...
Search for Visual Studio 2010, as you do in Windows 8 ....
And this is Visual Studio that I installed on Windows 7.
Alternatives
Install Windows 8 then Visual Studio 2010 + Visual Studio 2012
Myself I would not mind installing Windows 8 from scratch and moving all my preferences, plugins, settings, sourcesafe, team foundation settings and installing Visual Studio 2012 side-by-side. But there are people out there who are perfect about the way everything is setup and to redo all the settings can be the worst thing ever.
You should download this hotfix (update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Test Tools) to make VS2010 test tools stable.
Uninstall Visual Studio then follow upgrade
If you wanted to save a bit money and bought Windows 8 upgrade path (as spotted for as low as £45) and then you got stuck with the upgrade advisor. Then the only way to work around this is the un install Visual Studio and possibly SQL Server, do the Windows 8 upgrade and reinstall everything on the other side. It is painful but if times are tough you have to work a bit harder ...
Dual Boot
Can I install Windows 8 on my computer running Windows 7 and dual boot operating systems? Yes. For evaluation, the simplest and easiest-to-revert method is by installing Windows 8 to a native boot virtual hard disk (VHD). If you simply want to ensure that Windows 7 is available because of application compatibility, testing, and so on, an alternative is to install Windows 8 Pro or Windows 8 Enterprise on your computer and then install Windows 7 in a Client Hyper-V virtual machine. Last, you can configure your computer to dual-boot Windows 7 and Windows 8 by installing Windows 8 on a separate volume on your computer. Quote reference
Visual Studio 2012
I am not a developer, but can I build a Windows 8 app to learn more about how they work?In an effort to learn how developers build Windows 8 apps, you can easily build one by using Visual Studio Express 2012 for Window 8. Doing so can help you gain a deeper understanding of Windows 8 apps to help you better manage and deploy them. For more information, see Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8. Quote reference
You could just start using a clean version of Windows 8 with Visual Studio 2012 and upgrade all your existing projects to unleash the full blown set of new features and enhancements from these new products...
This blog entry was entered in the Windows 8 Challenge on Super User.
But I had to delete it because it was not exclusive.
So here it lives now - Exclusive to you only!
But I had to delete it because it was not exclusive.
So here it lives now - Exclusive to you only!
Comments