In one events, i saw my friend use a brand new IPad 3. His IPAD helps him a lot, when he tried to remember an important topic or a concept to the audience, he used his IPad as a notes taking tools. After that day, i visited a local exhibition and saw a good devices called Samsung ATIV. However, the price is too high for developer like me (it cost 799$-1399$). Trying to forget about ATIV, i opened my old device. It called HTC Shift, it runs Windows 7 and Windows Mobile 6,5. My mission is to make this old device run Windows 8 RTM with his full power. In this article, i will show you a several tips to make your work easy to install Windows 8 in your own devices like HTC Shift.
Tips No. 1 – Installing using USB
You can use Windows 7 USB Download tools, just prepare at least 4 GB Flash Disk use that tools and you are ready to go by booting it from your USB through a BIOS.
Tips No. 2 – Downloading your old driver
Luckily I still can download my old driver at HTC website. Driver from Vista might be work, Driver from 7 should work.
Tips No. 3 – Installing Features in Offline Mode
Several features need you to install in online mode (e.g. .NET Framework). You can by pass it by using offline installation. To do that just follow this simple steps
- Open command prompt using Administrator role
- Insert your USB drive that contains Windows 8 installer
- Type this code, replace G: with your USB drive letter
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:G:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess
Tips No. 4 – Altering the Drivers
Driver can work really bad. for example in my HTC Shift, the SD Card, and WIFI cant work on Windows 8. After several attempt I can make it work by tampering the new driver with the old one. To do that just follow this tricks.
- Running Command prompt with an administrator role
- Preparing your old driver (anything.sys)
- Typing type: takeown /f c:\windows\system32\drivers\anything.sys and hit enter
- type: cacls c:\windows\system32\drivers\anything.sys /G “Ridi Fe”:F please note “ridi fe” is my username
- Replace your new driver using your old driver
- Restart
Tips No. 5 – Using at Least 1024 x 768 resolution
For a really old devices you should set manually your device to 1024 x 768 resolution or more. Go to desktop resolution in your device and select at least 1024 x 768
What can I say, Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7 for my old HTC Shift device, at least I can play and use it for my daily and notes taking activity.