swe_badger

No worries, glad I could help. With regards to the iso/usb thingiemabob, I just checked the USB I put my install on and it shows that approx. 2.66GB of space is occupied on my 8GB USB stick. I have to say, that's some impressive compressing considering the whole 64-bit installation takes up roughly 20GB of space when it's finished. You wouldn't believe how fast it installed and was up and running. Also the start-up and shutdown times are radically improved, I have a 5900 RPM drive but I swear, Win8 boots up and shuts down faster than Win7 did when I had my SSD drive (RIP). Great stuff. With regards to the new start screen, I like it as I now think of it as a kind of new Start Menu, switching between it and the regular desktop is totally seamless.

As I mentioned in my little "guide", if you are doing it on ANY 64-bit windows installation (Vista or 7 64-bit at least) it will automatically download the 64-bit files, I guarantee it. It's really daft of Microsoft I know but I guess it's to simplify for people that don't know the difference between them 32-bits and those 64-bits I guess.:doh: P.S Boy was I happy -and releived- when my install was finished and I went to my computer info and saw that 64-bit OS notice in the properties of "My Computer".

That shouldn't be, if you click on the link in your e-mail you should be prompted to download a file called "Windows8-Setup.exe". It's the exact same size as the upgrade assistant BUT the first thing it will do is to ask you to input your Windows 8 license key that is in the very same confirmation mail that you will find the link to the "Windows8-Setup.exe" file in. I just did it myself in my own confirmation mail to be sure. I also took the time to make a screenshot of my confirmation mail to show you which link to click on:

LOL! This is so sad because I was -until yesterday- in almost the exact same position as you. Luckily I figured it all out with some help and some serious detective work. Here's your solution, you're welcome: This is how I got a working Windows 8 Pro x64 installation from a 32-bit Windows XP license. All of the below instructions can and must be done from any 64-bit Windows installation, use you're secondary PC or your gf's PC, any 64-bit Windows installation will do (except maybe XP 64-bit, I'm not sure). 1. Open up the email that you recieved from Microsoft when you bought your license. In it -on the top under the big "Thanks for your purchase/order" head- you will find the sentence (translating from Swedish now) "If you need to download Windows just enter your new Product key here." 2. Click on "here" and it will re-direct you to enter your Win 8 license key and you will receive a file that looks the same as the upgrade assistant and is the exact same file size and the name of the .exe is different but it isn't the same. 3. Just start the downloaded .exe file and follow the instructions, don't worry it won't install anything on the PC you are doing this on. It will just download the Windows installation files (64-bit version in this case) and when it is finished it will prompt you to either install the freshly downloaded files right away OR make a bootable ISO or USB. 4. Choose to create an ISO or USB and when it's finished making either one of those, simply put your fresh Win 8 DVD or USB stick in the computer you want to install it on. You can even make a fresh installation on an empty drive if you want to instead of doing the cumbersome upgrade from a previous Win 7/Vista/Xp installation. Just like a regular OEM/Retail DVD. Typing this from my fresh 64-bit Windows 8 Pro installation, happy as can be!

Interesting, but matter of the fact is, Steam is big business for Valve and Microsoft having their own portal for selling software can and will eat revenue off of Steam. Valve are claiming this is bad for consumers, free the people enslaved by Microsoft etc, when in fact many of us are "slaves" of Steam. They're trying to future proof themselves and this is a sane business minded way to look at it but don't think for a minute that Valve are just doing this for charity, it's all about money. The fact that they ARE putting real effort in to the Linux Project shows that they are genuinely concerned that Microsoft in the end will eat up a considerable amount of their profits. Also, Microsoft are trying to get developers onboard by undercutting the industry standard fees for selling your apps on online "marketplaces". Microsoft is offering 80% of the profit of selling an app or game to the developer after they pass the 25,000$ line as opposed of most of the "competition" that only offers 70% of the profit however much they might sell. Still, I think Valve should be careful not biting the teet that they feed off of. ;) P.S I'd like to say that I love Steam. I have A LOT of games on Steam (many I haven't even had the time to install yet, *ugh*) and I can see why Valve are looking elsewhere with there business but what I don't like is how Gabe Newell keeps dissing Microsoft and saying things will get worse for the consumers, closed eco-systems are bad etc. That's just populistic BS, it's all about the almighty $, nothing more nothing less but saying that publicly won't create any popular sympathy for Valve. I don't like when people try to manipulate popular opinion by pretending that they care about people, you know, like just about every politician out there. P.S I have to give Valve credit for getting Nvidia onboard considering the rather chilly relationship between the Linux community and Nvidia in the past, just ask Linus Torvalds:

I think this might help you.

I've already bought it and installed using an old XP license I had laying around. Wise of you though, for that price it's at least worth buying and maybe later install. It's not even the price of a new PC game for Crying out loud, very un-Microsoftish indeed.

First a question to the ED team, will there be a retail DVD version of the full BS 2 version? Secondly to all complainers on why they charge 20$ for the upgrade, this is business, there are people doing jobs behind this game. You remember jobs right? where you receive a salary for work done. Now if the salary payments stop, well that means they can't release any games/patches at all, because guess what! work has to be done to achieve that and work costs money! How much do you think a software engineer costs/hour? That's right, they are not cheap. Wake up people! ED is no Electronic Arts or Activision. They don't sell 20 million copies per release like CoD. If you can't figure out these things by yourself then just forget about what I wrote because you won't understand that either. I heard the Red Cross is helping people out with free stuff, you could always go there.....

After being torn between hope and despair by IL-2 Cliffs of Dover for several months I took the leap and bought DCS: A-10C a couple of weeks ago. Wow! Thanks ED! I've never been much of an online simmer but I've been finding myself on 74th FS server nearly everyday for almost a week now. It's so much fun especially when you -finally- are getting a somewhat basic understanding of all the weapons systems and stuff. So thank you ED for this great sim, below is a picture of my crate after landing -after a successful sortie- without a nosewheel. :thumbup: