Windows 8: advanced features

Windows 8 is noted for its tile-based interface (formerly known as Metro) and newfound focus on touchscreen input. However, this latest edition of Windows also brings numerous technical enhancements for advanced desktop and server users. For many users it’s these features, rather than tablet support, that may sway the decision whether or not to upgrade.

You’ll notice the first enhancement to Windows 8 as soon as you begin using it: it starts up much more quickly than previous OS versions. This is assisted by a new feature called “fast startup” (internally known as HybridBoot). It works in a similar way to hibernation; when you shut down your PC, Windows logs you off, then writes out a memory dump to disk before switching off the power. When you turn on your computer, the dump file is read back into memory, so in a matter of seconds you’re ready to log on and start using Windows again.
Fast startup is switched on by default, although you can disable it from the Power Options item in Settings (click “Choose what the power buttons do” to access the option). Sometimes, however, a “real” reboot is required – for example, when installing patches downloaded from Windows Update or running a disk check when suspected corruption is detected.



The good news is that in Windows 8, both of these scenarios are less frequent and intrusive than in previous versions. Disk-checking requirements have been reduced thanks to a new “online self-healing” approach, which tries wherever possible to fix NTFS disk errors in the background while Windows is running, rather than waiting for the next reboot. What’s more, on occasions when a reboot is necessary, the disk scan now targets only the parts of the disk where inconsistencies have been detected, rather than scanning every single file as it did previously. To say that this dramatically reduces the amount of checking required hardly conveys the scale of time saved – Microsoft estimates that on a system holding 100 million files, processing time is cut from around two hours to less than two seconds.

Windows Update has been streamlined in a similar way. Frequent forced restarts have long been the bane of desktop users; now Windows Update demands a restart only after installing critical security updates, which usually means once a month. If other updates arrive in the interim, they’ll quietly install at your next restart.

You’ll receive more notice of a pending reboot than before, too: update warnings now appear on the login screen three days before a forced restart. If you’re not sitting at your PC when the three-day period expires, you’ll receive a 15-minute warning after your next login, giving you a chance to save your work. This at least is the default behaviour – if companies want to enforce a stricter patch policy, or disable automatic reboots altogether, it can be customised through group policies.

At first glance, the Task Manager in Windows 8 looks much simpler than the old Windows 7 version, showing nothing but a list of applications and a “Not responding” flag next to any programs that appear to have frozen. It’s accessed in the same way too: you can press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to open the lockscreen and click on Task Manager, or press Ctrl-Shift-Escape to open its window directly.

Click “More details”, though, and the window grows into a more powerful console. The default tab – Processes – lets you monitor all running processes in a hierarchical view, and examine not only each one’s CPU usage, but also memory, disk and network consumption. This provides a useful insight into what’s gobbling up your resources.

In the upgraded Performance tab, you can take a closer graphical look at total resource usage, and the Startup tab shows you a list of processes set to load automatically when you log in – a graphical alternative at last to the antiquated MSConfig tool. It’s a breeze to check and disable unwanted resource-hogging startup items; a particularly nice touch is a “Startup impact” estimate that helps you to identify the most sluggish starters. Other tabs enable you to monitor resource usage by user and keep an eye on running services. This all adds up to a more powerful monitoring tool than its forebears.

The only disappointment is the “App history” tab, which keeps track of total CPU time and network usage for each installed app. The idea of keeping a long-term view of resource usage is a good one, but unfortunately, only tablet-style apps are counted, not desktop applications, making this tab fairly useless to desktop users.

Much has been made of Windows 8's new ribbon-based Explorer. For the most part, this merely puts the features of the classic Explorer into a more organised interface, but look closely and you’ll spot some useful new features and controls hidden in the interface.

For a start, we’re happy to see an up-arrow icon, which takes you unambiguously to the parent folder (in contrast to the Back button, which leads to the most recently viewed directory). Under the Home tab, the new “Copy path” button lets you copy the full path of the selected file or folder to the Clipboard (with multiple selections separated by carriage returns) – this saves time when you’re writing a program or technical document. The History button gives you direct access to Windows 8’s File History feature – a system similar to Apple’s Time Machine that uses external storage to automatically archive previous versions of files for backup and reference.

There’s a new “invert selection” button, too, which can be helpful if you want to copy or move a specific selection of files. Under Share, you’ll find a one-click Zip button, as well as a simplified interface to Windows’ disc-burning wizard.

Other contextual tabs appear based on your location and selection. These won’t revolutionise the way you use Windows, but you may quickly come to rely on them. Tabs for Computer, HomeGroup, Library Tools and Network provide one-click access to common configuration and troubleshooting tools. Picture, Music and Video Tools tabs appear with playback and basic editing options when you select the relevant type of media.

Of particular interest is the tab that appears when you select a disk image in ISO, IMG or VHD format. The Disc Image Tools tab offers a Burn icon, and also a new Mount option for mounting image files as virtual DVDs and hard disks. This makes it easier to install software and browse images for specific files.

Professionals and power users often need to add storage to their systems, and safeguard the integrity of their data. Regular backup is part of that equation (perhaps using Windows 8’s File History feature, as mentioned above); but Windows 8’s new Storage Spaces feature kills two birds with one stone. First, it lets you combine any number of drives – regardless of how they’re connected – into a single convenient pool, which can be dynamically extended simply by adding drives at any time.

Within this pool, you can configure mirroring or parity to provide transparent tolerance for one or more drive failures. Storage Spaces therefore gives you the peace of mind and flexibility of an extensible RAID enclosure with the effective simplicity of using a single external or internal drive. Setup is simple: you’ll find the new Storage Spaces manager under Settings, and creating, extending and repairing pools is a matter of a few clicks. For more information, see our Storage Spaces how-to guide.

BitLocker in the Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows 8 now supports hard disks with hardware FDE (full disk encryption) features, making your data unreadable if the disk is stolen. It’s also now possible to use BitLocker’s soft-encryption capabilities to encrypt a drive before installing Windows 8 on it. Microsoft has listened to complaints about how long it took to encrypt disks in previous BitLocker implementations, so in Windows 8 you’re given the option of encrypting only the area that’s in use rather than the entire disk capacity, slashing setup times.

Windows 8 focuses on stability, too. Device drivers must now be digitally signed by a recognised developer, making it harder for dubious code to access your system. This doesn’t mean that legacy hardware is shut out – using the Advanced Startup option in Settings, you can reboot into a less secure mode in which unsigned drivers can be temporarily installed.

For businesses looking to secure desktop clients, Windows 8 brings support for secure boot on UEFI hardware. This means the hardware will refuse to boot unsigned or unknown OS loaders, closing off an avenue often used by rootkit-type malware to compromise a PC. It’s a feature that’s caused controversy: when Windows 8’s support for secure boot was announced, users of Linux-based operating systems and similar projects feared that “homebrew” systems would be locked out, as their unrecognised boot loaders would be rejected. In reality, secure boot can be disabled manually by the user in the BIOS settings, so Linux users can simply carry on as before. IT departments wishing to enforce secure boot can password-protect the BIOS to prevent it from being disabled.

Finally, the AppLocker system has been beefed up in Windows 8, so administrators can now allow or deny specific packaged applications and installers, rather than having to rely on the more broad-brush policies supported by the Windows 7 version of AppLocker. For more details on what’s new here, see Microsoft's AppLocker Technical Overview.

Windows 8 is the first version of Windows to link your identity across multiple PCs, using Microsoft Accounts by default as connected user accounts. This doesn’t mean every system you use will work identically, but cosmetic settings such as wallpaper can be synchronised automatically across all the systems you use, as can stored passwords and credentials. To determine what syncs, you can use the “Sync your settings” option.

If you want to synchronise documents, you can use the built-in SkyDrive feature (or a third-party service such as Dropbox). There’s no way of synchronising desktop applications – this would clog up small devices, not to mention violate licence agreements. However, full-screen “Modern” apps are more flexible; if you have the same app installed on multiple systems, its settings and most recently used state can be automatically synchronised across them.

The move to online accounts simplifies matters when it comes to managing home networks. In the past, when parents wanted to use Windows Family Safety, they had to go through a slightly awkward process of associating each child’s local user account with an online identity. Now the single sign-on system manages everything. The Family Safety system itself has been updated, too, so you can now restrict not only web pages but also app downloads from the Windows Store to certain age categories. In addition to the existing “permitted hours settings”, parents have the option of limiting the total time their offspring spend online, or just using the computer, on a given day.

Windows 8 is also the first version of the operating system with a built-in awareness that not all networks are created equal. 3G mobile internet adapters can now be configured as metered connections, which won’t be used automatically to download apps and drivers. To activate this feature, open the Charms menu, select Settings, right-click on the appropriate connection and select “Set as metered connection”. Windows can keep track of your estimated data usage over a metered connection, so you can tell if you’re getting near a data cap; you can assign different costs to different adapters, enabling Windows to select the cheapest connection automatically (Windows will use this by default in preference to any mobile broadband connection if a Wi-Fi connection is available). If you need to shut down all your wireless communications, a new “airplane mode” toggle makes it easy.

One novel feature in Windows 8 is the new Windows To Go system, which allows you to install the operating system onto a USB flash drive or external hard disk. The process is fairly automatic – you’re guided through it by a wizard called the Windows To Go Creator. The volume you create can then be used to boot any PC it’s plugged into – a boon for remote workers and hot-deskers.

The way it works has been well thought out: the first time you start up on new hardware, any necessary drivers are automatically downloaded and then integrated into the image, so that subsequent boots take place at full speed. Memory caching is used sensibly, so booting and running over USB 2 is an impressively smooth experience (although USB 3 is recommended for optimum performance). The system is designed to tolerate the accidental removal of the system drive, allowing you to resume by reconnecting the disk within 60 seconds. With full-disk encryption, any security concerns over losing the drive are eliminated.

Windows To Go has limitations: once you start using a To Go system, there’s no way of automatically synchronising new documents and desktop applications back to your primary system. It’s also available in only the Enterprise edition of Windows 8 – not the Professional edition, which is a mean decision, in our view.

Businesses operating over a wide-area network will also be pleased by upgrades to the BranchCache feature, which manages local caching of remote documents and resources so that they can be opened and accessed quickly, even if the master copies are located at the other end of the country. When it was introduced in Windows 7 (and its server-side partner, Windows Server 2008 R2), BranchCache’s capabilities were limited. In Windows 8 and Server 2012, BranchCache can support any number of remote branches, and can be silently enabled on client PCs through a group policy. Deduplication is automatically applied, so only one copy of duplicate data is stored and synchronised, which minimises bandwidth and storage requirements. Extensive new configuration options also let administrators manage how much information is cached where, and for how long.

A final convenience for IT departments is a set of improvements to the way group policies are managed. The Group Policy Management Console in Server 2012 now provides a one-click status check, showing details of all active domain controllers and the state of policy replication on each one, so you can easily spot any propagation errors. It’s also now possible to force an immediate group policy update across any Organisation Unit, so that urgent changes take effect within ten minutes, rather than having to wait an hour or more for the clients to refresh themselves. The ten-minute delay is to avoid a sudden bandwidth crunch on large networks, but can be overridden using the new Invoke-GpUpdate PowerShell cmdlet.

A final notable benefit of Windows 8 is improved provision for system recovery. Microsoft understands that, with the best will in the world, PCs go wrong – hence the introduction of System Restore in Windows XP, to enable you to roll back changes if necessary in order to restore your computer to a previous working state.

Windows 8 takes this idea much further, introducing two new ways to restore your PC to an earlier state. Under Settings you’ll now find options to “Refresh your PC” and “Remove everything and reinstall Windows”. These options are also found in the Troubleshooting interface that appears at startup if Windows can’t boot properly.

These two options are based on the same concept – an automatic, in-place reinstallation of Windows that restores the underlying system to pristine condition. The difference is in the data and settings that are retained. As you’d expect, the “Remove everything” option wipes the system completely, including your data and settings. “Refresh” keeps copies of your personal files and remembers important settings, such as network connections and saved BitLocker keys. It also retains any “modern” tablet-style apps – as these are heavily sandboxed, they’re unlikely to be the cause of the problem.

These features may sound pedestrian, but they mean PC manufacturers no longer need to produce recovery discs and partitions, and they ensure that everybody running Windows 8 can easily revert to a fresh installation state without losing their data.

Most helpfully, Windows 8 even allows you to customise your Refresh image. For example, you might choose to take a snapshot of your system with your Outlook mail configured and Visual Studio installed, to which you can easily roll back in case of system failure. You can do this using the new recimg command-line tool. To use it, open a command prompt as Administrator and enter: recimg -CreateImage C:
This will make an image of your PC, place it in the root of the C drive (you can specify a different directory if you like), and automatically set it as the default Refresh image. Enter recimg /? to see the full list of options for recimg.