After tweeting a picture of Windows 8 Developer Preview running on my new Samsung Series 7 Slate, a few people asked if I would enumerate the instructions that I used to get it running. The machine is still fairly new to me, but I believe that everything is working, and it was relatively painless to get it all working.
I may amend this blog post as I discover things that might be not quite right, or things that I missed the first time around.
Obligatory Warning You Will Probably Ignore
What you're doing here is erasing a computer. You can screw things up if you do them incorrect. This worked for me, but it may not work for you. If you get stuck, I may not be able to help you, and Samsung may not be super excited about helping you out with a Windows 8 problem. Also, Windows 8 is pre-release software, so expect some occasional bumps in the road.
Important Links:
- Windows 8 Developer Preview Download
- Making a bootable USB thumb drive from the Windows 8 ISO
- Samsung Series 7 Slate Software Downloads
What You'll Need to Get Started
- A bootable USB device to install Windows 8; meaning, either a USB DVD drive or a USB thumb drive. If you want to use the latter, follow the instructions linked above to make the thumb drive properly bootable. You'll want a 4GB+ thumb drive for Windows 8 x64, or a 8GB+ drive if you want to install the version with the development tools, too. Your machine has 4GB of RAM, so don't bother with the x86 (32-bit) verison of Windows 8. Installation from a USB thumb drive is a LOT faster than installation from a DVD (and doesn't waste a blank DVD).
- A keyboard and mouse is highly advised for some parts. You can get by without it, but it's... painful. If you're planning to use a USB keyboard, bear in mind that you'll be booting off of a USB drive, so you'll either need a USB hub, or you'll need to use the optional dock to get yourself a 2nd USB port.
Step 0: Update your firmware (before you delete Windows 7!)
Your machine probably shipped with the latest firmware (mine did), but it's worth verifying that to be sure. A relatively new firmware is necessary to ensure that screen rotation works properly in Windows 8.
Boot into Windows 7. Visit the Series 7 Slate Downloads page, click on the Firmware link/tab, and download the firmware updater. Run it to ensure you are on the latest firmware.
Step 1: Make some machine settings changes
With the machine in a powered off state, hold the HOME button and then press the POWER button. Continue to hold the HOME button until the machine settings screen is displayed:
Attaching a USB keyboard helps navigation here a lot. If you don't, then you'll need to use the hardware keys to navigate:
- Rotation Lock (on the right, below the power button)- Enter
- Home (the only button on the face of the device) - Escape
- Volume Up/Down (on the left, below the USB port) - Move the cursor up/down
- Hold Rotation Lock + Volume Up/Down - Move the cursor left/right
The BIOS changes we want to make/verify are all on the Advanced page:
- CPU Power Saving Mode : Enabled
- Hyperthreading : Enabled
- Execute Disable Bit : Enabled
- Legacy USB Support : Enabled
- UEFI Boot Support : Enabled
There are two additional interesting settings on the Boot page, which you may or may not want to change:
- TPM Support : you'll want to Enable this if you want to use Bitlocker to secure the contents of your slate. Some corporate environments (like mine) require that you use Bitlocker, and TPM means you won't have to carry around an extra USB key with Bitlocker booting codes on it.
- PXE OPROM : you'll want to Enable this if you have the optional dock, and you're planning to install Windows via the network, as network booting requires a physical Ethernet connection. This is probably not useful right now with Windows 8, but you may find it useful if you decide to revert back to Windows 7 at some point (assuming you're on a network with network boot support).
Navigate to the Exit page, and choose "Save Changes and Reset". But before you do that, read ahead just one more paragraph.
Step 2: Boot the USB device to install Windows 8
In Step 1, we held the HOME button to get into the machine settings. This time, when the machine reboots after we save and exit the settings screen, we just want to press and release the HOME button once. In a few seconds, you'll be presented with a boot menu. Don't get anxious and hit it a second time, because you're almost sure to accidentally escape out of the boot menu; trust me, I think I did this 3x before I learned to be a tiny bit more patient. :)
The contents of this menu will vary depending on which boot features you've enabled; for me, they were:
P0: SAMSUNG MZMPA128HMFU-00000 (this is your SSD drive)
SMI USB DISK 1100 (this is my 8GB USB stick that I'm planning to boot from)
Realtek PXE B02 D00 (this is the network boot via Ethernet)
Enter Setup (this will drop you into the machine settings again)
Use the USB keyboard (or the volume up/down keys) to select the boot device, then press Enter (or Rotation Lock) to boot the selected device.
The Windows 8 installation includes enough drivers to do mouse emulation for the slate's touch screen, so I was able to touch my way through the install process. I nuked both the Windows 7 partition and the factory restore partition, because I was confident that I would rather reinstall Windows 7 from scratch anyway. Just bear in mind that your slate didn't come with a Windows 7 DVD (or thumb drive), so unless you have an extra Windows 7 DVD hanging around that's usable for this, you'll want to preserve the factory restore partition. Me, I wanted that extra 20GB back. :)
Since there is no on-screen keyboard, if you want to do any advanced partitioning, you'll basically have to boot with a USB keyboard connected for the installation. Tapping the down arrow on the partition size edit box over and over again gets old REALLY fast. :)
After you've picked your installation partition, the system will do its copy thing and then reboot to finalize the installation. Now Windows 8 is running in full swing, and final settings (like connecting to WiFi and logging in with your Windows Live ID) are touch-friendly operations with on-screen keyboards available.
After your initial logon, you're on the Start Screen. At this point, I'd recommend connecting your Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (if you're using USB, then there's no connection necessary other than just plugging things in). FWIW, the Start Screen is great on this slate, but classic desktop mode can be challenging without a keyboard and mouse. I wouldn't recommend it for anything other than casual usage, and instead limit yourself to the Start Screen (and touch-designed apps) when you don't have a keyboard and mouse.
Alternatively, you can use the provided pen for light mouse-like usage. This slate comes with both a real digitizer as well as touch screen, and it turns off the touch functionality when the pen is nearby, so it's actually quite nice to write with using the provided pen, as you can lean the edge of your hand on the glass to write without triggering any touch operations. Honestly, this is a great slate for people who like to write, and I suspect I'll get a lot more use out of OneNote with this than any previous PC.
Regardless of what kind of precision input device you're using, we're going to make some changes and do some work in classic desktop mode next.
Step 3: Run Windows Update
From the Start Screen, swipe in from the right edge, tap Search, and then search for "Windows Update". Tap on the Settings sub-search, and then tap on "Check for updates". This will launch the desktop version of Windows Update. If you're careful with your taps, you might be able to use this app without resorting to a mouse or pen.
Force Windows Update to search for drivers, even if it thinks you're up-to-date. This will end up giving you most of the drivers you're missing. For me, this included nearly 20 updates in total. As is typical with Windows Update, you will probably need to reboot one or more times to get everything updated properly. Continue to install/reboot dance until Windows Update comes up empty.
Step 4: Run Easy Software Manager
Head back to the Series 7 Slate Downloads page. This time, go to the Software tab and download Easy Software Manager. This is a great tool from Samsung which will probe the PC and its current drivers, and figure out what you still need to install. Here's the trick, though: the app only wants to run in Windows 7. This means you'll need to use Program Compatibility to fool the setup into thinking you're running on Windows 7; in addition, after the program is installed, you'll need to use Program Compatibility on the program itself again to ensure that it thinks its running in Windows 7 mode.
Here, we really need a mouse or pen. To set Program Compatition, right click/pen tap and hold on the executable (or the shortcut), and click Properties. Click on the Compatibility tab, check the box labeled "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and then choose "Windows 7" from the drop-down:
Note that if software manager needs to update itself, you may need to remake these settings changes after the update.
Once you've installed and run everything, if the app is working correctly, it will probably sit and think for a good 60ish seconds, trying to decide what devices you have newest drivers for and which ones need updated drivers. Then you can click on the Drivers tab, and then install the drivers one at a time (or use the Install All button).
Step 5: There is No Step 5
That's it! I think you'll find that this was a machine that just begs for Windows 8... where I found it to be a little slow and imprecise with Windows 7, I found its performance in Windows 8 to be just plain slick and pleasingly forgiving of my not-entirely-great tapping ability.
Time to enjoy your new Windows 8 slate!
