Problems with Windows 8.1 Dev Preview-You have been warned.

Note that this video was made on the day it was released. In the time that passed, bug fixes were released and the official 8.1 update has been made available. Unfortunately, many people are still reporting problems with the update, ranging from inconvenient to downright obtrusive. The official 8.1 update caused my laptop to crash and I got the blue screen of death, forcing me to reformat. Proceed at your own risk.

There are quite a few issues with Window's newest operating system and while this is a dev preview and some bugs are expected, there are quite a few more than most people had hoped. It may just be my specific system's reaction to the update however it could happen to anyone, and since there is no easy way to remove the update you should know what you're getting into before you install it.

Problems it caused for me
-Most programs became blurry/fuzzy
-Most games crashed
-New start button gets in the way of "real" 3rd party start buttons (like classic shell)
-Screen flickering
-Overall sluggishness animations (My system has an i7 with dedicated graphics so the problem is definitely software)

~Upon downloading and installing the official 8.1 update, my laptop became unresponsive. After trying to reboot, I was faced with the blue screen of death. I was forced to reformat, and I'm back to using Windows 8.0

You may not experience the same problems or even any at all depending on your exact system, however it is very likely that at least one or more of these problems will affect you, and there are possibly more issues that I didn't notice. Be warned before you install it, there is no way to uninstall the preview without completely restoring your system. It's up to you!

[MagmaRhino]

Wow that makes my problems sound tiny, and thanks you actually just gave me an idea to include everyone's 8.1 story within the description!

[MagmaRhino]

Well thanks for the feedback, I guess the update is starting to become more functional. I downloaded it over a month ago when it was first released and there were few to no driver updates so that is why my experience was so different.

[MagmaRhino]

Because I wanted to see what improvements they made and I thought it would be simple to revert. When I downloaded it, no where did it mention there would be no way to revert to 8.0 without doing a complete wipe, otherwise this wouldn't have bothered me.

[deltadoublevictor]

you're not wrong dude, i had major issues and had to revert to 8.0 - graphics drivers were laggy, even moving the mouse pointer was stuttering.

[MagmaRhino]

Well I'm not saying these problems are guaranteed to happen, but they are possible. My best suggestion would be to just wait until I believe October 15th and install the official update. 2 months is not that long to wait and it could possibly save you a lot of frustration.

[MagmaRhino]

No I do understand that, but what bothers me is that it caused so many problems without any proper warning from Windows beforehand mentioning it is impossible to downgrade without formatting. And what new features they did add wouldn't be worth it even if there was only 1 or 2 bugs.

[RedStarSQD]

I have been using 8.1 preview since released and have had none of your problems. It is quite the leap to claim 8.1 is broken based on 1 account. And so far no one else has made such claims so i am leaning towards my own experience of 8.1 as being very positive. I am a gamer and all games work just fine, including BF3. I will agree the start button will not appease those who were crying for old menu. And i also spend most of my time in desktop mode. But i'm on a desktop :)

[samoandadgonewild]

Hey man I just upgraded to the latest version of 8.1 today. I have had all the issues You talked about. One thing that I have noticed is that they got rid of the setting to adjust the cooling performance to battery optimized. Now its in a different place and says sumething like drop CPU performance before speeding up the fan. Any way the fan has been running non-stop, evan when on idle, since the upgrade and uses up loads more battery.

[MagmaRhino]

Yeah I believe that is because java works fine but DirectX has not yet been updated for 8.1 or you just didn't download the update if there is one

[coykiko]

I have the same problems with my steam games, they don't crash, but since I have a low end laptop I have to lower the resolution to adjust, but when that happens I get a major screen flicker.

[cliftonkung]

My steam games load and nothing happen, can you help me?

[uhhhhNick]

I had windows 8 pro and did the upgrade yesterday, well this evening I went to log on and my keyboard and mouse wouldn't work, I tried installing drivers again through the recovery command prompt to no avail, it said my OS was locked. I winded up just formatting the drive and reinstalling windows 8 pro, since I had my OS on a dedicated SSD in raid-0 it was no problem, didn't lose anything but had to reinstall a lot of stuff. Such a pain in the ass

[uglynerfherder]

Most games crash while I play, and this has just started happening when I downloaded 8.1

[MagmaRhino]

That's what I suspected however because I could not find an update it didn't matter to me, with windows 8 games worked and 8.1 they didn't so I left it at that. I didn't test any D3D games

[thestaticpunch]

its a Dev Preview not ment for gaming on its ment for people to program apps/games on so that when windows 8.1 dose come out things work on it

[Rexfuyther]

Sounds like the games not running is caused by DirectX not being compatible yet. Minecraft runs on OpenGL iirc. Do non D3D games run?

[MagmaRhino]

I'm not claiming 8.1 is broken, I'm simply saying there are quite a few serious issues that CAN occur and that severely hinder any system. Depending on your individual setup, the results may vary. You got lucky, but if you read the other comments you will see numerous accounts of problems due to this update, it isn't just me. Also, since I made this video I believe nVidia released new drivers which are more compatible with 8.1 to fix any broken games

[SWAGIEVANY]

 I'm also having the same problem every time I try to play a game on it, the screen will flicker 10 minutes or so after I start up the game, then the game shuts down and I'm looking for ways to solve the problem if anybody knows how to fix it please let me know. 

[rjl]

I installed windows 8.1 preview a few days ago and since then iv noticed sluggishness in the start screen and bad internet performance!

[Braynnorth]

I am having audio problems, like everything throught my headsite speakers is really low! can anyone help me out?