BOINC 6.12.34 ok in Windows 8 Dev Preview

[AMDave]

BOINC 6.12.34 runs ok in Windows 8 Dev Preview
BOINC didn't install on the first try.
Had to re-do and select Advanced settings during the setup and select the 'use unprivileged account' check box.
That worked.
ran a couple of short-wu tests.
surveill completed and validated
mersenne all failed at about 10 seconds.
CAS completed and validated.
chess960 could not find a suitable platform.

Only running a couple of BOINC WUs then shutting the VM down. Lots of other things to do.
Just waiting for a wu-prop wu to finish before shutdown so the data is collected for the records.
There will be some issues to be sure, but the devs will likely lead the curve with new versions of client apps where necessary.

Interesting things installing Win8 in a VM:
The VM HDD default was 8GB. Win8 installer said no, needs 10GB.
Made a 12GB VM HDD installer said recommended size is 17.5GB
Made a 20GB VM HDD installed no problems.

I haven't tried it but it looks like the installer may allow you to install across multiple drives with the 'extend' feature. Nice.

After copying the Windows files, the installer took an age to expand them.
The install might have been faster with more cpus.
I did the install with 2 cpus available.
After the install I stopped the VM and added additional cpus.
Win8 shows them as available in the Device list but the OS does not recognize them or use them or allow any app to use the additional cores available.
Other editions of win have picked up changes in the number of available cpus in a VM without any problem.
I can't see a way to force it to recognize them even after hardware change detection and os reboots.
I'll try a fresh install tomorrow with max cpus for the full effect.

Tested various sound h/w but drivers not found for ac97 or es1370.
pcspkr not recognized in the device list at all.
but this is in a vm so not a real test.
Others have posted that all of their drivers have been found.

Observed various errors and warnings in event logs about registry locks and services that didn't always start on boot and sent them back to MS.

Quite a clean usable interface even with the mouse.
A few different behaviours around window management, but once you get used to the start menu not being there you get used to clicking on the desktop tile in metro.
It is not bad as some of the xenophobes are wailing about.
Tried out various apps.
I quickly found thru process of elimination that ctrl-ESC sends apps to 'background running' and returns you to metro.
There's a few posts around already where folks like myself have got stuck in an app so this is an important thing to learn.
Maybe they will bring back Alt-F4 and ctrl-W, who knows.
Quite a few changes in the land of keyboard shortcuts, but that's not the aim of this edition of win anyway.

Getting back to some more serious stuff now. Just thought I'd let you know that BOINC works