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I am thinking of upgrading my laptop to Windows 8 64 bit and would be pleased if you could confirm that all will be well with the new OS, (I am almost sure it will be, but...)
Also will there ever be a work around to get the ATAPI and CDFS working with SATA on windows machines? at present I have renamed the code which refers to this in VA so as to be able to run the programme successfully. Having mentioned the above I have not needed it for quite some time as I keep a backup of the Hard Drive so can load it back directly into the filer window in VA on the Windows C drive.

Sorry for the delay in replying. All of our current products work on Windows 8 provided the User Account
Control settings are set to 'never notify'. See this article:

http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/support/a ... /index.htm

Support documents for Windows 8 have now joined those for Windows 7 and Windows Vista:

http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/support/a ... ndexpc.htm

The issue with optical drives that are not ATAPI compatible is a hardware/firmware issue on the drive itself and is not related
to the version of Windows in use.

However I am please to see that under Windows 8 RISC OS can work with some external USB CD/DVD drives,
something that rarely/never worked properly on Windows XP.

Thank you for the reply, I have now upgraded to Windows 8. and VA was transferred automatically along with other programmes which were in Windows 7 and it worked correctly, unfortunately I then had to re-install Windows 8 as a clear install. I now have problems with VA I installed the latest upgrade for Risc PC SA and added the "[HostClock]" line as usual before running VA for the first time, I expected to get the usual "insert the password etc" but this did not happen and the programme ran as normal except each time I got a message "access Violation" which I cleared and still all was normal except the ReadMe file loads (the one which should only load at first time of running VA and is displayed each time VA is started. I have looked at the file named VA in which are stored the pass code and a few other changes, these had not been done, so I looked at the back up files I kept before re-installing Windows 8 and changed them. I still get the access violation window and the README file. As I am sure you can understand this can get annoying, can you help please.

I have un-installed and re-installed about 3 times, still same problem as above. The programme seems to work correctly in all other respects.

You haven't altered the Windows User Account Control slider setting to 'Never Notify'

http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/support/a ... /index.htm

Thanks for your reply, I have managed to get the Access violation to stop occurring but still have the "first" readme file loading at boot up of VA, no really a problem. Sorry, but yes, I had already changed the user account details, as always. ( I did forget but the programme would not run, so remembered and did it then.)

I have now solved the problems of "access Violation". I always kept a copy of HardDisc4 on a partition in case some thing went wrong with the working installation, and to be able to copy this over the top of the HardDisc4 which is always installed when re-installing from the CD. I was puzzled when I ran the programme for the "First Time" and did not need to copy the harddisc4 to the programme and when I tried to delete some files the "access Violation" returned. I therefore did a search for HardDisc4 and found that there were 4 files called HardDisc4, I was unable to see them in the normal way but was able to delete them from the search result window, again all appears to be running well. Hope this information may be of some use!

I am still having problems with Windows 8.1 and Virtual Acorn. The problems is that Windows insists on keeping copies of files in various locations on the C:drive,users,Allan,AppData,Local,VirtualStore,ProgramFiles,VirtualAcorn,VirtualRPC-AdjustSA,HardDisc4,!Allan,!A-FDirs, and so on, There is also a partial copy of !Boot in the same location.

This could also be causing the problem which will not allow me to change the !Boot.Boot configuration options RUN, LOOKAT etc.,

Am I the only one, or have you had other users with the same problems since installing Windows 8.1, the programme worked fine in Windows 7 and 8.0!

In summary when a file is changed in Real RiscPC and then copied over the old file in Virtual Acorn via the LAN I end up with two files with the same name, one is correct with the correct Icon and will load the other has a ? mark and will not load and neither can be deleted, only get an access violation error message. If I go to one of the location as mentioned above they will be found there and can then be removed from within Windows, and also removed from the HardDisc4 again from within Windows. Then the file can be moved from the Real Risc PC to the Virtual Acorn via LAN without any problem...until the next time! Have you any idea what windows is doing? I know you are busy with RISC OS at the moment but hope you will be able to get around to solving the above problem soon. In the mean time I can get around the problem, but it is a pain. I have not found away round the boot problem.

Try switching off 'System Protection', as this is what is causing this issue.

Control Panel > System > System Protection (listed in left hand pane) > Click Configure > Click Disable System Protection > Click OK

System Protection enables File History (aka Volume Shadow Copy (VSC)).