Testing Windows 8.1 Industry Pro on an Intel MinnowBoard

Microsoft just recently updated their Windows version for industrial use, called Windows 8.1 Industry to the latest OS base version 8.1.

I wanted to give this new release a spin, and wanted to try the 32-bit version on an Intel MinnowBoard (the original version, not MAX). After following the instructions generally available, I was successfully able to install and boot Windows 8.1 on the board. I've connected and SSD disk into the SATA port of the board, and this works fine, except that it can be little tricky to know which medium is used for booting, if you have both a bootable SSD drive and a bootable USB stick connected to the board.

I also noticed that by default, Windows cannot find drivers for the Gigabit Ethernet connector (RJ45), and so far, I haven't found suitable drivers for this. I could find some older drivers from Intel, but they didn't work. However, you can get yourself an USB based Ethernet adapter. For instance, I'm using one from HP, and it works perfect.

That said, Windows itself works great on the board, and I'm able to run my favorite .NET and C# code there. Excellent!