well this is probably the end of the line for this particular machine but I had upgraded from Vista over to windows 7.
it worked but everything was really hinky.
for instance I had to load the audio drivers every time I started up the machine.how close are you to building a Windows 8 machine down at the cat?wondering if that touch screen is going to be cool enough to want one.
WSS

I'm seriously thinking of getting Win8 for my new build, just to be ready for touch screen in the future. Also, there's these classic shell enhancements for Win8 that seem to be very popular (eliminating the use of metro app...) which I believe are free? to DL. 

funny the 3 issues we have had with win8 have been on sonar systems.
just had another, we installed Cubase and no issues
 
we always do a long play back record loop (hours) this is always where it fails..  freezes drops outs
if we don't do the long play back it seems fine.

Scott, is there any particular interface that this fails with?  e.g. USB or Firewire?

hmm USB I think has been all will have to check. its been a very odd issue
its the first time in I cant tell you how many yrs I am actually contacting cake support

Save a disk image before clicking "install."

I don't like Windows 8 because I am facing too much hang problem..Window 7 is best..Checking the worth of the website:
 

Not a w8 issue. It is a driver issue, prolly the audio interface.
 
 

Home built AMD machine here originally with Win7 with no issues with X2a.  Upgraded to Win8 (without touch screen) again with no X2a issues.  There are a few programs that restore the 'Start' button, all free, the two most popular seem to be Classic Shell and Pokki for Win8, the latter being my preferred option.
 
Upgrade has been painless as I used the 'Transfer Wizard' that came with my Samsung SSD.