Manually run a virus scan in Windows 8/8.1

It's bugged me since 8 came out that I couldn't "get to" Defender. I knew it was supposed to be there but the task tray icon is gone. Well no more!

Put your mouse in top right corner until the right hand charms pop out.

Click on search.

Type Windows Defender

Choose Windows Defender from the results.

You can change your settings, make sure you have the most updated dats, or run a manual scan, from the interface presented, which resembles the Windows 7 Security Essentials UI.

Configuring Windows Updates. 0% Complete. Please do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 1 of 5.

I get this type of message all the time on shutting down and it hangs my laptop. Something in Windows Update gets stuck. A lot.

Here’s a couple of the fixes I’ve used semi- (temporarily) successfully:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358
• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/troubleshoot-problems-with-installing-updates

Microsoft shoots self in foot AGAIN

• http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/xbox-music-preview-144504
• http://www.winsupersite.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/microsoft-itunes-xbox-music-144505
• http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2012/10/slick-xbox-music-coming-to-xbox-windows-8-but-windows-7-not-so-much
• http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/14/microsoft-xbox-music/
• http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/15/3502846/xbox-music-windows-7-windows-phone-support

“Hey I’ve got an idea, let’s release an amazing new music service, and completely shun our biggest user-base and our most popular product!” (not an actual quote, just a dramatization)

This is Microsoft’s idea of how to roll out a new music service – don’t offer it to the hundreds of millions of users of their current flagship consumer PC operating system, Windows (7).

Or here’s another great idea, make it first available on your game console (XBOX). Who listens to music while they are trying to play a game or watch TV (and I don’t mean watch TV through the XBOX)? Oh but there’s an additional $60 per year charge to listen to music on your game console versus other platforms.

How do they come up with this stuff? This is a clear case of management by committee. Straight stupid. When they force me off my Zune subscription with the 10 songs to keep per month, I’m going straight to Spotify with my money.

Install Win8 Consumer Preview 32 bit in VmWare Player 4

Most of the posts I looked at for installing win8 on VmWare mentioned the term "slam dunk". Not so much for me.

Here's the resource that eventually helped me out, even though it is for VmWare Workstation and the dev preview instead:

http://www.mywindowsclub.com/resources/5081-Install-Windows-VMWare-Workstation.aspx

I'll try to detail where I went wrong, and what the keys were to getting back on track. First let me note that I believe you need to upgrade to at least Player 4 for this to work.

Wrong:
1. Choosing "Other" as the OS - you can install Windows 8 like that, but you won't get the "tools", which for me meant no networking.

2. So then I chose Win7, but pointed to my ISO in the VM setup. That led to the player running an unattended install file for win7 on top of the win8 setup. That kept failing and looping with an error on the product key. There seem to be indications that "removing" the "floppy" in the hardware portion of the VM setup can help with that, but it didn't help me.

Right:
Choose "Win7 as the OS (with the 32 bit win8). But choose operating system as None/Do later. Then mount the iso as the dvd after the VM fails to boot, and restart the VM. You wind up in setup without the unattended install script, but with win7 VmWare tools, which is exactly what you want.

Good luck, I'm off to play with win8!