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Is it Advanced Start Up you are looking for under update and security. Click bottom left icon/type Recovery In “Find a Setting” and then click on Recovery/ then there is a link at the bottom of Advance Recovery Tools “if you are having trouble with PC…..” this takes you to Update and Security/ Advance Startup.

That’s where I was in the first place. Doesn’t help, but thanks for verifying I was looking in the right place – in W8.1 it used to be in that general area, but the option seems to have gone, or been moved or suppressed.

My comments were a summary only, but re their own article on Netflix, they probably didn’t need to reference it because I told them I’m already on an admin-level account where the problem is happening, and the problem doesn’t happen on a normal-level account newly created for testing on the same machine. So there’s no point in going to that article. And I don’t use a guest account either (its disabled). So the first link gets me no brownie points.

Re the second link, thanks but I found that slightly different error numbers can and often do talk about quite unrelated issues. I’ve been exploring a lot of links on the web for similar error messages but they all ended up in dead ends. For example, the message you refers to only applies to machines with AMD video cards. Mine has an Intel HD Graphics 5300 (Lenovo Yoga 3 13 Ultrabook). I wasn’t prepared to remove Hyper-V on spec because I didn’t meet the prerequisites for that error and nobody told me how to restore Hyper-V if the test doesn’t work or how to check whether Hyper-V is enabled or not. Besides, if it was Hyper-V then why isn’t it an issue on the normal-user account? I might research this angle a bit more, but I think it’ll be another loose end.

Thanks for the suggestions. As Thomas Edison said, the thousands of tests that didn’t result in the desired outcome (i.e. light bulbs that work reliably) are not failures, they’re in all cases learnings!

Update: I found how to check Hyper-V (its in “Turn Windows Features on or off”), and it was off. Also VT-x was turned off in the UEFI/Bios. I turned them on and rebooted just to see if it made a difference. Nope. Still have the same Netflix Windows Store App error message. No difference. I’ll put it back the way it woz.

Cheers,
Paul

Glad to hear it’s working in Firefox.

You might check on the Netflix Support page and see if they have more info on their app…

https://help.netflix.com/search?q=Netflix+Windows+Store+app

I’m chatting with Netflix Tech Support now and they will research a solution over the next few days.

Summary of what I’ve tried so far:
1. Uninstalled Silverlight, cleaned the Registry with ccleaner & reinstalled Silverlight: that fixed the FireFox browser netflix viewer
2. Uninstalled/rebooted/reinstalled the video drivers downloaded from Lenovo & updated them from Windows update/rebooted again: Netflix App still gives error code W8156-80040153 on playing a video
3. Updated my system BIOS (there was a new fix for battery problems last month): not fixed
4. Uninstalled and reinstalled the Netflix Windows Store App (many times): no difference
5. The netflix windows store app works in a new standard-user account set up just to test, but not in my main login admin-group account.
6. Tried other video programs in case its a content-related issue: same problem

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I’ll post again when & if the tech support comes up with things to try
Regards,
Paul

Right, I answered the Firefox DRM question because you had mentioned you fixed it for Windows…

Since Netflix uses Silverlight, I would suggest brushing up on Microsoft DRM with Silverlight, and learning how it works…

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838192%28VS.95%29.aspx

Thanks for the pointer to Silverlight. So I uninstalled Silverlight and rebooted. Then I cleaned the registry with my favourite tool CCLEANER and rebooted again. Reinstalled Silverlight, and Netflix is now working properly within Firefox on my main account. Thanks for this tip, it really helped!

The Netflix Windows Store app is still broken on my main account (works okay on a separate account, so there’s some config problem somewhere), but at least I don’t have to switch accounts now, as I can watch it happily in FF. Thanks again for the pointer!

Thanks, but that doesn’t help because the problem occurs in the Windows 8 App as well as firefox, so its not FF specific.

Yes you can and I did. Here’s my scenario:

I purchased a Lenovo laptop (Yoga 2) with Win 8.0 but I wanted the Pro version so I could use Bitlocker, so I purchased an upgrade to Win 8.1 Pro from MS online. The upgrade went fine, but a few months later the Yoga 2 developed an unresolvable touchscreen hardware fault (I went through all the faultfinding/system refresh/system factory reset process with Lenovo and the problem persisted). The machine was replaced with a Yoga 3 13 which had Windows 8.1 standard in the factory build. I tried to upgrade this to Win 8.1 Pro with my previously purchased key and it installed okay but wouldn’t activate automatically. I called MS’s manual activation phone number and got to speak to a human (nice to know they still have those, at least I don’t think it was a simulacrum!) who asked me for my 40 digit number from the manual activation system. No other questions asked. He read back to me another 40 digit activation code that I plugged into the manual activation system and the machine successfully completed activation. So MS themselves have reactivated it (and, by implication “authorised” the transfer). Been as good as gold ever since. My guess is that if the original Yoga 2 machine tried to turn on and connect to the net with my key, it’d get deactivated automatically, as only one activated machine per upgrade license is allowed.

I should add, that if you upgrade the Win 8.1 Pro to Win 10 instead of purchase a new license, I think that snuffs the Win 8.1 license (i.e. can’t use both at the same time on different machines).

When Win 8 originally came out MS tried to lock the license to a single machine for life. They rescinded that after a massive public outcry, and now the EULA allows the license to be transferred (but not duplicated).

HTH
Paul

Hi, the number (18) appears when you look at the “LibrariesMusic” root folder. When you go to a subfolder you don’t see the number (well I don’t anyway). Also if you navigate directly to the “Music” folder location without going through the libraries (which isn’t a real folder anyway) you won’t see the number either.

If you want dates on your folders, you can edit the folder name to put it there. I use the international format YYYY-MM-DD in front of the folder name so it sorts sensibly. Can’t edit the dates in the metadata here, sorry. However if you go to the folder with the MP3 files in it, you can right-click each music file and bring up “properties”, then click on the “Details” tab, then you can update the metadata (aka “properties”) for each track right in Windows. Track by track, I’m afraid, but no additional software needed.

HTH
Paul

I use SplashID Safe Pro ($1.99 a month or $19.99 per year). There’s a free version too. It works across Apple Iphone/iPad/Mac, and Windows (I’m using it on Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Windows phone 8.1), Android and Chrome. You can sync via the cloud (encrypted) or you can sync device to device. Ticks all my boxes.
Paul

Hi, Thanks for an interesting article.
Another interesting encryption solution for the cloud (DropBox, OneDrive or others) is Viivo (free for personal use, paid for commercial use). I’ve been using this for a little while and really like it. Basically it creates a watch drive on your PC, outside of the cloud, that’s unencrypted (you can convert folders under this to encrypted folders if needed with Windows Pro) and anything you put in this folder gets encrypted to your cloud drive for backup and access on other machines (which also need Viivo to decrypt). So your stuff in the cloud is secure. I have it on two PCs and it syncs happily via DropBox in my case between the PCs. I just have to remember to file my sensitive personal stuff in Viivo’s watch container rather than directly in DropBox.
The “old” favourite WinZip also creates encrypted Zip files too if you want. But it’s not free.
Also, I’d like to know more about “encrypted” hard drives and SSDs etc., such as the OPAL drives sold with many laptops these days. How do I know what stuff is encrypted on these or even if the encryption is actually working? I’ve never been able to find out and the only search results I got back were enterprise-level software, way too pricey and difficult for personal use. I asked Lenovo one time about it and they weren’t able to shed any light on it either. In case the PC goes bung, I’d like to know if I can transfer the drive to another and use the encryption key (which I don’t know where to find) to do data recovery. Or is it tied to the PC’s TPM somehow? There’s zero information on how to ensure OPAL drives are actually encrypting their contents. It would remove the need for other software solutions if I could have this assurance.
For Bitlocker whole disk encryption of the boot drive at least (as I’ve done on my Win 8.1 Pro Lenovo Yoga 3), if you don’t have a TPM (trusted platform module) in your PC (just like I don’t have), you have to change the PC settings to allow Bitlocker to work in passphrase-only mode. It’s not obvious how to do this and I have to web-search it each time (dare I say “google it” or “bing it”?).
Paul

I did a factory restore on my ThinkPad Twist a couple of weeks ago. It used to be on Win 8.1, but the factory restopre reverted it back to Win 8.0 (pretty much as I expected), then I had to apply hundreds of updates before I could apply Win 8.1, then more updates and I could install Win 8.1 Update 1. Then the final set of updates. The updates to get it back to current level were gigabytes in size, and took hours/days.

I use Allway Sync http://allwaysync.com/?a=1 to backup my data files on a daily basis (I run it manually). I use Acronis True Image 2014 for the odd disk image/clone so I can have a fully restorable system. Problem with ATI on Win 8.1 is that the UEFI won’t let it reboot to the cloning program unless you change your UEFI settings to allow it, and not all PCs allow you to do this. I can do it ok on my ThinkPad Twist, but not on my Lenovo Yoga 2 13 for some reason. Guess I’ll need a new Clone solution for the Yoga that plays well with UEFI. Does anyone have ideas for that?

Depends on what you want to store. I got 50 GB with Dropbox for free (forget how) and I’m using half that maybe. Also Flikr has 1 TB (terabyte = 1000 GB) available for free for photos and personally-filmed videos (like from your own cam or phone). Don’t know about you but I have a couple of hundred GP of family pics I wanna keep, but they don’t need encryption really at all. Anything sensitive you don’t want seen you should encrypt yourself, as many governments request (==”require”) cloud providers to give them a way to decrypt the cloud=stored files for law-enforcement purposes. Any back door can be malappropriated in my view.

I’m running the 32 bit version of Office 2013 Home & Business quite happily under Win 7 Pro 64 bit edition.
I’m also running 32 bit Office 2013 Professional on a Win 8 Pro 64 bit system and it’s great there, especially with the touch-screen features under Win 8.

Copernic Desktop Search now supports Windows 8. It’s not free though. There’s also X1 Desktop Search. However they do also search inside Outlook emails if that helps you (which I find useful too – I can search the desktop and Outlook at the same time).

Under Windows 8, I don’t think it natively searches inside files any more like Win 7 did. Anyway, as Medico says, you can go to your W8 start screen and just type anywhere – then a search bar will pop up on the right and you can select what kind of search you want: Apps, Settings or Files. It’s not very granular. You can find more info here: http://windows7themes.net/microsoft-how-to-search-on-windows-8-file-search-settings-search-app-search.html.

Another way to search in Win 8 if you’re searching for files is to open the File Explorer wherever you want and click in the search bar in the Ribbon. This can search on any disk such as USB disks. When you click in the Search bar and/or type anything there you’ll see a Search Tools/Search Tab at the top of the ribbon that wasn’t there before. You can use this to create a much more granular file search than by the other Win 8 native methods. I’ve included a screen shot so you can see the options.
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This feature will allow you to search non-indexed locations if you want.

all you’d need to do would be to change the UEFI Secure Boot settings to allow uncertified programs to boot at boot time. The Win 8 default on factory-installed systems is to tie down the UEFI so it can only boot Win 8. That’s how my ThinkPad Twist was configured. To get it to allow the likes of Symanted Desktop Encryption 10.3.1 to run, and also Acronis Tru Image Clone Disk to work I had to set the UEFI to allow Legacy Boot. To get the UEFI settings up on my thinkpad, I could either do a special restart from Win 8 or I could power down the hardware and restart it, pressing F12 before the Thinkpad startup logo transferred to Windoze 8. This process also allows me to boot off USB-stick operating systems like Linux if I want. However, YMMV, because different Mfrs might have tied down the UEFI so you can’t even change the secure boot setting there, but that’s the first place you should look anyway.
(p.s. you shouldn’t clone an encrypted drive. It can get messy and make recovery difficult if you invalidate the recovery token).