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I went to the MWB site and do not see anything that is of that exact description.  Can you point me to the right spot?  Another option is to approach MWB support but have not done that yet.  The problem started at the same time I removed MWB professional, but could be co-incidence.

Well, after all that, and ten minutes or more of blue screen and percentage incrementing, I get the message, “Windows Installation Has Failed” with no further information  and I am back at where I began.  Maybe there is a log file?  Nothing was mentioned.

I suspect whatever locked the folders initially preventing Windows Update from installing updates thwarted this process.

The problem began initially right about when I had installed a free trial of Malwarebytes full meal deal and then uninstalled it because it was far too restrictive.  I suspect that MWB locked something and did not unlock on removal.  Too many developers do a bad job of uninstalling their products and leave all sorts of crap on the machine.

Maybe I’ll have to reinstall the same software and remove it again or use revo to make sure it is all gone. However I suspect the permissions on some folders have been changed but don’t know which or how.

Thanks.  Very nice, clear video. I’m doing this right now.

I had a second issue besides the update problem and that was that the Internet on that machine was intermittent and often non-functional, so downloading was unlikely to succeed and workarounds are time-consuming.  I suspected the wifi driver but Windows, being Windows though the driver was just fine. Tethering to my phone did not work either so something in the workings was jiggered and no amount of sleuthing could solve the intermittent lack of DNS.

I finally thought, what the heck, I’ll pay for Ccleaner to update the drivers and paid for a subscription.  (At first I declined the offer but each time I declined, the price came down to where I figured, why not and bought).

Even when I managed to get enough Internet to download Ccleaner, installing on that machine was difficult.  Install failed a few times but after a few reboots it took and I ran the driver scanner and it said that about twenty drivers were old.

I replaced the wifi driver first and saw an immediate improvement and then, with solid Internet updated the rest.

So, now I am downloading Windows and will follow your instructions to see if that unlocks the directories that prevent Windows Update from working.   Here’s hoping.

Sounds like you have interference or a huge house.

Have you taken a look around using Inssider?

http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

I have used OpenDNS in the past, but found that, on occasion and although I has set no restrictions, it suddenly decided I could not watch YouTube or access some site or another due to my ‘policy’, then later reverted to working — as far as I could tell — properly. I had not set restrictions.

Currently, I use Google DNS rather than my ISP’s DNS, as I figure it is probably very accurate. See https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq It claims to be unfiltered and says,

” Does Google Public DNS offer the ability to block or filter out unwanted sites?No. Google Public DNS is purely a DNS resolution and caching server; it does not perform any blocking or filtering of any kind. We believe that such functionality is best performed by the client. If you are interested in enabling such functionality, you should consider installing a client-side application or browser add-on for this purpose.

For site filtering, I have used Spybot Search and Destroy’s immunization for many years now and consider it a must-have. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

I run the scan periodically, but don’t worry to much about some of the cookies it turns up. It has on occasion found more undesirable things on machines for me, though. I generally use it as part of my clean-up of friends’ machines, along with (indispensable) Malwarebytes.

My understanding is that this free application (I found it is worth a donation) maintains a list of bad IPs that that it injects into the HOSTS file on the user’s computer and silently and unobtrusively redirects those IPs to 127.0.0.0 It seems completely unobtrusive, but needs regular manual updating and immunization. I tried the new beta and found it unintuitive and slow, but the tried-and-true 1.62 version has served me well on many machines. It has other protections which I can’t claim to really understand, but which seem to be reasonably lightweight, and, of course, there is the scan.

I installed Win8 Preview on a netbook recently. The netbook had come with Vista, then had Win7 Home Premium installed over top and the preview was installed over that.

The netbook was pretty slow, but usable before the install, since I had added and removed a lot of programs over time and made the mistake of running an “optimization” program on it at one point in the past. The installation went perfectly and I have had a chance to play with the result.

I should explain here that there are six screens in front of me — three computers including the netbook, and three large monitors attached to them. The computers are connected over a wireless router using Synergy software and managed with one mouse and one keyboard. The cursor moves seamlessly from screen to screen and I have defined no corners or edges, so when I go off a bottom corner on one, the cursor appears on the next screen.

This probably contributed to my puzzlement when the computer came up with the metro screen, since metro mouse activities involve moving to precise areas on the fringe of the screen. At any rate, I did manage to get to my desktop which had been preserved from the previous O/S and which was identical except for a missing start orb.

I had the presence of mind to press F1 and help of sorts appeared, but the first question anyone would ask, about the start button, was not answered. I did, however manage to get a link in the help system to a forum which deals with exactly that: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-desktop/what-happened-to-the-start-icon-on-the-desktop-in/74cc7983-20e9-4a6e-a7d9-a832d4187388

As for performance, I was pleased to see that the system runs much better with Win8 than it ever did on Win7 and that I can even run some of the Windows eye candy on this rather limited machine. Under Win 7, I had to turn off almost every appearance feature except aliasing on type to get acceptable performance. I can’t believe that I am now running transparency and shadows, etc. (I’ll probably turn them off again once the novelty wears off) IMO, whatever is under the hood is running better than 7, and I love 7.

I should mention that I had to leave the machine on for several days so that the indexing and other background activities could complete before the processor usage dropped down from nearly 100% much of the time.

BTW, to anyone looking at Linux for an escape from Windows, I can only say “been there done that”, and you will most likely be disappointed after using Windows. I have run many of the various distros over the years and they are good if your needs are few and you don’t do much heavy lifting or customization, but nothing beats Windows as a desktop machine IMO for healing itself and flexibility. Updates in Windows are painless and seldom break anything important. Not so any customized Linux I have used. My advice is to invest some time into Win 8 and learn to work with it and bend it to your will. Doing so will take much less time than trying to keep a Linux running and up to date. I have a few busted Linuxes around here on various machines and they are not fixable, by me anyhow, or by anyone on the various Linux help forums. I can’t say that I have ever had a recent Windows install that could not be salvaged. (Touch wood).

I expect we’ll see changes in this pre-release before Win 8 goes gold. Personally, I would like to see the start button reinstated as an option at least, but if it isn’t there are several workarounds and there will be more.

The machine I installed on is a play-around machine and one that was almost useless the way it was. It is working well now and I will continue to tinker until I get it the way I want.

Will I install Win 8 preview on any of my everyday workhorse machines? Not very likely at present, but after I figure things out better, maybe.

Will I buy Win 8 when it goes gold? Probably. I have upgraded to almost every new version of Windows when it came out ever since Windows first came out. Not only that, I almost always installed over an existing O/S, always with results I found acceptable.

I didn’t read the whole thread (sorry), but when we started looking today for place to put our many family pix, I read your article first, then immediately took another look at our old faithfuls, Dropbox and Sugarsync.

I have been a Dropbox user forever. Free at first, but then decided to pay after I got several mobile devices and found it indispensable . I am not quite as fond of Sugarsync, only due to lack of LAN sync (but there is a workaround), BUT both have really nice photo albums and no ads or come-ons.

Of course, you have to have your own photo editing software or use an online service, but both of these services keep a local copy on my machines and one in the cloud. Both have good web interfaces.

I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but all the services you reviewed suck. I am really annoyed and sad when people send me a link to anything in any of them because I know I am going to be subjected to inferior pix and a lot of advertising.

These services — Dropbox and Sugarsync –are good and do the job right — IMO, anyhow.

I have used Password Safe for many years and keep the file in dropbox. That way, I have access on all my computers and my phone and my Galaxy Tab.

It is free, makes automatic backups and keeps old versions of passwords if desired. It can be installed on a USB drive and carried around, too.

It has always worked well for me.

I have been using eMail Client for my Windows 7 client with great success. It offers everything that any version of Outlook does with two important additional features; a self healing database, and automatic updates from the author.

That is this one, I trust?

As it happens, I don’t like WLM. no need to list the reasons, I hope. There are too many, and some have not been mentioned, like the fact that it slows down as the database fills up, and can have unfixable problems. The new version that will appear on your machine soon is another minus, if you haven’t updated yet. UI bloat.

I liked OE despite the bugs and and moved to WLM when I moved to Win7. Now I find that other email software will not import from WLM and I am stuck.

(What I would really like is a utility which would go through all my archives going back to 1990 from Edora, Pagasus, OE, etc and make one dB out of them and elinminate dups. — dream on).

Anyhow, last time I used Evolution, it seemed a lot like OE, so I will give the Windoze version a shot. (thanks for the tip). I may still have the import from WLM problem, though. Haven’t tried yet.

BTW, for Gmail fans, there is an offline feature which will download up to five years of your emails and you can then work in your browser, even offline.

As for showing pictures, that is a simple setting you can set for your frequent contacts and others. I’m seeing all the WS images in Gmail.

It pays to take a half-hour every so often to see what has changed in Gmail by examining the settings.

I guess you all know that you can make free phone calls from Gmail?”