More Windows 8

I had not moved on the adapter mentioned at the end of reference 1, but all of a sudden the newly upgraded (HP Pavilion) PC, not connected to the Internet, announced that it would like to be updated. All a bit of a puzzle. How did it know?

So I thought I better had move, although, as it happened, Staples had something which looked suitable from Belkin (a solid looking brand from which I buy four way surge protectors) for £25 or so, so I did not get as far as Maplin. The young lady on the till at Staples hadn't got a clue, although she was able to read the box to me. But she was backed up by a chap who was very confident that it would all work as intended. But he then weakened slightly by saying that these sorts of things were always a bit of a gamble, you could never be sure. Buy.

Get the thing home to read that while it is good for Windows XP and Windows 7, it says nothing about Windows 8. Furthermore, when I put the installation disc in the disc which had only recently been used for the Windows 8 upgrade, I find that Windows could no longer see the disc. Poked around a bit in control panel to no avail.

So today, humped the thing downstairs to connect it to the router again with the trusty yellow cable.

Step 1, check that the Belkin installation disc is readable on the other Windows 8 PC.

Step 2, plug the subject PC back into the Internet. Restart it to see if it was in an update mood, which it wasn't. But it was pretty busy in the background, none the less.

Step 3, phone up the helpful people at BT and see what they can do. They poke around a bit, then put me on hold and then, after a while, return to announce that there is quite a lot of stuff on the Microsoft site that they use about this very problem. A popular number. He has three possible fixes, he does the first and then we sit back and wait while the PC installs the thing. Maybe 5 minutes later the missing disc drive has sprung back into life.

Step 4, put in the Belkin disc and get on with installing its software. The PC being Windows 8 does not seem to be an issue. Wait for half an hour or so while 78 or so Windows updates which have now caught the PC up are installed. That all goes smoothly and the little widget, sticking maybe an inch out of its USB port, is now delivering the Internet.

Step 5, having come across all sorts of MS malware protection stuff sitting around in Task Manager in the course of step 2, confirm earlier decision not to install Norton. We shall see what we shall see.

In the meantime, here endeth the experiment in offline Windows 8.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/windows-8-resumed.html.