Not Just Another Weblog

Windows 8 took away something useful we've been using since the mid 1990's (in Windows 95 & NT 4).  In unrelated news , Steve Ballmer has been fired .  But still--we have to live with the abomination which is Windows 8.  If you have a touch screen, it's somewhat usable.  But if you just have a pointing device, i.e. mouse, touchpad, pointing stick, etc.; tough. This is crap. The Windows 8.1 upgrade/update/patch/lipstick-on-a-pig gives us back a start button without the start menu (more crap), and the option to boot to the desktop, rather than the Metro interface or whatever they're calling it this week.  Crap-crap-crap. Yours truly has been using and customizing the Start Menu for years.  The classic Start Menu (an option in XP & Vista, but taken away in Windows 7) allowed quick access to additional icons, e.g. a new shortcut on the classic start menu in XP named "Word" meant two keystrokes opened Word--tapping the Windows key (on a 'Win

Unbelievable . A Google search for this returns lots of hits, however the variety of solutions seem to have mixed results. This happened to me most recently in a shiny new Windows XP SP3 Pro virtual machine in VMware Workstation 9.x.  The only item installed was, as many might expect, VMware tools. I am a fan of stopping the windows update service, deleting the c:\windows\softwareupdates folder, and then starting the windows update service.  Does that fix this?  Of course not.  (Actually, my usual screw-up is the clock being horribly off....) I installed Chrome and MBSA 2.2.  MBSA threw an error.  Chrome worked like a charm. Ultimately this forum , this KB article , and THIS DOWNLOAD FIXED IT .  Many reboots. Yes, XP is going EOL very soon. You know what, that Mac Airbook with the ridiculously short screen (both models) is starting to look pretty good.  (I really miss those 4:3 monitors.  Stinking display manufacturers...). This VM was originally plagued with getting a