Month: July 2014

Windows 8: How to Fix Windows Update and/or Windows Defender Check for Updates Failure

I had a very irritating problem with my Acer Aspire V5 notebook computer running Microsoft Windows 8.1 for the past several months. The computer was not able to update itself. When I launched Windows Update, it would just hang forever checking for new updates, so I couldn’t even figure out what updates were needed, let alone download and install it. At the same time, Windows Defender would constantly bug me that my virus definitions needed to be updated, but every time I tried to download the updates, it would either hang forever, or fail.

After wasting many hours trying to find a solution, I finally fixed it yesterday. It turns out that the two problems were related. It seems that Windows Defender uses Windows Update as a back end to download its virus definitions, because my fix got both of them working again. So, without adieu, here is the procedure for getting your Windows Update and Windows Defender to successfully check for updates again:

Step 1: Download Windows Update Powershell Module

Open up your favorite Web Browser, and point it to:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/2d191bcd-3308-4edd-9de2-88dff796b0bc

Click the blue box labeled PSWindowsUpdate.zip and save the file to your computer.

(Direct download for PSWindowsUpdate.zip: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/2d191bcd-3308-4edd-9de2-88dff796b0bc/file/41459/43/PSWindowsUpdate.zip)

Step 2: Extract files from PSWindowsUpdate.zip

Extract the files in PSWindowsUpdate.zip to %WINDIR%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules.

If you do this step correctly, in most computers, you will have a folder called C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\PSWindowsUpdate

Step 3: Launch Windows Power Shell with Administrator Privileges

From the Control Panel, open Administrative Tools. Right click Windows Powershell ISE, and select Run As Administrator:

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Step 4: Import the PSWindowsUpdate Module

Type Import-Module PSWindowsUpdate into the PowerShell:

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Step 5: Change Execution Policy

In the PowerShell, type:  Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

You will get a security warning dialog. Click the Yes button. You don’t have to worry, because we downloaded the module directly from Microsoft.

Step 6: Run Get-WUInstall

In the Powershell, type Get-WUInstall:

PS> Get-WUInstall

Answer any prompts which may come up. My system had a lot of updates pending, so I let the module download and install them all. After it’s done, your Windows Update and Windows Defender will work correctly again!

Many thanks to the people who came up with this solution. The information came from: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/afc7f693-f742-402f-b513-063989b79c2f/windows-81-enterprise-windows-updates

gCode Visualization

I was working on a project today, which had some serious overhangs. I added support material manually, but needed to make sure that slic3r was traversing a usable path through my supports. Usually, I use Repetier Host‘s excellent built-in gCode visualizer, but it only displays a layer at a time, and I needed to see the actual paths followed in each layer. After searching a bit, I found an excellent online visualizer: gcode.ws:

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It is very full featured, with sliders that let you step through your gCode layer by layer, and also line by line within a layer. Additionally, it prints out a lot of useful statistics within your gCode.

While running it in a web browser is handy, since you don’t need to install any software, sometimes, I need to have access to it when I have no Internet access. Fortunately, the visualizer is open source, and is written in javascript, so you can also run it directly from your hard drive. First, download the zip archive from github:

https://github.com/hudbrog/gCodeViewer/archive/master.zip

Unzip the archive, and simply launch index.html. I had security issues running it in Chrome, and it froze up in Internet Explorer, but Firefox runs it just fine. To run it in Chrome, you must launch it with the command line option “–allow-file-access-from-files” in order to lower the security so that it can access files locally, but it doesn’t work if you already have a running copy of Chrome.

On Windows computers, if Firefox isn’t your default browser, you can just right-click index.html, and select Open with->Firefox.

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Many thanks to hudbrog for making this excellent tool.