[Solved] 2 issues during upgrade of preinstalled win8 64 bit to 8.1 (Dell Inspiron)

I ordered a Dell pc (Feb 2014) which came preinstalled with win8_64 and after getting all the updates I was offered the upgrade to win8.1. When I clicked on the upgrade in the Microsoft store I was confronted with the following screen which told me I have to retry with administrator account. I checked my fresh created account and I was administrator. Luckily I found the answer here:

• Navigate to Control Panel > Uninstall a program > View installed updates (located on the left pane) > Uninstall the Microsoft Update KB2871389

After doing this you can go back to Microsoft Store and your download will start ..

Next I ran into the issue that The installation stalled at 63-64%, to get it moving again just disconnect from the internet as was mentioned here. You can go back to your upgrade to Win8.1 tile and your installation will continue and soon be progressing beyond 63%

Remove Avast clean note from your email

I'm verry happy with Avast but don't like to have it advertised in my outgoing mail.

source
Luckily ther is an option to remove it:
From the avastUI > Settings > Active Protection > Mail Shield > Settings (the cog wheel) > Behavior  - General section and uncheck the options you don't want.

Remove Homegroup Icon from Desktop

source

I tried to remove the Homegroup icon which suddenly appeared on my desktop.
I found this tip:
Right click desktop. Select View, Show desktop icons. untick box. repeat process, but retick box. Homegroup icon should no longer appear.

Unknown \\SMBSHARE in network overview [Solved]

It was bothering me some time that I noticed an entry within my win8.1 network overview called \\SMBSHARE
I never created it and therefore I wanted to get rid of it.
It turned out it  samba was enabled on my KPN Modem by default.

Just untick the "Enable Samba Server" and you're done

[Solved] Cakewalk UA-1G and windows 8.1 64bit

http://www.roland.com/support/article/?q=downloads&p=UA-1G
provides version 1.0.1 which also states win 8.1
I just successfully installed UA-1G with the 1.0.1 driver which worked flawlessly. I left the "Advanced Driver"in the on position and that worked. I also can access UA-1G driver settings without getting the below popup.
Thanks Roland/Cakewalk for the updated Driver!!

++++ Obsolete info below since Roland provided 1.0.1 driver +++++++
I upgraded my audio pc to 8.1 and the first thing I noticed it did not recognize my UA-1G.
I tried with the latest driver to no avail.
Nevertheless I managed to get it recognized in 8.1.
I followed the process of first uninstall and reinstall. During the install process it will ask you to plug in the UA-1G. Make sure you turn off "Advanced Driver" (small switch on the side of the UA-1G) before you plug it in. The installation will now complete without issues.

At least I can play my music again although if I try to access UA-1G Driver Settings it pops up the following:

So not all is well with the current driver. I hope we will soon see an updated version for win 8.1.

How to test your power supply without motherboard

Source
I needed to know if my Power supply I had lying around for a while still showed some sign of life but I wasn't setting up a new pc so I wanted to have a quick method. I found it at Corsair:

64 bit testing tools

Sometimes you want to check  if an exe file or DLL is 64bit or its dependencies etc.
These tools can help you:

• EXE 64 bit Detector: (basic)

command-line tool to find if file is 32-bit or 64-bit Executable

• Dependency Walker: (advanced)

free utility that scans any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module (exe, dll, ocx, sys, etc.) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules.
Very useful for troubleshooting system errors related to loading and executing modules. Dependency Walker detects many common application problems such as missing modules, invalid modules, import/export mismatches, circular dependency errors, mismatched machine types of modules, and module initialization failures.