One of the first things I do to any new Windows desktop PC is disable the Windows Defender and Windows Firewall services completely. I use a real AV solution so I don’t need Defender, and I have a high quality hardware firewall in place so I don’t need no bobo Windows Firewall.
Well, much to my surprise Windows 8 gives you a little extra encouragement to leave the native firewall enabled; you can’t install certain apps from the Windows Store unless it is.
Today I was trying to install the Slacker Radio app and got error code 0x80073d0a “App couldn’t be installed…” That’s just great, I thought. So I went a Googling and found this. I re-enabled the Windows Firewall and the installation went through normally.
I guess I’m just going to have to leave the damned thing enabled, even though it irks me. Furthermore, the Windows 8 Skype App is horrid. It takes forever to get to the contact you want, and you can’t even alt-tab out of it if you’re on a call or it will mute it completely. Get it together, Microsoft.