No, it was some lousy, rotten lowlife skank bastards who, had I accepted it, would have stolen data and performed nefarious actions on my rig.  My mother got caught by it about 3 months back, because it looks all official and genuine, and the best way for me to remedy the issue for her was to purge her machine and do a complete rewrite of Windows.  There was no way of getting rid of it conventionally because it disabled System Restore, Safe Mode and Acronis. 

It was hooked into the Registry in dozens of places, and I no sooner deleted/disabled an entry, it would self-replicate and write several more. She wanted to replace the HDD with a SSD anyway, so what I did was disconnect the OS drive, slip in the SSD and performed a total clean install.  I then put the old drive in my XP box, and being there were no registry entries, etc, I wiped it clean and set it up for a storage drive.

Had I not known what happened to my mother I may well have been duped also, but there's a giveaway that confirms it's phony... in properties it states the publisher isn't Sun Microsystems, so that's when you reject the 'update' and block the site, which I read is in Russia somewhere.

Chemical castration is too good for them... when a butter knife 'll get the job done for a fraction of the price.

As for skinning my Win 8.1 setup, I'm using Karen's Steampunk WB, the matching Winstep theme, a gear CFX and British Library/Steampunk icons I got from devart, with an appropriate wallpaper depicting a crowd boarding a steam train.  If I get my lazy arse into gear later I might post a screenie to show it off.

BTW, the mowing didn't and won't get done today... maybe not tomorrow, either.  Went to bed but tossed and turned the whole time, and I hurt like a bitch all over /am worse for wear.  There's always Thursday, Friday... and it ain't going anywhere unless somebody's goats escape their paddock.

v will be unhappy to hear that...     

Awww, I was just messing a little John, something I rarely do. But my desktop PC runs CursorFX, IconPackager, ObjectDock v1.9 and Windowblinds, that's it. Don't find anything else really useful because I am constantly designing skins. This is on Windows 7 though, on Windows 8 I have the same stuff and of course Start 8.

You can scratch mine!

On Win7 I run Iconpackager, Windowblinds, Objectdock, Dreams (but only once in a while cause it sends my cpu into a tizzy) Don't do Fences because I like a clean screen without all that stuff muckin' it up. I also use Rainledar, Rainmeter and SMX although the last two aren't strictly SD. All in all i'm a happy camper.

Double click on the desktop and it's about as 'clean' as you can get...

couldn't live without Fences for this very reason.... 

I use both Fences and WinFX, but really, how hard would it be to right click and hide/show your icons?  

Exactly!  I have 3 Fences down the left side of my screen that are set to hide with a double right click... an easy peasy, now you see me now you don't, solution to desktop clutter.  I also have a Fence across the top of my screen with my most used apps, etc, but I have no issue with it being exempt from 'hide' because it is narrow and takes up very little screen real estate on a large screen... currently a 27" but I also have a 29" that I've not hooked up since moving my 'man cave' upstairs, though I will get around to it once I've settled on how I want things set up in the new 'man cave'... which also hasn't been decided because I have two spare rooms and I'm deliberating which best suits my IT needs and which I'll keep as a bedroom.

I'm currently working on a temporary setup in the dining area... temporary because I hurt like all buggery and need a couple of days to recuperate after moving some of Shaunna's stuff out and all of my man cave stuff upstairs.  Damned arthritis... remembering muscles I hadn't used in a while, like the ones in my bum cheeks hurting as well.  Shit yeah, my bum cheeks hurt, as do my thigh and calf muscles and... shoot, I might just as well say I hurt all over and be done with it... oh, and my legs feel like jelly [ jello for those incivilised colonials who don't know the Queen's English]

Hehe, of course she's feching English, and talks with a plum in her mouth... something I'm told some people in Boston do, which somewhat surprises me.  I mean, if they're trying to mimic the English, why did they throw all that feckin' tea in the harbour?

See how easily I'm feching distracted!  First I'm talking skinning; then I'm talking moving man caves; then I'm talking hurting like a bitch; then it's a fechin' history lesson.

So back to skinning and useful apps.  Workshelf!  Now that is the must have, goto app that answers all my needs instantly.  No matter what I have open on my desktop, I can always access Workshelf, which I have set up to give me access to everything on my PC within 2 clicks of the mouse.  And the thing I like about Workshelf and the modules that accompany it?  They're all skinnable and can often have matching skins to accompany the Windowblind you're displaying.  For those of you who do not know what Workshelf is, it is a part of Winstep Xtreme and can be found here.

Just installed Fences on Terry's machine ....added advantage...gets rid of those icon shortcut arrows too.  Next is to dig out an older sysmetrix of mine...just a single clockface ver.  Most of the 'tweaking' is functionality ... and maintaining settings as were on the old machine.

Just put 8.1 on the laptop...still looks like crap....

I just click the Show/Hide Desktop button in the right corner of the taskbar, a built-in feature in Windows 7 and 8. All my desktop icons, ObjectDock and everything disappear giving me a clean desktop.  That is the easiest way, no need for extra software for something that simple.

Also handled by WindowFX, for those who don't use Fences. Just sayin'.  

Yeah, Tom, but most of us don't want the widgets, gadgets, winstep modules, or whatever to go away as well, just the icons.  

Must've put it on wrong, then! 

Has to be cos it looks alright here.

When clicking to install 8.1, was the mouse in your left or right hand?  Makes all the difference, you know.

See, if you used the left and and yours is a right handed mouse, what you'll get is a mirrored image... what's on the left of the screen should be on the right and vise versa.  Hence you have a feched up screen that looks like sh!te

Same thing if yours is a left handed mouse but was held in the right hand during execution.... just the opposite way around.  And still looking like sh!te.

I had a similar thing happen this one time I was downloading centrefolds from the playboy site... or was it the Penthouse site... and was it the one time or more often than that... anyway, doesn't matter, cos I was holding the mouse in the wrong hand I got mirrored images.  It took a while to figure out why the boobies were all pointing the other way, but I got there, and conversely, how I figured out how to install Win 8 correctly.

That is probably why everybody who hates Win 8 hates 8... held the mouse in the wrong feching hand at installation.

And over at Intel, the bloke responsible for naming CPUs has elected to call the next high-end batch i9s.

Why, because he's on a strict diet at home and he don't want his wife to get the wrong end of the stick. 

The other offerings will be a range of i4 and i6's.  And that's another thing!  If ikt was up to me I'd have all hardware and software with proper names, not just numbers.  I mean, there's not a lot of difference between i6 and i7, or between Windows 95 and 98... and Windows ME for fech's sake, that's just initials and just as confusing... XP for crying out loud.  There'd be much less confusion if it were all named... with proper names. Nicknackpaddywack give a dog a bone can't be confused with Longjohntiddlywacker, doctor John the kidney cracker, now can it.  Right, so proper names it is, then.

Now then, if we all thought like that: "Fech the 3rd party software if the OS does the job.", even if it is only half-assed, then Stardock would be out of a job, wouldn't they!!!!  Orright, so get with the programme and install Fences to show your support.  It's not like it'll cost you any extra, and just think of all the kustomization kiddies at Stardock who'll be so much better off when we all stick with the programme.  And all their kiddies at home, at school, running the streets... they'll appreciate it too.

Oh, and if anybody thinks I've got too much time on my hands, get off my feching back.  I'm feching suffering here...  suffering, I tells ya!!  Apart from the usual insomnia and restless leg syndrome, I feching hurt all over, and at 3.15am, when I should be in bed snoring off the covers, I'm wide awake and bouncing off the walls.  Well I'm not hurting quite as much as I was earlier, cos I took some quick-release Trameedo, which have made it more bearable, but me thinks that's why I'm bouncing off the walls... boing, boing, ding... 

I'm not high exactly, but every time I hit something hard, I hear all these bings, bangs, ding dings and boing boings, like I'm trapped in a pinball machine.... oi, wait a minute...

Orright, back again... 'twas the pinball ringtone on my mobile, hehe.

So, that stopped the noises in my head... now what to do about bouncing off the walls?.... thud, bang, wallop.

Okay, I know that when a thread is posted it can go in many directions but could we get back on topic and not turn it into a like/hate Windows 8 discussion.  The OP had some very easy and simple questions, like to see more responses as I'm sure SD/WC might be interested.

There's a button for that?? I ain't never seed it.

Something else I've used in recent times is X-Widget.  No it's not Stardock's, but there are several Steampunk skins for it and I've been applying a few Steampunk desktops over the last few months.

I would of course use DesktopX if there were any Steampunk themed Widgets/Gadgets and it was compatible with Win 8.1.  There was a time when I enjoyed using DesktopX and the various themes, but the last time was on Vista x86 some years ago now, and since then it has pretty much fallen by the wayside, with little or no support for x64 OSes.

I'd like to see DX updated to comply fully with Win 8.1 x64 and Win 7 x64, but I don't see t happening any time soon, so will continue to use X-Widget and hope for a customisation miracle.

I also use Rainmeter for its Steampunk skins and would like to see more of those if anybody's interested.

There are and it is.