Getting Arduino Uno work on Windows 8

I keep needing to do this and I couldn’t find one place where all the instructions are placed, so capturing it here. Also the standard instructions at http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Windows didn’t work for me.

Get the Software

1. Get Arduino Software from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software. Choose the Windows (ZIP file) and unzip it to local PC. I used D:\Skydrive\bin\arduino-1.0.5

Disable Driver Signature Enforcement

Unfortunately this step does disable a security feature of the OS, but I couldn’t find a way to do this otherwise.

1. Open an command prompt and run the command
   shutdown.exe /r /o /f /t 00
2. System restarts with Choose an option screen
3. Select Troubleshoot
4. Select Advanced options
5. Select Windows Startup Settings
6. Click Restart and it will restart into the Advanced Boot Options Screen
7. Press the keyboard button for the number for Disable Driver Signature Enforcement (which was 7 in my case)
8. System will restart with driver signature enforcement disabled.

Install The Driver

Press Windows key + W and type “Devices and Printers” and open that. Connect the Arduino board over USB. You should see something called Unknown Device shown in it.

Run the installer "D:\Skydrive\bin\arduino-1.0.5\drivers\dpinst-amd64.exe” or locate corresponding path from your installation folder. The window above should get updated as below.

You can also verify by again hitting Windows Key + W and typing Device Manager and launching it. Then expand to see the following