As part of the recent winter festivities, I received a Chromecast. As I'm in the UK, this was an unofficial import with an American plug but I managed to get it some power and eventually managed to connect it to my wifi network.
I was excited to see what I could do with it. I tried it out with my phone and found I could use it to share YouTube videos and play my Google Play Music through the TV. Pretty cool.

So far, so good.

When I tried to use the Google Cast Chrome extension on my laptop, however, I was disappointed. It was unable to find the Chromecast. Following the "No devices found?" link, Google informed me that (for laptops running Windows 8.1) Software that installs a virtual NIC - VMware, Win8 Hyper-V, but also some NAS drivers - may cause discovery issues between a laptop/desktop and the Chromecast..

I wasn't aware I had any of these things installed but it turns out, the default installation for the network card on my laptop was being virtualised through Hyper-V. I tried disabling the Hyper-V adapters but then found I couldn't get on the Internet.

So far, so bad.

Fortunately, there is a way to uninstall Hyper-V (which is software used to run virtual machines under Windows and therefore, not necessary for most users). Going to Control Panel, then Programs and Features and then clicking "Turn Windows features on or off" at the side, led me to a window where I could uncheck and uninstall Hyper-V. A quick restart and I was then able to find the Chromecast and share my tabs from my laptop.

Now to find something meaningful to share.