I,too have a freshly upgraded Windows 8 PC from Windows 7. I also have Norton Utilities 15.0. Everything had been working fine until my Speed Disk suddenly stopped working and then I noticed the error message that it could not connect to the engine. I went through multiple uninstalls and reinstallation of NU without any improvement, so that was a waste of time! But eventually I DID solve the problem! Basically the Speed Disk Service got turned off and that is why it does not work! Go into Computer Management by Right clicking on My Computer on your desktop and select Manage. When Management starts up, select on Services and Applications and then select on Services. Scroll down to SpeedDisk Service. Right click on that and change the Start-Up Setting to Automatic (Delay Start) and that should solve your problem connecting to the SpeedDisk engine! This has worked for me now without failure for the past few days! An easy solution without having to do any disk formatingor partitioning!