Insider stuff, Security, Thoughts & concerns, WED Blog, Windows 11

Evolving Windows Device Security Hardware

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This weekend, I pulled up the Windows Security Device security panel on my ThinkPad P16 Gen 3 (2025 build) and my ThinkPad X380 (2018 build), and put them side by side. The difference showed me something interesting — namely,  evolving Windows Device Security hardware.

Both machines run Windows 11. Both are solid, business-class Lenovo laptops. However, the P16 Gen 3 panel is full: every tile is lit, every checkmark is present. The X380 panel, OTOH, shows obvious gaps. It closes out with a blunt verdict: “Standard hardware security not supported.” The lead-in screenshot tells a story of Windows device security hardware evolution over 7 years.

The X380 isn’t a bad machine. It was just built before the security landscape it now lives in actually existed. That distinction matters, so it’s worth unpacking what’s missing and why.

What Evolving Windows Device Security Hardware Means

The most visible absence on the X380 is the Secured-core PC badge. Not surprising when you check the timing: MS launched the Secured-core PC initiative on October 21, 2019. That’s over a year after the X380 shipped. The X380’s 8th-generation Intel Core (Kaby Lake Refresh) silicon predates the Dynamic Root of Trust for Measurement (DRTM) and System Guard Secure Launch capabilities that Secured-core status requires.

In sharp contrast, the P16 Gen 3 runs Intel Core Ultra 9 silicon that fully implements Intel Hardware Shield. That’s what underpins DRTM and Kernel DMA Protection at the hardware level. In addition, Secured-core mandates HVCI (Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity) enforced at the silicon level. Older CPUs can enable this in software. Alas, they cannot deliver the hardware-based capability that Microsoft’s Secured-core PC requirements demand.

The second gap is the Security processor tile. The P16 Gen 3 surfaces an explicit tile confirming that TPM is visible, active, and reports correctly to the Windows Security layer. The X380 does have a TPM  (Lenovo shipped TPM chips on all commercial machines by 2018). However, Windows Security on the X380 doesn’t surface that tile. Its firmware TPM integration doesn’t offer stricter attestation-visibility that newer UEFI and firmware stacks expose to the operating system. The chip is there, but the trust handshake simply isn’t good enough for Windows to show it as an attestable asset.

The X380 Bottom Line Is…Not Quite There

That brings us to the X380 bottom-line verdict: “Standard hardware security not supported.” Windows delivers this message when a device cannot simultaneously confirm TPM 2.0 attestation, Kernel DMA Protection, and VBS readiness at the hardware level. The X380 can satisfy some of those requirements individually, but not in hardware. As a result, it falls short of the full baseline. That is not a misconfiguration, but falls out because the required silicon-to-firmware-to-OS trust chain simply wasn’t designed into the X380.

What Both Machines Get Right

Let’s be fair to the X380, because calling it obsolete would be wrong. Core isolation runs. And indeed, Virtualization Based Security operates in software mode. Secure Boot is fully active, with all certificates up to date. BitLocker encrypts the drive. These are the foundational Windows security capabilities that survive on older hardware, and they aren’t trivial. The X380 still protects data at rest and guards boot integrity against tampering. It simply cannot make the firmware-to-OS trust chain guarantees that silicon-rooted security delivers. There’s a meaningful difference between those two tiers, but the lower tier is not nugatory.

A Seven-Year Gap in Numbers

Between 2018 and 2025, Intel moved from 8th-generation Kaby Lake Refresh to Core Ultra (Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake). AMD traveled from Ryzen 1000-series to Ryzen AI 300. Along the way, Microsoft introduced Secured-core PC certification (2019), Windows 11’s hard TPM 2.0 requirement (2021), the Pluton security processor co-design with AMD and Intel (2022 ), plus evolving memory encryption standards. Thus, the Device Security panel on a 2025 machine doesn’t just reflect software updates . It also reflects seven years of deliberate co-design among Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and various OEMs, baked directly into the silicon and firmware before the OS even loads.

Wondering About Continued Viability?

If you’re running a 2018-era machine and wondering why your Device Security panel looks thin, it’s not your fault and it’s not your settings. It’s the silicon that falls short. The hardware security stack that Windows 11 fully expects is built into CPU microarchitecture and firmware design from 2019 onward. No amount of registry tweaking can close that gap. That said, your older machine isn’t broken. Instead it’s working at a lower tier of the trust hierarchy, but it still does real security work. When it is finally time to refresh, pull up the Device Security panel on your new, Secured-core PC. It  fills those gaps, and offers more and  better security capability. Worth it!

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Fixing Windows Security Stays Blank

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Normally, when you open the Windows Security app, there’s a brief pause during which the app window is blank (1-2 seconds is normal). But sometimes, that window remains empty. This morning, it popped up on my second Ryzen 7 5800X desktop. In turn, that had me seeking out ways for fixing Windows Security stays blank. Turns out there are two extremely easy fixes, though one takes longer and is more disruptive than the other. Here goes…

Note: the intro screencap shows mockups of the blank Windows Security window (light theme at left, dark theme at right). The key point is “Nothing to see here!” That’s a problem that turns out to be relatively easy to fix.

How-To: Fixing Windows Security Stays Blank

The quick and easy way is to use the app menu a little differently. On the affected machine, I observed that picking any subsystem inside Windows Security will cause it to open, after which “going home” inside the app works like a champ. Since I wanted to check “Device Security” anyway, I went straight there.

Instead of clicking the icon at top center, I clicked on “Device Security” (3rd from bottom in preceding screencap). It came right up and I saw what I needed to see (checking Secure Boot status info).

Another Fix: Reboot, Try Again

I also observed that a reboot brought Windows Security back to a normal, predictable state. Indeed, this is a workable technique to undo lots of everyday wonkiness in Windows, as many readers will know and appreciate. This has been a staple early stage activity in Windows troubleshooting as far back as I can remember (1991, 35 years ago).

Why Does This Happen?

Copilot attributes this reasonably common behavior to an outcome from its design as a UWP shell atop a set of back-end Windows services. It says “When the shell launches faster than its backend services are ready to respond — a classic race condition — the shell renders the window frame but has nothing to populate it with, so you get a blank canvas.” Sounds about right to me, especially noticing a slight delay between launch and population on other PCs I just checked (including the 2018 vintage ThinkPad Yoga X380, the 2022 vintage ThinkPad X16, and the 2020 vintage ThinkPad X12 Detachable Tablet).

Here in Windows-World thinks going wonky is part of the daily round. It’s nice to find a minor glitch that’s quick and easy to diagnose, and fix. I’ll take those wins where I can find them!

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GNUBG Shows WinGet Pin Rationale

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Since Monday, I’ve noticed that WinGet is updating GNU Backgammon every day, aka GNUBG. You can see in the lead-in graphic this happens because the app reports its version number as unknown. Of course, that means WinGet wants to update it, even though that’s unnecessary. How to avoid this unwanted repetition: the WinGet Pin command. Thus, GNUBG shows WinGet Pin rationale, and lets me turn down the noise.

How GNUBG Shows WinGet Pin Rationale

The lead-in graphic also shows that the current installed GNU Backgammon version matches the one that WinGet wants to install. That proves it’s a reporting error from the app itself, not the typical “current version is less than winget database version” that supplies a usually valid reason to run the update process.

Obviously, this will go on until (or if) the developers fix the game, or until a real, new version comes out. So here’s what I did to stop the madness: I ran winget pin –id GNU.gnubg

Once pinned, WinGet stops its repeated GNUBG updates. Good!
[Click image for full-sized, more readable view.]

I’ve seldom had to use WinGet Pin on the PC fleet here at Chez Tittel. But every now and then — as with GNUBG here — something pops up that calls for a timeout. Now, I just have to remember to keep an eye on the app so I can unpin or force-update when a REAL one shows up. That’s just one of the small things that keeps me on my toes, here in Windows-World.

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USB Ports Need More Storage Bandwidth

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In reading over Computex coverage I’m impressed by an array of newer, faster computing platforms and storage technologies. At the same time I’m depressed that USB-attached storage is not swimming in this rising tide of increased performance and capability. Simply put: USB ports need more storage bandwidth so they can hold up their end while ushering in a brave new world of performance computing. Let me explain…

Why USB Ports Need More Storage Bandwidth

Thunderbolt 4 tops out at 40 Gbps — that’s a theoretical ceiling of roughly 5 GB/s, and real-world storage transfers run well below that. It was impressive when it arrived. It isn’t anymore. Thunderbolt 5 moved the needle, pushing up to 120 Gbps on the read side and 40 Gbps on writes. Indeed, its asymmetric bandwidth design delivers somewhere in the neighborhood of 6–7 GB/s of actual storage throughput under optimal conditions.

That’s a real boost, and to give credit where it’s due: Intel’s Thunderbolt 5 is the current high-water mark for USB-attached external storage performance. But here’s the problem — “high-water mark for external” and “keeping pace with internal” are two very different things. Alas, the gap between them is widening fast.

Phison’s PCIe 5 Controllers: Lapping the Field

Let’s talk about what’s happening inside the box right now. Phison’s E26 controller — the flagship PCIe 5.0 x4 part — pushes sequential reads up to roughly 14 GB/s and writes near 12 GB/s. That’s not a roadmap promise. That’s shipping silicon, today, in drives like the Crucial T705 and Seagate FireCuda 540. And the reason those numbers are possible is that PCIe 5.0 x4 delivers approximately 32 GB/s of raw bus bandwidth — a figure Thunderbolt 5’s best-case scenario can’t remotely approach.

I’ll be blunt: Thunderbolt 5 running at its theoretical maximum is still less than a quarter of PCIe 5’s available bus bandwidth. External storage users are working with a narrow pipe while internal NVMe users are drinking from a fire hose. And here’s what makes it even more galling — PCIe 5 SSDs themselves are already hitting their ceiling and looking nervously at what comes next. The interface they’re starved for is PCIe 6, which is already coming down the pipe.

Phison PCIe 6 Controllers: Next Tier Is Here

Computex 2025 was where Phison first made the PCIe 6.0 future feel real, and the momentum has only built from there. The next-generation Phison controller roadmap targets PCIe 6.0 x4 — an interface that theoretically delivers around 64 GB/s of raw bandwidth per slot, thanks to PAM4 signaling running at 64 GT/s per lane. Real-world sequential read targets are north of 20 GB/s.

Think about what that means for Thunderbolt 5’s ceiling. A single PCIe 6 SSD — one drive, one M.2 slot — could in principle saturate nearly five simultaneous Thunderbolt 5 connections running flat out. The Thunderbolt bandwidth ceiling doesn’t just look inadequate at that point; it looks comical. External storage users are so far behind that “catching up” is a massive understatement. Instead, designs must condider a completely different approach.

What Needs to Change?

USB4 Gen 3×2 sits at 40 Gbps — identical to Thunderbolt 4, still not enough. USB4 v2 bumps that to 80 Gbps, which helps at the margins but still lands less than a third of PCIe 5’s bus bandwidth, let alone PCIe 6’s. These are incremental improvements on an interface that needs a fundamental rethink, not a spec bump.

The industry needs a paradigm shift. Either Thunderbolt 6 or USB5 — whatever we end up calling it — must arrive with dramatically higher bandwidth, we’re talking 200+ Gbps as a floor, not a ceiling. Alternatively, PCIe tunneling over external cables needs to mature to the point where it can fully exploit NVMe speeds without  overhead that kills performance today. One or the other. Probably both, eventually.

Until one of those paths becomes real and shipping, external storage users are locked in a performance ghetto. Internal SSD buyers are sprinting ahead with every product generation. The storage industry owes external storage users a credible, substantive answer. I’m not talking about another incremental spec revision, not another narrowly defined workaround. Computex 2026 is the right venue and this is the right moment. USB silicon designers need to envision, then deliver something worth getting excited about. So far, I can’t see it. Let’s hope for something amazing, shall we?

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NVIDIA Extends ARM on Windows’ Reach

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Just a couple of weeks ago, Lenovo sent me the Qualcomm X2-based Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 laptop. Over the weekend, NVIDIA upped the ante with a Computex announcement of its RTX Spark CPU, also ARM-based. Developer in collaboration with MediaTek, this new CPU family, aka N1 and N1X, shows that NVIDIA extends ARM on Windows’ reach. Indeed Microsoft has announced a “Surface Laptop Ultra” build around this silicon, and ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI are also on the bandwagon. Acer and Gigabyte will follow shortly after that, and we’ll have both laptops and desktops running RTX Spark to choose among. Big news!

What NVIDIA Extends ARM on Windows’ Reach Means

Let me be clear about what’s going on with this upcoming architecture and systems that will use it. It’s aimed squarely at the top end of the market. I’m guessing such systems could easily cost upwards of US$5K, because they are aiming at high-end creators and AI developers.

Here’s a list of noteworthy features that NVIDIA and the OEMs are touting as relevant to potential buyers of such top-flight PCs:

  • Up to 6,144‑core Blackwell RTX GPU for high‑performance graphics, AI acceleration, and workstation‑class compute in thin‑and‑light designs.
  • 20‑core Arm‑based Grace CPU (co‑developed with MediaTek) delivering strong performance‑per‑watt for mobile and small‑form‑factor desktops.
  • Up to 1 petaFLOP FP4 AI compute enabling local execution of large AI models, agentic workflows, and advanced inference without cloud dependency.
  • Unified memory architecture (16–128GB LPDDR5X) shared between CPU and GPU, reducing bottlenecks and enabling massive 3D scenes, large‑context LLMs, and high‑resolution media workflows.
  • Ultra‑low power envelope (single‑digit watts to ~80W) allowing OEMs to build ultra‑slim laptops with all‑day battery life while retaining workstation‑class performance.
  • Full RTX software stack support (CUDA, TensorRT, DLSS 4.5, OptiX, Reflex, G‑SYNC) for creators, developers, and gamers on Windows.
  • Native support for on‑device AI agents via NVIDIA OpenShell and Windows 11 optimizations, positioning PCs as proactive “teammates” rather than passive tools.
  • High‑bandwidth NVLink‑C2C interconnect (600 GB/s) between CPU and GPU for low‑latency, high‑throughput compute.
  • Advanced media engines including 4:2:2 hardware encode/decode, AV1 encoders, and Blackwell‑class video pipelines for 12K editing and pro‑grade content creation.

A LOT to Take In, MORE Left to Understand

Whoa! That’s a lot of capability with a pretty rarified set of target buyers. Given current RAM and storage pricing, and rising costs for PC hardware in general, it’s clearly a small sliver of the market. But it’s got huge potential, and could ultimately redefine how Windows works — for a certain subset of users/consumers.

I think it’s pretty cool. I hope I’ll get  a chance to check one out later this year. In the long run, though, what will make the difference is how and when such special capabilities trickle down to garden-variety PC users. I’m intensely curious to watch this unfold, and see how it all plays out. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted!

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Windows Outgrows 100 MB ESP

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ESP is an abbreviation for the EFI System Partition, where a PC uses its contents to boot a PC far enough along to start loading Windows. For almost as long as I can remember, that partition has been created and sized during Windows installation at 100 MB. But this is changing. Here’s a “known issue” for  KB5089549, Microsoft’s May 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative update for Windows 11. It can fail mid-installation on systems with a critically full EFI System Partition (10 MB or less free space). What do we, and OEMs, do as Windows outgrows 100 MB ESP? Get bigger!

Other Evidence That Windows Outgrows 100 MB ESP

I polled the 7 PCs (2 desktops, 5 laptops) here in my office at Chez Tittel to check their ESPs and observed something interesting. Here’s what I found:

Name Year ESP (MB)
X380 2018 100
X12 Hybrid 2021 100
P16 Gen 1 2022 100
Tsp3Ultra2 2024 260
P16 Gen 3 2025 260
AsusSnap 2025 260
Yog7X2 2026 450

Notice that the ESP sticks at the 100 MB mark until 2024, at which point it jumps to 260 MB. Then, on this year’s May-delivered Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 (X2 Snapdragon) it jumps again to 450 MB. There’s no doubt about it: the EFI is getting bigger!

What is the ESP, Anywho?

The EFI System Partition — ESP, in the shorthand everyone actually uses — is a small, dedicated FAT32 partition that lives on GPT-formatted disks and serves as the staging ground for everything the system needs before the operating system proper gets involved. Boot loaders live there. Firmware drivers live there. UEFI utility executables live there. If the system can’t find and read the ESP at power-on, it goes nowhere. It is, in other words, foundational infrastructure — and like most foundational infrastructure, nobody pays attention to it until something breaks.

Microsoft’s own documentation has recommended a minimum ESP size of 200 MB for UEFI/GPT systems since at least the Windows 8 era, with 260 MB or larger as the preferred target for new installations. That guidance has been sitting in plain sight on Microsoft Learn for years. OEMs, however, have a long tradition of shipping machines with a 100 MB ESP because, at the time those machines were built, Windows fit comfortably within it. The margins were thin, but they existed. That era is over.

Why 100 MB Isn’t Enough Anymore

Every Windows feature update — and, increasingly, every cumulative security update — must write updated boot files, recovery sequences, and language-specific font sets into the ESP. As the Windows boot stack has grown over successive releases, the items demanding ESP real estate have multiplied: Secure Boot validation assets, BitLocker metadata, UEFI capsule drivers, and a collection of per-locale font files for the pre-OS boot interface that can alone consume several dozen megabytes. If 100 MB was ever “enough,” Windows has long since moved those goalposts.

The specific tripwire for KB5089549 is tight, but telling. Microsoft confirmed that the failure triggers when the ESP has 10 MB or less of free space remaining. On a 100 MB partition that has been hosting Windows through several years of cumulative updates, that threshold is entirely realistic. The update proceeds normally through its initial phases — progress bars, the usual theater — and then dies during the restart phase, right around the 35–36% completion mark. The CBS.log entries are unambiguous: SpaceCheck: Insufficient free space and ServicingBootFiles failed. Error = 0x70. The accompanying companion error code, 0xc1900104, surfaces during feature-update upgrade attempts and carries the same root cause. The partition is simply full.

Increasing ESP Lebensraum

The community has converged on two main workarounds, and it is worth being clear-eyed about both of them.

The first is the “fonts delete” trick. You mount the ESP using mountvol Y: /S from an elevated command prompt, navigate to EFI\Microsoft\Boot\Fonts, and delete everything inside — typically recovering somewhere between 30 and 60 MB in a single sweep. It is fast, it is effective, and it is entirely unsupported by Microsoft. The risk is real: those font files support non-English boot environments. If your machine ever needs to display Cyrillic, Japanese, or Arabic characters in the pre-OS recovery interface, you will have a bad time. For an English-only deployment sitting quietly in a US office, the practical risk is low. In any multilingual environment, it should be treated as a last resort only.

Microsoft has also offered its own short-term registry tweak for KB5089549 specifically: running reg add “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Bfsvc” /v EspPaddingPercent /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f from an elevated prompt, followed by a reboot. This reduces the padding buffer the update engine reserves in the ESP, giving just enough headroom to slip the update through. It buys time. It does not fix the underlying problem.

The second, more durable option is partition resizing — shrinking the C: volume and extending the ESP to somewhere between 260 MB and 512 MB. Tools like MiniTool Partition Wizard (MTPW) can accomplish this from within Windows on many configurations. That said, a WinPE offline environment is the proper path since you are modifying a sometimes live boot partition. This is the correct fix. It is also disruptive, carries a non-trivial risk of data loss if anything goes wrong mid-operation, and absolutely requires a verified backup before you touch anything. Done properly, you will not need to revisit this for years. Done carelessly, you will spend an afternoon with recovery media and a sinking feeling. I experienced this myself recently on an ASUS Zenbook A14 laptop.

MS Is Mum on Remediation

Microsoft has not, as of this writing in mid-2026, provided an official, automated remediation path. There is no inbox tool that detects an undersized ESP and expands it gracefully. Ditto no Setup-phase blocker with a clear, actionable error. There is a Known Issue Rollback for KB5089549, which automatically propagates to consumer and unmanaged devices and prevents the broken update state — useful, but it leaves the machine unpatched. Enterprise admins can deploy the associated Group Policy to apply the KIR on managed fleets. None of this changes the underlying geometry of the partition. Something’s got to grow — and soon!

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WinRE Ignores Inactive HDMI Output

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I guess it figures. If you examine yesterday’s blog post carefully, you’ll see it includes an obvious iPhone shot of a Windows boot screen. I’d hoped to replace it with a real screencap. Instead, I learned something interesting: my AGPTEK HD Video Capture device works fine with Windows OS running; not so with WinRE/WinPE at the helm. That’s because WinRE ignores inactive HDMI output ports thanks to its slimmed-down minimal graphics. Let me explain…

Why Say: WinRE Ignores Inactive HDMI Output

Simply put, if the runtime environment doesn’t require HDMI graphics, WinRE doesn’t use them. Given that the ASUS Zen14 has a perfectly good built-in display, with its own video channel, WinRE doesn’t feed any signals to the external HDMI port when it’s running.

My AGPTEK HD Video Capture box will cheerfully record any signals sent its way, once its “Record” button is pushed. It writes output to a UFD, from whence it may be copied and edited. I could have used it to capture a frame from said video showing the boot screens I wanted, but the box couldn’t grab them.

What WOULD Work?

It turns out I need an active frame-grabbing device not a passive, pass-through capture device if I want to grab WinRE and other WinPE-based screens through the HDMI port on the A14. Most of them cost between US$240 and 450, whereas the AGPTEK cost me US$65. Here in Windows-World, once must make sure to pay for what one needs. Otherwise, when one gets what one has paid for, it may not suffice to meet them! Live and learn, I always say…so obviously, I’ve learned that I need to buy another box!

 

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ASUS Snapdragon Shows Odd Boot Anomaly

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Here is a puzzle that took me longer than I care to admit to fully unpack. I built a recovery USB — clean DISM export, proper bootloader, everything by the book — set it first in the UEFI boot order, and rebooted an ASUS A14 Zenbook expecting to land in a familiar Windows Recovery Environment. Instead, I got the ASUS recovery stub. Every single time. I moved the USB higher in the boot order. I tried the firmware boot menu. I watched the machine apparently select the USB and then, silently and without apology, drop me into ASUS’s own mini-recovery UI anyway. The drive was not defective. The boot order was correct. The machine just did not care. This is my reason for saying: ASUS Snapdragon shows odd boot anomaly.

Getting Past ASUS Snapdragon Shows Odd Boot Anomaly

What I kept landing in was not Microsoft’s WinRE. It was ASUS’s recovery stub from firmware. It’s a minimal launcher, typically just a few hundred megabytes, that presents three or four tiles: Reset this PC, ASUS Recovery, and Advanced options. It looks vaguely like WinRE. It shares some ancestry with winre.wim. But it is ASUS’s gatekeeper, not Microsoft’s recovery environment, and it exists specifically to intercept the boot process before you can get anywhere else.

Here is the mechanism. ASUS, like most Tier-1 OEMs, configures its UEFI firmware with a hardcoded recovery boot path that fires during the BDS (Boot Device Selection) phase. It hits before the standard UEFI boot manager even looks at the user’s boot order. The firmware scans the internal NVMe for a partition stamped with a specific GPT partition type GUID — not the ordinary Microsoft Basic Data GUID, but a dedicated Recovery GUID or a custom OEM namespace. When it finds that partition, it hands control to the stub immediately. Your carefully ordered boot menu is consulted afterward, if at all. The USB was never really in the running.

Secure Boot adds a second layer of obstruction. Let’s say your hand-built USB carries an unsigned or self-signed bootloader (common with DISM-assembled media not signed against Microsoft’s KEK). Then,  the firmware rejects it silently and falls through to the next trusted entry in its internal list. That entry is the ASUS stub. So even when the BDS phase does get as far as examining external media, an unsigned USB is invisible. The machine looks like it’s ignoring you. It is, technically, but for a specific cryptographic reason (yes, really).

The WIM Recompression Tax

Once you understand why your DIY USB is being locked out, it helps to understand what the OEM actually ships in its place. It also explains why making a genuine ASUS recovery drive takes the better part of an hour. It starts with WIM compression. Microsoft’s stock winre.wim uses LZX compression and typically lands somewhere between 500 MB and 1 GB on disk. Manageable. Sensible. But ASUS’s customised image, once you add the recovery launcher, platform drivers, UI payloads, and potentially a full factory image, can balloon to several gigabytes of uncompressed data before anyone has touched the compression knob.

When you kick off the “Create ASUS Recovery Drive” process in MyASUS, what actually happens under the hood is a DISM /Export-Image /Compress:max operation (or its functional equivalent)  applied to an enormous source WIM. Maximum LZX compression, and on newer builds you may even see solid-block LZMS compression, which squeezes harder but runs even slower.

Here’s the critical detail: WIM compression in DISM is largely single-threaded. It reads every file, applies the compression algorithm, writes the output, and verifies integrity as it goes, all on one logical core (yes, really). On an otherwise fast NVMe-equipped laptop, that process still takes 40 to 55 minutes, not because the machine is slow, but because the algorithm is doing an enormous amount of intense, serialised work. The hardware isn’t at fault; the workload is.

Getting to USB-Based (Alternate) Boot

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Getting external media to boot on an ASUS machine requires working around the firmware, not just the boot order. There are two reliable paths. First: disable Secure Boot in UEFI setup (DEL at POST, not F8 — more on that distinction in a moment). With Secure Boot off, unsigned bootloaders no longer get silently rejected. Second: on older platforms with CSM support, enabling CSM forces a legacy BIOS boot path that bypasses the UEFI BDS handoff to the stub.

The Bottom Line: Build Custom Recovery Media

Whether you use the MS supplied “Create a recovery drive” facility, or turn to the MyASUS toolbox to do likewise, the best way to protect an ASUS Zenbook A14 is to build recovery media from that PC. As I learned through a series of failed recovery attempts with other, supposedly generic, all-purpose recovery media, that stuff doesn’t fly inside the Zenbook’s firmware envelope.

Learn from my mistake, and follow this advice as soon as  you can. Otherwise, you too, will fumble around until you find the MyASUS in WinRE tool that does cloud-based image reconstruction instead. If all you want is WinRE running a command prompt, that’s not a good alternative. Do it now: don’t delay!

The Secure Boot Perspective (2 Days Later)

I just ran the Garlin scripts on the recently rebuilt ASUS Zenbook A14. Looks like one benefit of a constantly updated cloud-based restore is the ability to slipstream new stuff in (or replace older, outdated images with newer, current ones). The concluding status report from  that check script is pretty telling:Shoot! They’ve even revoked the CA-2011 certificate. Good stuff!!!

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Bizarre ASUS Disk Layout Is Intentional

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Wow! Wow! Wow! What an adventure I just went through. After examining the weird, seemingly fragmented disk layout shown in the lead-in graphic, I went nuts. I decided to clean install Windows 11. That’s when I learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to know. Chief among those things (more to follow): the bizarre ASUS disk layout is intentional. Indeed, it came back after typical clean install manuevers failed repeatedly. Ultimately, I used the “My ASUS in WinRE for USB” app to bring the unit back to life.

Why Say: Bizarre ASUS Disk Layout Is Intentional?

Short answer: because it came back on its own after running a cloud restore on the Windows 11 image on the Zenbook A14. Longer answer: the unit simply wouldn’t boot into any kind of standard recovery media that I could build by hand. I wasted more than a day trying to brute force my way into a clean install, only to realize ASUS has barred the “boot to USB” door very tightly and narrowly. Indeed, I’m very, very glad that I was able to get the unit up and running again. I’d been contemplating a run to a nearby repair shop. I’m glad it didn’t come to that — but it was close!

I’m not sure WTF is going on, that ASUS needs nine OEM partitions on its SSD drive (the 16MB one is undoubtedly the MSR). But I’ll be darned if I was able to figure out how to get rid of them. I think there are two recovery partitions (reagentc says it’s tied to Partition 15) because one is for normal Windows use, the other for ASUS’s no-doubt murky purposes.

If It Ain’t Broke…

Honestly, I should’ve known better. The unit was behaving and peforming as expected. Just because I didn’t — and still don’t — like what I see for disk layout, doesn’t mean I should’ve taken the clean install route. Now I know better.

A painful lesson learned, a day-and-a-half spent chasing phantoms. Sounds like my idea of a good time. Here in Windows-World, I take my jollies where I can find them. Think I’ve had enough of those to last me for a while, though…

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Superb Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 Unboxing & Setup

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The other day I said it was coming. Yesterday, it arrived at my door about noonish. Today, I want to share my first impressions. TLDR version: I expected a lot from the Snapdragon X2, and I wasn’t disappointed. In today’s post, I’ll describe Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 unboxing & setup. In subsequent posts I’ll go into more detail. Here goes…

Digging Into Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 Unboxing & Setup

Lenovo’s getting pretty good at the notion of low-footprint, low-carbon packaging and delivery. The box includes 2 eggshell carton style cradled for the laptop, a bamboo fiber sleeve for same, a cardboard holder for the one-piece 65W brick, which comes wrapped in a disposable paper sleeve. That last is black, and easy to miss: I didn’t even notice it until I checked it for the power rating info. Good job, packaging team!

I jostled the power switch (right edge of keyboard deck) as I picked up the unit, and it came right up with a full charge. I’m happy to report that “instant-on” remains as fast and reliable on X2 models as it was on their X1 predecessors. I logged right into the Lenovo review account and got going, and jumped into the setup process. That has its own story (complete with interesting bumps in the road). First, let me offer a table to compare Snapdragon X1 and X2 laptops:

Snapdragon X1 vs. X2: Good Gets Better

The key points to absorb from the following info are: more and faster cores, more cache, DX12 Ultimate, 80 TOPS NPU, PCIe 5.0. This laptop is noticeably faster than my 8 core Ryzen 7 5800X desktop with 64GB RAM, especially on CPU-intensive tasks. Impressive!

Spec Snapdragon X Elite (X1) Snapdragon X2 Elite (X2)
Launch May 2024 September 2025
CPU Architecture Qualcomm Oryon v1 (Hamoa) Qualcomm Oryon v3
Process Node TSMC 4nm TSMC 3nm (N3X/N3P mix)
Transistor Count ~20 billion ~31 billion
Max CPU Cores 12 (homogeneous, 3 clusters of 4) 18 (12 Prime + 6 Performance)
Peak Single-Core Boost 4.3 GHz (X1E-00-1DE dev SKU) 5.0 GHz (X2E-96-100 Extreme)
All-Core Sustained Clock ~3.8 GHz ~3.4–3.6 GHz (more cores to feed)
CPU Cache (L2+L3) 42 MB L2 53 MB L2 + 9 MB L3
GPU Adreno X1-85; 4.6 TFLOPS; 1,500 MHz Adreno X2-90; up to 1,850 MHz
GPU API Support DX12 (not DX12 Ultimate) DX12 Ultimate
NPU (AI TOPS) 45 TOPS (Hexagon) 80 TOPS (Hexagon, 64-bit NPU)
Memory Type LPDDR5x-8448 LPDDR5x-9523
Memory Bandwidth (peak) ~136 GB/s 152–228 GB/s (SKU-dependent)
Memory Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit
USB USB 4.0 / Thunderbolt 4 USB 4.0 x3 / Thunderbolt 4
PCIe for NVMe PCIe 4.0 (up to 7.9 GB/s) PCIe 5.0
Display Output Up to 3x 4K 60Hz Up to 3x 5K 60Hz
Wi-Fi Wi-Fi 7 (HBS Multi-Link) Wi-Fi 7 (HBS Multi-Link, enhanced)
Bluetooth Dual BT (Snapdragon Sound) Dual BT (Snapdragon Sound)
5G Optional Optional (up to 10 Gbps peak)
Security Qualcomm SPU + Microsoft Pluton Qualcomm SPU + Microsoft Pluton + Snapdragon Guardian
Copilot+ PC ✅ (inaugural platform) ✅ (enhanced)
Emulation Performance x86-32 and x86-64 via Prism Improved Prism; more native apps available
TDP / Power Envelope Up to ~80W (peak) Comparable; better perf-per-watt at 3nm
Notable SKUs X1E-84-100 (most common); X1E-80-100; X1E-78-100 X2E-96-100 Extreme; X2E-88-100; X2E-84-100; X2E-80-100; X2 Plus (6–10 core)
Review Slim 7×2 SKU — X2E-84-100 (12 Prime + 6 Perf; 4.7 GHz boost; 152 GB/s)

One Small Little Gotcha…

My only real disappointment with the review unit was that it shipped to me running Windows 11 Home. That’s because I rely on RDP (through Remote Desktop Connection, aka mstsc.exe). Thus, I had to upgrade to Windows 11 Pro to make that work. However, this is a minor beef, and one easily remedied at purchase time for an extra US$50.

Here’s the configuration Lenovo sent (aside from the already-mentioned OS): X2E Elite 88-100 CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD, 1920×1200 OLED display. As configured, the Lenovo store currently lists the price at US$1,795.49. Comparatively speaking, I believe this is a good deal, given current prices for RAM and SSD.

Setting Up the Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11

Things got interesting right away. I made a misstep and associated my MSA with the Lenovo review account — not smart. As a result, I ran a factory reset to see what would happen. Indeed, it took about 22 minutes all told (pretty darn fast, AFAIK). That put me back into the base OOBE for Windows 11. Then, I burned an MVP key to upgrade from Home to Pro, which went amazingly fast — less than 2 minutes from hand-off to the Pro desktop. Overall, given intense non-gaming workloads, this unit screams!

Along the way, I learned that you can target ARM CPUs in WinGet using the --architecture ARM parameter and argument during installs. That helped me get the right versions of CrystalDiskMark, PowerShell 7, and a couple of other odds and ends up and running on the X2 laptop. In addition, I used a combination of PatchMyPC Home Updater and WinGet to get all the usual tools and applications up and running. On the whole, that process took about 2 hours and was pretty enjoyable.

I did hit a typical snag in getting RDP to work. Specifically, I was unable to get into the laptop (machine name: Yog7X2) using a Microsoft Account (MSA), despite various well-known fixes — namely, requiring Hello compliance for all logins, and making sure to sign in with the password at least once to get the MSA registered with the LSA. Consequently, I resorted to the equally well-known workaround of setting up a local account and using that instead.

First Impressions: Bedazzled and Enthused

I’ve actually purchased two Snapdragon X1 laptops for our household already (in 2025). For instance, I own an ASUS Zenbook A14. Meanwhile, my son has a ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 that we bought to replace a ThinkPad X390 after its display cracked. Obviously, I’m already enamored of the value proposition: decent performance, great battery life, and a slim, portable form factor. Indeed, both of us emphatically like those older models.

Surprisingly, the Slim 7X Gen 11 runs noticeably faster than most of the fleet here at Chez Tittel. To be clear, that fleet includes high-end Lenovo models like the ThinkPad P16 Gen3 Mobile Workstation and the ThinkStation P3 Ultra — so that’s a significant statement.

In addition, the unit is incredibly light at 1.17 kg (2.58 lbs). At the same time, even the low-end OLED display is brilliant and easy on the eyes. Astonishingly, reviews published so far (it’s early in the life cycle) put battery life in a range from 25 hours (mixed real-world usage) to 31 hours (local video playback), with Lenovo claiming “up to 29 hours” in its CES 2026 announcement. Naturally, I’ll see how that pans out in my own testing and usage.

All in all, this is a machine I wanted to see and use. Now that I’ve gotten started, I’m favorably disposed. Furthermore, I’m expecting my ardor and appreciation to grow as I get more time with this snazzy little laptop. Stay tuned: I plan to post three more items about this device in the next two weeks.

One More Things (Added 1 Day Later)

The Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 also offers another feature I definitely appreciate. I concur with Michael Crider’s recent PC World story that OEMs should provide USB-C ports on both sides of their laptops for ease of access to chargers and docks in cramped conditions and on on office desktops. And guess what? Lenovo provides 3 (!) USB-C ports on this model: 2 on the left side, and one on the right. Good stuff!

 

 

 

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Author, Editor, Expert Witness