All posts by Ed Tittel

Full-time freelance writer, researcher and occasional expert witness, I specialize in Windows operating systems, information security, markup languages, and Web development tools and environments. I blog for numerous Websites, still write (or revise) the occasional book, and write lots of articles, white papers, tech briefs, and so forth.

Cool Tools, Hyper-V and VMs, Insider stuff, WED Blog, Windows 11

Moment 3 Dev VMs Now Available

June 26, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then. I read a June 25 story on Neowin with great interest. It’s entitled “Microsoft releases free Windows 11 virtual machines with the Moment 3 update .” If you visit the MS webpage that the story covers, you’ll find VMs to download for VMWare, Hyper-V (Gen2), VirtualBox and Parallels. Inside each VM is a running instance of Windows 11 Enterprise, Visual Studio 2022 Community edition, WSL for Linux 2 (Ubuntu), Windows Terminal, with developer mode turned on. Hence my title here: “Moment 3 Dev VMs Now Available.”

Moment 3 Dev VMs Now Available:
20+ GB Download

Because Hyper-V is my virtualization tool of choice, that’s the version I downloaded to try out on a test PC. That download is about 21GB in size, and took me a good 4 minutes to download over a fairly fast connection.

Once you get over that hump, you’ll find a .vhdx file inside the ZIP folder that’s a hefty 40+GB in size. UnZip same, and you’ll be able to open that VM inside Hyper-V. I’d recommend doing so from an NVMe SSD, which for many users will mean their system drive. Thus, make sure you’ve got the room!

I’d also recommend deleting the ZIP file once you’ve extracted its contents just to save some space. If you have the expanded file, you don’t need to keep the ZIPped version around. On an 8th gen 4-core i7 CPU (8650U @ 1.9 GHz) laptop, it took just under 5 minutes to unZIP the VM (4:55).

This hefty ZIP file takes a while to unpack…4:55 on my test PC.

Once you’ve got the .vhdx file unzipped, you simply need to create a new VM inside Hyper-V (Gen 2, 4096 MB RAM, default switch). You can then double click the VM inside Hyper-V to launch, and you’ll get a complete Windows 11 instance with all the aforementioned goodies up and running. It took about 4 minutes on my Yoga X380 ThinkPad test PC to get to the desktop shown in lead-in graphic.

Other than the time it takes to download, install and start up, the process is dead easy. Try it for yourself and you’ll see. The only downside is that this is an eval copy of Windows that ages out on September 23, 2023. Thus, it won’t last very long!

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Teams App vs. Application Update Conundrum

June 23, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’m chuckling as I report this. Right now many people — including me — run both the app and the application version of Microsoft Teams on their Windows 10 and/or 11 PCs. I’ve been sussing out another update mystery in keeping Teams current, and have finally figured it out . . . I think. It seems there’s an easily overlooked Teams app vs application update conundrum in play. The Microsoft Store keeps the app version current on its own; regular applications often require human intervention for updates. And to make things more interesting, this is apparently a case where WinGet isn’t always equipped with pointers to the latest, greatest update packages. Sigh.

One more thing: Because the Teams application runs as part of the Office (365 or 2019 or later “dated versions”) running update in Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and so on also takes care of the Teams application update. Good to know!

Solving the Teams App vs. Application Update Conundrum

I started twigging to my issue when I saw two entries for Microsoft Teams in my update scanner SUMo. Winget told me one of those instances was an application (ID: Microsoft.Teams; version 1.6.00.12455 was most current, but I was still running 1.6.00.6754). The other one was an app (ID: MicrosoftTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe; version 23134.300.2089.5908; the _*weky… string in the ID is what tells you it’s an app, BTW).

That led to my “Aha!” moment. Microsoft Store keeps apps up to date pretty darn well without requiring human intervention. Regular applications, not so much. So I had to fire up the application, log in, navigate into Settings, and tell it to “Check for updates.” That did the trick, after which Teams was finally up-to-date. Amusingly it’s now running version 1.6.0.16322 — a higher version number than the SUMo recommendation that twigged me to this interesting issue in the first place. Go figure!

Keeping Windows apps and applications up-to-date is always interesting. In cases like this one, in fact, it may even be a little too interesting. But it’s always fun to figure things out.

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Thoughts & concerns, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

WizTree v4.14 Mystery Finally Resolved

June 22, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I must say I’m relieved. I keep in touch with Kyle Katarn. He’s the principal developer of Software Update Monitor (aka SUMo) and a bunch of other interesting software. Lately, SUMo’s been reporting there’s an update available for WizTree. But I’ve neither been able to find it, nor has the most recent available download resolved the discrepancy, either. Sigh. But this morning, the WizTree v4.14 mystery finally resolved itself. Indeed, its download page finally refers to — and makes available — the very version that SUMo recommends. See it in the lead-in graphic above.

Download Means WizTree v4.14 Mystery Finally Resolved

Even though it’s dated June 6 in that screencap, I swear by all that’s holy it’s only showed up on the download page recently. Somehow, Kyle’s data analysis tools figured out what was coming long before it actually appeared. This happens sometimes, when you use update tools that scan the web to figure out that new versions of existing apps may be available.

I’ve noticed, and reported, at least ten times a week lately that SUMo occasionally recommends things before they’re ready for consumption. And sometimes, it even recommends beta or preview versions of software instead of production ones. From messaging with Kyle I understand that’s because his tools pay close attention to version numbers. Apparently, that means the occasional false positive that selects an item based on version number even when that version isn’t yet ready for widespread distribution and use.

To his great credit, Kyle asked me to report these things to him as and when I find them. I do, and he almost always fixes them the same day (often within an hour or two). Indeed, I’m pretty impressed with his responsiveness and can-do attitude,

Enough! Or too much?

That balancing act actually comes from William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell (1793). It’s as true today as it was then. And it describes the kind of dancing on a knife’s edge that tracking updates demands. One must be just aggressive enough to catch everything, everywhere, all the time. But one can’t be so aggressive as to recommend updates that aren’t yet generally available, or that shouldn’t be put forward. That means recognizing and steering clear of previews, alpha and beta test versions, and so forth, even though they almost always bear higher version numbers.

Things can get tricky from time to time, tracking and managing updates here in Windows-World. Yet somehow, we manage to carry on. Whether or not we also keep calm at the same time tends to vary…

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11

Build 22631.1900 Shows 13 Spurious Reclaimables

June 21, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s an odd an ind interesting situation. After applying the CU that took the PC to the most current Beta Channel build, it reported an astounding 16 packages amenable to cleanup. After running DISM …/startcomponentcleanup, that selfsame PC running Build 22631.1900 shows 13 spurious reclaimables.

Why do I claim those reclaimable packages are spurious? Because running and re-running the same DISM command (which normally removes them all):

(a) reports successful completion
(b) leaves the number of reclaimable packages unchanged (13)

I’ve seen this happen on some Insider Previews in the past, as far back as Windows 8.x. But never with such a high number of packages — indeed, it’s “lucky 13.” WTF?!

If Build 22631.1900 Shows 13 Spurious Reclaimables, Then?

I’ve reported this situation to Feedback Hub along with screencaps to show what DISM reports. But otherwise, there’s not much a mere user — even an Insider MVP like myself — can do about this kind of problem. If the machine were showing signs of instability, odd behavior, or reduced performance I’d try an in-place repair install. I’d follow that up with a clean install if such problems persisted.

But since this seems to be purely an artifact from inside DISM that doesn’t affect the machine’s overall behavior or capability, I’ll leave it alone for the time being. If MS responds to my feedback, I’ll take whatever advice they dispense. Otherwise, I’ll wait for the next Beta Channel release with hopes that such an upgrade will clear this strange and weirdly high count of non-existent reclaimable packages.

Stay tuned: I’ll report back in after the next CU or new Build. I’m betting this problem will disappear once the “next thing” gets installed. We’ll see!

Minor Build Number Goes to 1906 (June 23)

Yesterday, CU KB5027311 got applied, as did an Update Stack Package. No change to the reclaimables count, nor did a cleanup attempt with /startcomponentcleanup have any effect. I’m guessing this won’t change until the next major version increments through an upgrade of some kind. Let’s see…

Note Added January 20, 2024

With the installation of Build 22635.3066 (23H2 Beta Channel Insider Preview), the “spurious 13” have vanished from DISM’s notice. The announcement says nothing about any relevant changes, and the one for the base level release for this feature upgrade says only “a handful of fixes to improve overall reliability.” Somewhere, somehow, though this finally got fixed. Go figure.

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

File Explorer Restart Fixes Start Menu

June 20, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I don’t know what I — or Windows itself — did. But I do know for sure that when I logged into my production PC this morning, Start Menu search was broken. I could type anything I wanted into the search bar. But each search came up empty. I could still navigate to apps alphabetically, so I knew something odd or interesting was up. Fortunately, among its many other good qualities, a File Explorer restart fixes Start Menu, too.

How File Explorer Restart Fixes Start Menu

The lead-in graphic shows how it’s done. Fire up Task Manager (I like to use the CTRL-Shift-Esc shortcut, but you can right-click on the Taskbar to get at it through a pop-up menu, too). Find Windows Explorer (I still think of it by its older name as in the title for this blog post), right-click, and select “Restart” from the pop-up menu.

As the term indicates, this basically kills the runtime environment for Windows/File Explorer, which includes the Start Menu, the taskbar, and other stuff, as well as any and all open Explorer windows. All this gets restarted afresh. And when that happens, the new and pristine runtime usually works as it should.

Case in point this morning: my broken Start Menu search function started working again. I cheerfully confess I simply wanted to play Solitaire. But typing “Sol” into the search box did nothing for me. The fix took less than 10 seconds to complete, though. And when it was done it was back to “Windows business as usual.”

Good! That’s just what I wanted… Keep this in your hat: it’s sure to come in handy someday here in Windows-World.

Backup/Restore, Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Windows 11 Restore Point Pros&Cons

June 19, 2023 Ed Tittel 2 Comments

I’ve got to admit it: I’m of two minds about restore points in modern Windows versions — especially Windows 11. I found myself chewing over Windows 11 restore point pros&cons this morning, as I used WizTree to check my boot/system drive on some test PCs. Let me explain…

Exploring Windows 11 Restore Point Pros&Cons

Let’s start with a basic definition courtesy of Gavin Wright/TechTarget:

A system restore point is a backup copy of important Windows operating system (OS) files and settings that can be used to recover the system to an earlier point of time in the event of system failure or instability. It is a part of Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11 and Windows Server. They are created automatically or manually. System restore points only affect OS and application files, but not user data.

I confess: up through and including versions of Windows 8, I used to use Restore Points a LOT. But since the introduction of Windows 10 in 2014/2015 — quite some time now — I’ve been using daily or weekly image backups on my production and test PCs almost exclusively. These protect user preferences, settings, and data as well as the “important OS files” mentioned in the preceding definition. For me, it’s also faster and easier to restore an image backup than it is to do likewise with a restore point (and with less certain results). FWIW, I still use Macrium Reflect Free as my primary backup and restore tool. (I use the paid-for version on production PCs.)

Restore Point Pros

If, as shown in the lead-in graphic, you have restore points turned on, Windows will make them for you automatically or manually. They’re created automatically when you apply Windows updates. Likewise, many application installers are built to make a restore point early on in their operation, so they can roll back to a point in time prior to their actions in case something goes wrong. Also, you can create a manual store point by clicking the “Create” button shown at the lower right in the lead-in graphic. If you do choose to use restore points, I also recommend grabbing and trying out Nic Bedford’s System Restore Explorer as well. IMO, it’s easier to use and more comprehensive than the built-in Windows facility.

Restore points are easy, somewhat automated and cover many OS or runtime issues. This makes them easy and convenient to use, especially for less savvy and sophisticated Windows users. In a nutshell, those are the pros for restore points.

Restore Point Cons

In using WizTree to explore a couple of my test machines this morning, I was reminded of one of the cons for restore points — namely, they can soak up a fair amount of disk space. When I use the “Delete all restore points…” option on one of my Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga PCs this morning, here’s what WizTree showed as deleted immediately afterward:

All in all I recovered almost 6 GB of disk space by deleting all restore points.
[Click image for full-sized view.]

The impact of restore points can be up to the size limit you set aside for such use. As shown in the lead-in graphic, that’s 19.05 GB for my “other” X380 Yoga test PC. If you’re making image backups and restore points, it’s a good idea to allocate no more than 1% or 10GB (whichever is less) for such use.

Besides space issues, I’ve observed that restore points don’t protect you from unwanted registry changes (including preferences, settings, use of tweak tools and so forth). Nor do they restore user or application data files and such, either. In general, I favor image files because they include absolutely everything that might get changed — or go wrong.

That said, if you use an image restore, you will lose any new files or changes you’ve made since the time at which that image was captured. Thus, it may be necessary for you to run a “mini-backup” to save that stuff to a flash drive or other external media before restoring the most recent image so you lose less (or nothing). Because Reflect lets me mount an image as a virtual drive, I often make another image of my broken system just in case I need something from that set-up after I revert to my most recent saved image.

What’s Your Preference?

On your Windows PCs, you can do as you like with backups and restores (including restore points). I don’t use them anymore because they don’t bail me out of all the trouble I often get myself into. If your usage patterns are less experimental or extreme, restore points may indeed meet all your needs. Even so, I’d still recommend periodic image backups just in case they don’t work to get you of some of the jams you may occasionally get into. But again: that’s up to you!

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, WED Blog, Windows 11

Chasing Canary Focus Sessions

June 16, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I have to laugh — or, at least, chuckle. After reading about a new Focus sessions widget at MSPowerUser I went chasing after same. I should have known it might not be as available as one might hope. It’s on gradual release. Indeed, it shows up only in one of two of its possible haunts. After chasing Canary Focus sessions for a while, let me explain how I figured this out.

Chasing Canary Focus Sessions
May Yield Mixed Results

The first key to focus sessions is an update to the Clock app. It needs to get to version 11.2305.6.0 (or higher). That should come easily, courtesy of a quick hop into the Microsoft Store’s Library tab, where clicking the “Get updates” button should true up a Canary PC or VM. Indeed, as you can see in the app window from Clock that appears at the head of this blog post, “Focus sessions” is the first element in its left-hand menu (also expanded to fill the right-hand pane as shown).

But a pane in a Windows 11 app is not a widget. So I went to both places where one might expect to find such a thing with mixed results:

1. To the Dev Home (Preview) app, where one can click the “+Add widget” button on its Dashboard pane to pin another widget thereto. But alas, the list of available widgets does not include “Focus session” amidst its still-limited set of offerings.

2. To the news/weather bug on the Canary task bar, where clicking on same opens a larger panel that includes this entry:

After clicking “Add them now” I *DO* see “Focus session” as an available item. Clicking same produces the Focus session widget at the top of the expanded news/weather bug window. Goody!

What Did I Just Learn?

Only some widgets make it onto the Dev Home (Preview) dashboard. Many more are available through the expanded news/weather bug pane. For the time being, it looks like the Focus session widget is one of the latter, but not one of the former. That’s one specific lesson learned.

The bigger implication is that not all new widgets that MS announces will pop up in both places. Only some will make it into the Dev Home dashboard, while all should indeed appear through the expanded news/weather bug. Consider yourself so informed.

Uncategorized

Dev Channel Drops Protected OS Files

June 15, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Since time immemorial, there’s always been a toggle in Windows versions to let users choose whether or not to “Hide protected operating system files…” But with a recent build (23481) MS Windows 11 Dev Channel drops protected OS files toggle. This control is gone, gone. gone.

I don’t like that change, nor do lots of other Insiders working with this latest Dev Channel version. Seeing (and occasionally working with) protected OS files is something I find extremely informative and useful. Thus, I’m joining into the general hubbub to entreat MS NOT to drop this toggle from its File Explorer Options.

Say NO to Dev Channel Drops Protected OS Files

Anyone testing Dev Channel Build 23481 should visit Feedback Hub. Tell them: Turn this his toggle back on. Making the inner workings of Windows more opaque does nobody any favors. That said, there are some “tricks” in PowerShell to show such items forcibly for those with admin privileges. See this StackExchange thread for details. If I end up having to learn this stuff, it will make great article fodder.

But in my experience, trouble is better avoided than detected and shot. This could get interesting. Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you posted. My take is it’s fine to have a toggle to protect ordinary users from stuff they probably don’t care about. But it’s not fine to withdraw the ability for power users and admins to choose to see the scaffolding that supports Windows and makes the OS work. ‘Nuff said…

Thanks for the Heads-Up!

Thanks to Rafly Pratama at MSPowerUser.com, whose June 15 story “These File Explorer old settings will be killed in Windows 11 & users are furious” alerted me to this impending debacle. Often such reporting focuses on less important stuff. Again, IMO, this one matters. Please raise some heck along with me on this topic. Thx!

Note added June 16

Over at WinAero, Sergey Tkachenko has already added entries to restore all of the File Explorer options that got knocked out in this update. Even if MS doesn’t relent from some or all such changes, there will be ways to keep them alive. Direct registry edits can do it, or you can use WinAero Tweaker version 1.55 (or higher) instead.

Note added June 23

As you can read in this Windows Latest story, MS is rethinking its position on hidden and protected OS files. Glad to hear, and hope they do reverse course on some of those original changes. Stay tuned!

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 11, Windows Update

Post-Update Cleanup Causes DISM Loop

June 14, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’m not sure what’s causing a fascinating Windows 11 issue. But you can see what it looks like in the lead-in graphic for this blog post. Basically, post-update cleanup causes DISM loop, whereby cleanup keeps repeating 100% completion, until I forcibly stop it with Ctrl-C. Weird!

I’ve never seen anything like this before. It occurred on Windows 11 Canary Build 25387.1200, after applying KB5027120 “2023-06 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8.1 for Windows Version Next for x64.” This comes in the wake of KB5027849, released June 7, that takes the build to minor release number 1200. Again: Weird!

When Post-Update Cleanup Causes DISM Loop, What Now?

The traditional “next move” when something odd and extraordinary occurs in Windows is to reboot, and try again. So that’s what I did. The affected PC — a Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga — came back up without any obvious signs of distress or damage. I was able to remote in without issues, either. And on a retry of the DISM… /startcomponentcleanup command it ran through to completion without further issues.

There’s a known oddity that this DISM command causes a weird doubling of the progress bar if (a) a CU is applied to a Windows 10 or 11 PC and (b) the command is run before the target system is rebooted for a second time. I can only speculate this oddity has been somehow exacerbated in this version of Windows 11.

Be that as it may, the old standby troubleshooting technique — reboot, and try again — seems to do the trick. Once again, the old “three-fingered salute” comes to the rescue. Go figure!

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog

Tracking Minor Updates Poses Diminishing Returns

June 13, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s a question whose best practices answer may save admins time and effort. While indeed many developers now push regular updates for their software, not all are equally urgent. Why? Because whereas some updates add valuable new functionality or plug serious security gaps, others may not introduce much of note. That’s why, IMO, tracking minor updates poses diminishing returns against the time and effort required to find, download, and install them.

A case in point appears in the lead-in graphic. Antibody’s WizTree is a tree graph oriented disk space layout visualization and management tool. You’ll notice that winget doesn’t track release numbers past the first sub version level (e.g. 4.14 is what its “show” sub-command displays, and what its “list” sub-command finds on the target PC).

Why Say: Tracking Minor Updates Poses Diminishing Returns?

Simply put, if winget doesn’t track it and package labels don’t include it, not even the developer thinks it’s noteworthy. I’ve had other development teams confirm this approach to me. Thus, for example, when I contacted IObit to ask about minor revisions to their Driver Booster tool (example version number 10.4.0.127) they’ve told me that they don’t advise users to update unless something new or security-related is changed in a new version. If so, their policy is to increment version numbers more significantly, and to use the tool’s auto-update function to recommend and flog the update process forward.

Long story short: if the developer doesn’t recommend installing every minor update that comes along, I can’t do otherwise. For one thing: life’s too short to keep up with absolutely everything. For another, working toward scheduled update windows for most corporate software means choosing only “worthwhile updates” for inclusion. This reduces the amount of change — and its attendant risk — during such windows, and keeps the time and effort required to survive them as manageable as possible.

The old saw: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” somehow seems apt. Don’t let OCD tendencies to keep up with all change put you in a bind. Relax, and watch the blinking lights instead…

Moment 3 Dev VMs Now Available: 20+ GB Download