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, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

WinGet High Water Mark 14

October 9, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Holy mackerel. It’s not so much that I’ve been ungodly busy lately. It’s more like my ongoing visual impairment (I’ve had one lens replacement done, and go back in next Monday for the second) is limiting my activity to only what’s essential. Thus, while I’ve been distracted from my usual routine. WinGet’s been piling up updates. Today, I hit a WinGet high water mark: 14 updates pending, as you see in the lead-in graphic. Wow!

When WinGet High Water Mark (14) Hits, Then What?

Wait. Wait. And wait some more. The whole process took about 18 minutes to complete, much of which went to a Visual Studio update. Interestingly Windows Terminal did NOT come in at the end of the batting order, as it normally does. Why? Because WT needs restarting when it’s updated. But this time, Teams snuck in at the end, so it got updated before I could get WT restarted. Go figure!

As usual, my hat’s off to Demitrius Nelon (@denelon) and his WinGet team, for their stellar work in making updates safe, easy and routine. I’m a rabid partisan on their behalf, and recommend this tool unreservedly to all charged with keeping Windows PCs current and correct.

Best of all I got a clean bill of health from WinGet after a single run: “No installed package found matching input criteria.” That’s WinGet speak for “everything is up to date.” Good-oh!

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog

Uncovering Create Dev Drive Gotcha

October 8, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Yesterday, I blogged about a real, but apparently small, performance boost for ReFS volumes vis-a-vis NTFS ones. While I was undertaking that testing, I switched a USB4 NVMe from NTFS to ReFS to keep everything else the same. I’m pretty sure that’s the best way to isolate file system differences because port, cable, enclosure and drive all remained the same. Along the way, I found myself uncovering “Create Dev Drive” gotcha. Let me explain.

Uncovering Create Dev Drive Gotcha:
Two Create Dev Drive Buttons

If you attach an unallocated drive to a Windows PC, then navigate to System > Storage > Disks & Volumes, you’ll not only see the “Create Dev Drive button” at the top of that UI pane as shown in the lead-in graphic. Should you scroll down to said unallocated drive, you can evoke a different Create Dev Drive button by clicking on the down-caret for “Create volume” like so:

Here’s the gotcha: if you use the upper Create Dev Drive button, everything works as it should. But if you use the lower one, the create operation fails every time, and reports it fails because the drive is read-only. Here’s what the Settings UI looks like after that error:

Something odd and interesting apparently happens when you use this button instead. I’m reporting this to Feedback Hub. Here’s that link, if you’d care to upvote: Create a dev drive button doesn’t work.

Clean-Up and Fix

Once you do this to yourself, you need to clean things up before you can set things up correctly using (only) the upper “Create Dev Drive” button. You must open Disk Management and delete the RAW volume you’ll now see there (right-click, and select Delete Volume… from the pop-up menu). Then you can return to Settings > System > Storage >Disks & volumes and do it right this time. Enjoy!

One more thing: the Dev Home app is a great place to get started when creating an ReFS volume. It does the Settings navigation for you and drops you right where you want to be. Just remember: it only works when you select the upper, general “Create Dev Drive” button, NOT the lower, device-specific “Create Dev Drive” button. I have no idea why this is so, but that’s the way it seems to work at present. Mysteries like these are what keep me forever fascinated with the wrinkles in Windows-World.

Benchmarking, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, USB devices, WED Blog

Exploiting ReFS Speed Advantage

October 7, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’ve been reading articles online about a supposed speed advantage for the Resilient File System, aka ReFS, in Windows. But I’m observing some caveats when it comes to exploiting ReFS speed advantage. Let me use a speed check from the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra as an example, mounted in a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) NVMe enclosure. Quick examination makes the point nicely: one sees no difference vis-a-vis NTFS. Indeed the speeds shown are entirely typical of any UASP devices at nominal 10 Gbps speeds.

Exploiting ReFS Speed Advantage Requires 20 Gbps or Higher

Do the math: 982.75 MBps = 7,862 Mbps = 7.67 Gbps. That’s about as fast as a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) device can go in a real-world situation, such as running the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. My basic point, therefore, is this: Don’t switch to ReFS for performance gains unless you have a device that can deliver 20 Gbps (or higher) performance. That means USB 3.2 Gen2 (20 Gbps) or USB 4/Thunderbolt 3 or 4 (40 Gbps).

So I tried the same enclosure, same SSD, same cable (all of these factors count) with both ReFS and NTFS. I found it easiest to use the “Create a Dev Drive” option in the Dev Home app to start the former. Disk Mgmt worked find for the latter. Here are those results, which do show ReFS has a speed advantage — but it’s pretty small.

If you compare the big block write speeds (upper 2 left cells) that’s where the advantage is noticeable. For the rest of the cells, it’s barely there.

True, But Nugatory

I’m going to have to mess around with faster SSDs and see if that helps. But so far, I don’t see the uptick as big enough to be worth a lot. That said, as 24H2 goes final I should try again. The P3 Ultra isn’t getting that update offer yet, and that’s usually for good reason. If this changes, I’ll update this post accordingly. Right now, it’s mostly a ho-hum level of added performance.

OK, so I tried it on a different PC — a ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 Mobile Workstation — running 24H2 preview version. It shows modest improvements over the P3 Ultra but nothing spectacular. I’ll keep checking and reporting back here. It’s possible there’s more to see than I can tell just yet. I’m going to run a Macrium Reflect Backup next…

Uncategorized

Unbearable Windows 10 Weirdness: Copilot + Edge

October 4, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

When is a Windows app not really a fully standalone piece of software? When it runs as an extension of the Edge environment. To be more specific: when it’s the Windows 10 version of the MS Store Copilot app. I found myself in login lockout because Copilot was using my base-level work MSA as its login account, and it only works with so-called “personal MSAs.” Only after a fair bit of searching did I discover I needed to change my default Edge profile to get Copilot to run. With apologies to Milan Kundera, I see this as a case of unbearable Windows 10 weirdness: Copilot + Edge, when the latter comes as a kind of unexpected surprise.

Deciphering Unbearable Windows 10 Weirdness: Copilot + Edge

My real issue was that I suddenly couldn’t log into Copilot. It said I was using a work MSA (it’s the base of my current production login account, in fact). It offered a “Switch account” option, too. But try as I might, I got exactly nowhere working through the MSA interface via Copilot. It kept looping back to the same place, and I remained stuck.

Naturally, I turned to Google using “can’t login to Copilot” as my starting point. Only after some serious rooting around in MS Answers and other similar online communities did I find a fix. It showed up in this MS Community thread Windows Copilot Is Not Working. Therein a self-professed “IT technician” observed that “you have to delete your Edge profile and then it works fine.”

That’s not exactly true. But it is an important pointer in the right direction. If you define or switch away from a work or school MSA to a personal MSA it works that way, too. I had to set up a personal MSA profile for the account shown in the lead-in graphic, then switch to same. After that, no more problems circling around my work MSA with no traction. To be more direct: after the switch, the Copilot app resumed working.

When they say “The Devil is in the details,” I am pretty sure the MSA stuff falls under that rubric. And for what it’s worth, so also does the MSA vis-a-vis MS Teams logins. Just another day in the paradisaical paradoxes of Windows-World.

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

WinGet Discord Update End-Around

October 3, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I absolutely love Microsoft’s built-in package manager WinGet. But occasionally things happen when updating application that it can’t (or won’t) handle. As you can see in the lead-in graphic, it cheerfully discloses in red that Discord “…cannot be upgraded using winget.” Indeed, its own built-in update facility did nothing to get me to version 1.0.9165. Thus, my only shot at a WinGet Discord update end-around was the tried-and-true uninstall-reinstall maneuver. That worked, as you can see…

Why Use a WinGet Discord Update End-Around?

Short answer: because it worked. Apparently, it’s uninstaller is smart enough to leave user account information alone. Even though I uninstalled the old version and then installed the new one, it carried over anyway. I’d been worried I’d have to set accounts back up, but no. Everything came up as it should’ve even after an “out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new” operation had completed.

I’m counting myself lucky in this case. There are plenty of other applications that don’t ask if you want to keep personal, account and config info. Then they cheerfully wipe all that stuff out as part of the uninstall process. That makes getting back to where one started a little more time-consuming, especially when a reinstall requires account, password, and possibly even other information to complete.

What’s with Discord’s Pinned Status Anyway?

Notice my attempts to unpin Discord reported “There is no pin for package Discord” (line 7 in the intro graphic). In the past, WinGet has often reported it can’t update Discord because the app is pinned. That’s an experimental feature in WinGet that prevents ordinary syntax for updates from working on certain apps.

Contrary to expectations, though, Discord wasn’t pinned. Yet WinGet couldn’t update it, either. Because the built-in updater didn’t do anything when I tried it (right-click on the notification area icon, then select “Check for updates…” in the resulting pop-up menu), I didn’t have a lot of other options. Thus, I’m grateful that the remove-replace approach did the trick. As you can see from the name of the package downloaded, I did wind up with version 1.0.9165. That’s just what I wanted.

Good thing one can sometimes get lucky here in Windows-World. Glad to have this behind me with no apparent ill effects.

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

Assistant Handles 24H2 Upgrade

October 2, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then: I read this morning that MS dropped the “official” 24H2 release yesterday. “This time,” I thought to myself, “I’m taking a different approach.” From the Download Windows 11 page, I grabbed the Installation Assistant. Prosaically enough, it’s named Windows11InstallationAssistant.exe. File properties show today’s date for creation and modification, so I’m hopeful it will get me to 24H2. But I’m still wondering if the assistant handles 24H2 upgrade as expected, or not. Right now it’s going into its initial restart.

Deciding if Assistant Handles 24H2 Upgrade

If you look at the lead-in graphic it shows the Assistant in phase 3 of the upgrade process — namely 75% through installing the new stuff. After this got to 100%, I rebooted that PC (Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 Mobile workstation). It’s now 30% through the post-reboot install process (white text, spinning arrow, black background).

…Aaaaaand then, it stayed at 30% long enough for me to finish a round of Backgammon waiting for it to complete. But complete it did, only to drop into the OOBE portion of the install next. A couple of minutes later, I had a Windows 11 desktop. But which version is it? Here’s what winver says:

Looks like the Installation Assistant is a workable way to get to 24H2 from 23H2, if you’re of a mind to do that. And it also looks like indeed the upgrade is officially out. I’ll go some exploring and report my findings in tomorrow’s blog post. In the meantime you could try it yourself to see what happens… Cheers!

Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Windows 11

Onscreen Keyboard Lacks Copilot Key

October 1, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Consider this: Copilot itself tells me that my ThinkPad T14s Gen6 Copilot+ laptop should show a Copilot key on its onscreen keyboard. It definitely has one on its physical keyboard: I can see it right now, plain as day. But none of the fixes Copilot recommends gives me such a key, nor can I access settings for that keyboard either. As you can see in the lead-in screencap, the onscreen keyboard lacks Copilot key (it would normally appear between Right-Alt and Right-Ctrl on the bottom row). Sigh.

Does It Matter If Onscreen Keyboard Lacks Copilot Key?

Not really, because the Copilot icon is pinned to the taskbar by default. I’ve always been able to open it with a single click anyway. But what I find interesting is that Copilot itself says there SHOULD be such a key on the onscreen keyboard. It’s clearly not visible.

Copilot also says I should be able to access Settings for the onscreen keyboard as well. But when I open the On-screen Keyboard menu, it shows me only options for Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize and Close. No Settings anywhere, nor does right-click help, either.

It Gets More Interesting at MS Learn

So I truck over to MS Learn to examine its article Get to know the touch keyboard. It offers versions for both Windows 10 and 11 (the preceding link is for 11, because it’s the only one with Copilot key capability AFAIK).

There’s an interesting sentence in this document though. It says “Select the keyboard settings icon in the upper-left corner of the touch keyboard to view and switch between options.” That’s the same thing I’ve been doing to try to access Settings. I don’t see the things it tells me I should see.

I’m left to draw one speculation: perhaps Lenovo didn’t update the onscreen keyboard for Windows 11 (24H2 or even earlier versions). I jump onto the P16 Mobile Workstation (23H2 Build 22631.4169). It shows me the exact same onscreen keyboard, with the same missing items. And indeed, it’s identical to the onscreen keyboard I see in Windows 10, too, with the same top-left icon menu and behaviors. Now, I think I have a clue…

Emailing Lenovo to ask about this. If I learn anything interesting I’ll be back in touch in this post… Isn’t that just the way things sometimes go, here in Windows-World? You betcha!

Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 11

KB5043145 Throws Interesting Stopcode

September 30, 2024 Ed Tittel 4 Comments

Here’s one I’ve not run into before: Stopcode 0XEA. It shows up on BSODs as THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER. The intro screencap show results running that stopcode against the MS error code lookup tool. Basically, it says a device driver thread is stuck in an infinite loop. (See the MS Bug Check 0xEA page for further deets.) Apparently, it’s showing that optional CU KB5043145 throws interesting stopcode and BSOD/GSOD on some PCs. Notably, says WindowsLatest, that includes some 2022 and 2024 Asus laptops.

If KB5043145 Throws Interesting Stopcode, Then What?

If that happens to any of your PCs, you’ll need to boot to WinRE on bootable media, and use the “Uninstall Update ” item in its Advanced Options menu to uninstall it from your Windows Image. When a PC won’t boot because the image is damaged, that’s pretty much the only repair that works, short of a clean Windows (re)install.

Alas, this is eerily reminiscent of the July 19 Crowstrike update, which took down 8+million Windows PCs. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as widespread nor impactful as that incident turned out. That said, Windows users should be aware that this optional CU could force recovery and repair to undo. Fortunately, such updates do not typically affect production environments, where update get tested and vetted long before they get scheduled for some update window.

But gosh, it seems like we’ve run into rather more problematic updates that is typical in 2024. FWIW, the update hasn’t caused any trouble on those test machines here at Chez Tittel where I can make it run. Even so, it’s a great reminder to be careful out there in Windows-World…

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

Outlook Search String Magic

September 27, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

This is an IDKYCDT item. I work with Outlook every day, and have done so since the 1980s. You’d think I’d have learned a long time ago about how to make Outlook search string magic stand up and bark. Not so: in trolling the Internet today I learned about the “isread:no” string in Outlook search, which shows you all unread messages for the current search focus. Indeed, it’s the bomb when applied to my inbox, where things can sometimes pile up alarmingly.

You can see a sample search string of this type in the lead-in graphic. It reads the sender field (from:) in messages, and shows those that match what’s on the other side of the colon. In this case, recent stuff from one of my main project editors at Actual Tech Media.

Exploring Outlook Search String Magic

By itself, this isread:no string is a big boon to my productivity. But naturally, I’d like to find a compendium of all such strings. The closest I could come as an MS Support note entitled “How to search in Outlook.” It lists a pretty good number of such strings. But it isn’t really structured, appropriately organized, or complete in that specific area . Ditto for another support note “Use Outlook’s built-in search filters.”

In fact, the more I look around, the less I’m able to find a useful resource. I’m thinking I should reach out to the father of the AskWoody newsletter — Woody Leonhard himself, author of many books on Word and Office — and see if he can point me in the right direction. Who know where this may lead? Can’t wait to find out.

Stay tuned!

Hyper-V and VMs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11

Chkdsk /f Fixes DISM Issues

September 26, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s an interesting item. As part of routine maintenance, I ran DISM /online /cleanup-image /analyzecomponentstore on the P16 Mobile Workstation this morning. Imagine my surprise when it threw “Error 2; The system cannot find the file specified.” at about 80% complete. I’d never run across this one before. But a Google Search soon revealed that this happens when DISM encounters a corrupted entry in the component store. MS Answers also reported that, nearly always, chkdsk /f fixes DISM issues of this kind. So that’s what I tried: as you can see from the lead-in graphic, it worked!

How Chkdsk /f Fixes DISM Issues

This particular disk scanning operation repairs any corrupted files it finds, if it can. That has me wondering if sfc /scannow might not have had the same salutary effect. I think that’s at least possible, so I’ll have to try it next time around. The only follow-on is that repairs to the C: drive (especially for the kinds of files that DISM cares about) must run while the Windows OS image is not in use. That means scheduling that check and repair during boot-up before the OS takes over operation of the PC (that is, while the boot loader is running things).

Thus, I had to reboot the P16, and watch the check run as a pre-boot task (large white text against a black screen). Here’s a capture from inside a Hyper-V VM (otherwise, it’s challenging to grab boot-time screens from Windows).

Once that repair had completed, I was able to run the previously inoperative DISM command without trouble. Every now and then, one gets lucky in Windows-World. This time, the repair worked just like it was supposed to. Good stuff!