Category Archives: Cool Tools

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, WED Blog

Winget Show URLs Are Live

December 21, 2023 Ed Tittel 1 Comment

Wow! I got a great, unsolicited tip from Demitrius Nelon yesterday (he’s the winget team lead at MS, and a great communicator). It explains a way to grab the download for any package that winget can find. It came up in the context of updating the package named Microsoft.PowerShell, but it will work for any package by name. He informed me that if you run winget show, it will include an installer URL. I knew that. What I didn’t know and am jazzed to learn, is that you can CTRL-click the link and it will fire up your default browser and download it. That’s what “Winget Show URLs are live” means.

Because Winget Show URLs Are Live, Use Them!

This comes up in the context of PowerShell reasonably often for me, because I run PowerShell as my default shell inside Windows Terminal. Alas, when some new PowerShell updates pop up, winget can’t install them because their “install technology” changes. That’s because winget is inherently conservative when updating, and won’t make big changes on its own. Thus, for example, when an install technology change hits PowerShell, one must then download the new version from GitHub and run the installer to make the update.

Look near the bottom of the lead-in screengrab, which shows the output for “Winget show MIcrosoft.PowerShell.” It’s the section that starts with “Installer:” at left. 2 lines down the label reads “Installer Url” with the actual github download link to its right. If you hold the CTRL key down and click on that URL, download will commence.

This is about as handy as updates get when winget won’t do them for you automatically. Shoot! It makes a pretty good alternative to winget install <package-name>, too. Thanks, Demetrius: this tip makes a snazzy stocking stuffer. Happy holidays!

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog

Hello Default Blocks Enhanced Mode Login

December 19, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s an interesting Catch-22 — for me, anyway. If you want to move data into or out of a VM easily, you must run that VM in an”Enhanced session.” OTOH, if you run a VM in that mode, you can’t login. First, you must tweak a setting with the Enhanced session turned off for the moment. Why? Because a Hello default blocks enhanced mode login unless it’s turned off. Let me explain…

Unless Turned Off Hello Default Blocks Enhanced Mode Login

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you’re also looking in on a VM window via an RDP session. You can see the pull down menu from the control bar shows its “Enhanced session” setting is enabled (blue checkmark against light blue background).

Unfortunately, because of Windows OS defaults upon installation, a VM will also have the Settings → Accounts → Sign-in options set with “Require Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts” turned on. Alas, that means the Enhanced session VM window will come up, but it won’t respond to the mouse or keyboard to show a login prompt with its PIN or password text entry box. You can’t login under these circumstances until you uncheck the “Enhanced session” item, log in to the VM, then visit Settings and turn off the afore-mentioned Hello sign-in requirement. Once that is done, you can turn the Enhanced session back on, and it will work just fine to let you login. Go Figure!

See the Setting Info…

Here’s a screencap of the “Require Windows Hello…” stuff from Windows 10. The one in Windows 11 is virtually the same.

If you are like me, you use both RDP and VMs together regularly. That means this little maneuver is a useful and necessary part of post-install set-up/clean-up.

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

Fixing Windows 11 Boot Loop

December 18, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Last Friday, we picked son Gregory up at the airport: he’s home for the holidays from college. That evening, he mentioned his laptop — a 2019 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga — was “stuck on updates.” Boy, was he ever right: i found myself fixing Windows 11 boot loop as the machine hung after the post-GUI reboot in attempting to get through the 23H2 feature upgrade. Stuck, stuck, stuck indeed.

Fixing Windows 11 Boot Loop Takes Thought & Recall

As soon as I turned the PC on, I could tell it was cycling on processing updates. It just couldn’t seem to get past the spinning circle stage after the initial reboot. Multiple tries later — 3 of them, to be exact — the Windows bootstrap facility presented me with the recovery menu. “Aha!” I though “now I’m getting somewhere…”

Of course, then I had to remember to turn off secure boot in the UEFI so I could actually transfer control to a bootable WinRE environment on a flash drive (UFD). Startup repairs didn’t do it. The Macrium Reflect Rescue Media’s “fix boot problems” didn’t do it, either. But when I stuck the DaRT (Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset) UFD into the machine it finally got through a boot-up to alternate media.

On the next reboot, Windows recognized it was stuck in the middle of a failed update. It then commenced rollback to the previous 11 version and reached the desktop. At that point, I was able to run another Reflect backup (I did), and then start rolling forward again.

All’s Well That Ends Well

The pending Cumulative Update completed successfully, and rebooted correctly. I then fired off the 23H2 upgrade and crossed my fingers. This time, it completed without a hitch. The X390 is now fully caught up, cleaned up and has been backed up one more time.

I’m not sure what caused the first 23H2 attempt to hang in a boot loop, but it didn’t fall prey to that again. I think it may have been the attempt to apply the CU, then the 23H2 upgrade, in a single go. This time around, I made sure to reboot after the CU, before attempting the 23H2 upgrade. By the time I worked through all the steps, the whole shebang took about 2 hours to fix. We were all glad when it was done — me, especially.

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

Windows 10 Copilot Remains Elusive

December 14, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

There’s a new KB in circulation that claims to extend the reach of Copilot in Windows 10. That would be KB5033372, released December 12. But alas: on the lone eligible physical PC and various Windows VMs here at Chez Tittel, Windows 10 Copilot remains elusive. It runs fine inside Edge, but will not show up as a Taskbar or Start menu item on any of their desktops. Sigh.

Why Windows 10 Copilot Remains Elusive

A quick visit to the KB announcement (link in preceding paragraph) gives me an excellent idea why my PC isn’t getting Copilot. Because some multi-monitor set-ups are subject to “mysterious icon migration” across or among desktops, MS has blocked it for such configs. Here’s what they say:

To prevent users from encountering this issue, Copilot in Windows (in preview) might not be available on devices that have been used or are currently being used in a multimonitor configuration.

And wouildn’t you know it: my Windows 10 PC runs with dual Dell UltraSharp 2717 monitors. That definitely accounts for my physical PC’s lack of Copilot. But I’m not so sure about the VMs. It may stem from my typical mode of access to them (using one of the two just-mentioned monitors) or it may be something else.

A Ray of Hope?

In the same KB announcement already cited MS also says that they’re “working on a solution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.” Here’s hoping that release is upcoming sooner rather than later!

And once again, I’m a Johnny-come-lately among all those already in the vanguard. But hey: that exactly the way that things go here in Windows-World. Once more with feeling, I guess!!

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

New Canary Notepad Builds Character

December 8, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

When I saw @JenMsft’s Tweet yesterday, I knew I had to have it. A new Notepad version now includes character counts in the (bottom-line) status bar. If you squint, and look bottom right, you can see it in the lead-in graphic: 10,852 characters. Thus, when I declaim that the new Canary Notepad builds character, I’m not talking about personality traits like gumption and perseverance. I’m talkin’ numbers, baby!

Exactly How New Canary Notepad Builds Character

Over time, MS has been revamping and improving the Notepad app. Indeed, it now comes from the MS Store and lives in the Program Files\WindowsApp file hierarchy (version 11.2311.29.0 has these particular goods). Indeed, I’ve seen some discussion that it might even gain more code editing and formatting smarts, a la Notepad++.

But this current version far exceeds the capability of its predecessor (e.g. the version still running in Windows 10). That older iteration lacks the bottom status bar completely. It’s got no settings controls, either: you must do all that stuff using menu bar entries.

A Different Update Drill…

Optimistically, I went looking for the newest Notepad version on one of my Canary test PCs when the news about the character counts came out. I should’ve known better. I had to open the Store, click the Library entry, then Update all. After that, as you can see in the closing screencap below, I obtained “new Notepad satisfaction.”

Once I visited the Store, I was able to update Notepad to see its new character count ability.

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Team Lead Sez: Winget Upgrade Winget

December 7, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

If you read this blog, you know I’ve been reporting for months about interesting issues that occur in PowerShell when winget tries to update itself. In a Tuesday Tweet MS Team Lead Sez: Winget Upgrade Winget. I take this to mean that they’ve solved the issues (for the stable version at the moment, previews planned for some future date) related to winget upgrading itself. Good stuff!

Why Team Lead Sez: Winget Upgrade Winget

I’ve interacted with the afore-mentioned Winget Team Lead, Demitrius Nelon, repeatedly in the last few months on this very topic. In fact, we’ve agreed that the issues of an application updating itself can be both tricky and challenging (it’s a kind of Catch-22, in the most classic sense).

And now, I find myself in an interesting situation. I can’t wait for the next stable version of winget to come along, so I can try updating it using winget itself. But the most recent release dates back to November. I can’t find any info on when the next release is coming out … goes off to message Demitrius on X … will report any responses received back here.

Note added 2 hrs later: Mr.Delon resonded to my inquiry about when the next winget stable release might hit. According to his reply,it could happen for an incremental winget 1.6 version before year’s end. If not, 1.7 is scheduled for February 2024. Now we know!

I just checked a representative sample of test and production PCs and there’s nothing in the queue for a winget self-upgrade just yet. But it should be interesting to see how it all plays out. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted.

Cool Tools, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog

PowerShell Out-GridView Grants Output Insights

December 5, 2023 Ed Tittel 4 Comments

OK, then. I’m taking Matt Hester’s fabulous Learning PowerShell course over at LinkedIn. Right now, I’m into the third of three modules. I have to say: it’s been great! Yesterday, among lots of other incredibly useful nuggets, I learned about the Out-GridView cmdlet. To say that PowerShell Out-Gridview grants output insights for most cmdlets is like saying “The Grand Canyon is Big.” But that makes it no less true or interesting — to me, at least. Let me explain…

What PowerShell Out-Gridview Grants Output Insights Means

PowerShell cmdlets manipulate data objects. These have named properties. When you output them, you can see the values associated with all properties for an object instance (rows). You can also see the values associated with individual properties for all instances (columns).

Simply put, what Out-Gridview does is to grab the values associated with each instance’s properties and throw them up in a window like the one you see in the lead-in graphic. As you can see in the top line of that window this shows the results of the get-service cmdlet, from which the resulting objects’ Name, Status and RequiredServices property values are all shown. This is cool and helpful all by itself, but there’s more: a LOT more.

Working the GridView Window

Let’s call the windowed output from Out-Gridview a “GridView Window.” It’s actually an output from the Interactive Script Editor (ISE) that’s part of the overall PowerShell runtime environment.

In this GridView Window, you can click on any column head therein to sort the data by the values in that column. By default it comes sorted on whatever shows up in column 1 (aka “alphabetical order, by Name”). But you can also sort on Status, or RequiredServices as well.

Wait! There’s still more:

You can add all kinds of filters to the output shown in the Window
Types of filters include
- contains (string or value partial matching anywhere)
- does not contain (string or value absent)
- starts with (initial string character matching)
- equals (string or value exact match)
- does not equal (string or value not matched or equal)
- ends with (ending string character matching)
- is empty (property has no value defined or is null)
- is not empty (property has a value defined or is not null)
You can add as many filters as you like, change them as you go, and the GridView Window’s contents change dynamically to keep up
Data shows up as you type

Overall, this is a great way to examine data from cmdlet outputs in PowerShell. It means you don’t have to scroll up and down in the command window, nor do you have to save the data to a file and open it using your favorite editor. The gridview data is, however, evanescent (when you close the window, the data is gone). It doesn’t do away with piping output into files: it’s just a (temporary) alternative, but a darned good one!

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

Windows 10 Copilot Limitations

December 4, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Dang! I’d have to call my desktop experience “a swing and a miss.” I jumped on the KB5023378 Preview update, expecting to get Copilot out of that amendment. Wrong! Among the first words in the afore-linked update Support note, key Windows 10 Copilot limitations emerge. This includes this scoping statment: “This [Copilot addition] only applies to devices that run Home or Pro editions…” (emphasis mine). As you can see from the lead-in graphic for reasons that are too long and tedious to explain, this PC is running Windows 10 Enterprise. Sigh.

Bitten By Windows 10 Copilot Limitations

Sigh. It just goes to show that my personal dark cloud hasn’t quit hovering in the vicinity. I’ve often observed that if MS slides an update out as a gradual release, my PCs are invariably in the rear guard. This is something of a spin on this all-too-familiar situation, but nontheless an amusing one.

Fortunately, my physical desktop is not the only Windows 10 image I can run. I just jumped over to the ThinkPad P16 Mobile Workstation where I have a couple of Win10 images from which to choose. My cleanest one (installed last week for an AskWoody column) is installing same right now. When it reboots, I expect to see a Copilot icon in the Taskbar. Here goes…

Overall, install time on a 4GB Gen2 VM was quick. The whole thing took under 3 minutes to download, install, then cycle through post-reboot update processing. Good stuff. But did I see Copilot on the Taskbar when it was all done? Nope.

I had to turn on and relaunch the VM to come back from the update reboot. And another reboot didn’t bring it up, either. Nor did a right-click in the Taskbar show a Copilot control. No Copilot item under Settings → Personalization, either. Very interesting. I’m obviously going to have to learn more to get Copilot working on my Windows 10 Pro VMs. Should be fun: stay tuned!

That Old Familiar Sensation

I see in the Windows Latest coverage (Mayank Pamar) that “Microsoft has also warned that the feature may not be available on devices with compatibility issues, including devices with an incompatible app.” Why do I get the feeling that includes either my ThinkPad P16 Mobile Workstation or its Hyper-V runtime environment for my 2 Windows 10 VMs on that machine?

Note Added December 6: Maybe I should be grateful none of my Win10 PCs got Copilot? I’m seeing numerous reports that MS has put updates for both 10 and 11 on hold because of Copilot issues. I guess waiting is better than troubleshooting problems of Microsoft’s making. Isn’t that just the way things go here in Windows-World?

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

Canary 26002 Gets Energy Saver

November 30, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Once upon a time, if one wanted to manage laptop batteries intelligently, one needed the OEM to provide a utility. No more. With the latest Insider Preview, Canary 26002 gets Energy Saver capability built in.

You can see this on display in the lead-in screen shot. It shows the notification area expanded to include a new “Energy Saver” entry (right). What’s more. if you right-click that item, it will open Settings for you. There you can easily get to the Power & Battery display (left) that shows Energy saver is turned on and always running.

Why Canary 26002 Gets Energy Saver Is Good News

Many, many years ago — I think it was in the early 2000s — I translated an article for Toms Hardware from German into English. It dealt with the issues involved in keeping batteries alive as long as possible. This could be a problem for units whose chargers remain plugged-in more than running off battery.

Indeed, it had long been the case that laptop makers had to furnish a special utility that would monitor battery charge levels, usage patterns, min/max for charge and discharge (and more) to keep track of things. You can see evidence of this even in my 2021 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 Mobile Workstation. Here are its Battery Details (from Lenovo Commercial Vantage):

Lenovo tracks all kinds of battery levels and stats.
[Click image for full-sized view.]

With this latest addition, the OS can keep track of this kind of thing for any and all battery-powered PCs. It can also manage charge levels and energy consumption to ensure long batter life while also minimizing actual energy consumption. This is a great step forward, and a good thing for laptops, users and the environment. I approve!

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

PowerShell Install Method Changes

November 27, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

When a new version of PowerShell comes along, it’s always interesting to see whether or not winget can field that update correctly. This time around — with version 7.4.0 — it reports a “different install technology” as you can see in the lead-in graphic. When the PowerShell install method changes, winget won’t handle the update without an uninstall/reinstall maneuver. So I CTRL-clicked the link shown above the WT pane (from the GitHub link that’s helpfully provided) and used the MSI file to update PowerShell instead.

When PowerShell Install Method Changes, Use GitHub

That Microsoft Installer File is under 65MB in size. On my test PC, that takes less than 10 seconds to download. That opens the “SuperHero” PS installer (see next screencap), after which install takes half-a-dozen mouse-clicks to configure as I like it. Another minute or so, and the job is done. MS is doing better at getting new versions of PowerShell to circulate. I like it!

The only time you actually see the PS superhero avatar is when the installer runs.

Watching Out for Certain Winget Shenanigans

So, I’m learning to be wary of three specific installs when using winget inside Windows Terminal and PowerShell — namely:

winget itself: if the tool doing the updating gets updated, interesting things can — and do — sometimes happen. This is another case when I’ve sometimes seen the “Cancelled” error message that really reports a loss of interaction with the updater (the update actually succeeds, but can’t report success).
Windows Terminal: same principal as before, write large when the entire Windows Terminal runtime has to change. When this occurs, WT usually writes a message into the active terminal window to say “Restart the window/session to run the changed version.” Good -oh!
PowerShell: and again, if PowerShell is updating itself it must be ready to handle those changes. As we see in this particular case, something has changed that requires an uninstall/reinstall. My preference: using the GitHub installer instead. Easy-peasey.

And that, dear Readers, is how I often keep myself entertained, here in Windows-World. Great fun…