Category Archives: Device drivers

Device drivers, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11

Windows 11 Power Options Oddity

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OK, here’s one for the “Stranger Things” file. I was checking Power Options on a test laptop yesterday. In fact, it’s one of a pair of nearly identical machines: both are Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yogas that differ only in SSD brand and OS variant (this one runs Beta Channel, the other one Dev). Yet this machine will show only two power plans under Power Options (see lead-in graphic). The other one shows all default items just as it should, and then some (see below) .

Windows 11 Power Options Oddity.devchannelx380

The Dev Channel X380 lets me view or hide additional plans; the Beta Channel X380 does not. What gives?
[Click image for full-sized view.]

Working Around Windows 11 Power Options Oddity

To attempt to fix the issue, I worked my way through the various — and terrific — Power Options tutorials over at ElevenForum.com. These include the following items:

Of those items, the first put the X380 in a state where I could restore missing power plans. The GUIDs for other plans remained available, but I couldn’t get the utility to offer an “Unhide” option so it would only show two Power Plans at any given moment. That said, having made other Power Plans accessible that workaround proved good enough for me.

Even the Master Remains Baffled

I exchanged a series of private messages with Shawn Brink, fellow WIMVP and a primary operator and tutorial writer at Eleven Forum on this mystery. We ended up concluding that a Lenovo OEM power management driver might be impacting the built-in Power Options control panel widget. I found and installed a new (Nov 29, 2022) Lenovo Power Management Driver for Windows 11.

At first, it made no difference in Power Options behavior. Following a reboot, though, while I still could not unhide other power plans in the initial Power Options pane shown as the lead-in graphic, when I click “Create a power plan,” it now shows all three default items correctly — namely Balanced, Power Saver and High Performance.

Windows 11 Power Options Oddity.partial fix

Here’s progress, of a sort. All the defaults show up when creating a custom plan. [Click image for full-sized view.]

I still have to work around the lack of an unhide capability to access invisible power plans using PowerShell. But at least I can now access and use all  such power plans. This time, close enough is also good enough. Sigh. And that’s how things sometimes go, here in Windows-World.

Note Added January 23

I built an ISO to match the currently running beta image (22623.1180) from UUPDump.net. Then, I performed an in-place repair upgrade. I’d hoped this would fix the Power Options oddities. No dice: apparently, this is among the few problems that a prair install won’t fix. Sigh again.

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Device drivers, Insider stuff, Networking, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Remote Wi-Fi Driver Update Magic

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I remember the networking wars of the late 1980s. That was when Token Ring, ARCnet, LocalTalk and other physical media vied with Ethernet for market- and mindshare. Indeed, I’ve worked with versions of Ethernet all the way back to 10Base2 and 10Base5. Thus, I successfully upgraded the Wi-Fi drivers on my 2018 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme (running Windows 11) with bemusement and appreciation minutes ago. Based on how earlier Windows versions worked, there was surely some remote Wi-Fi driver update magic involved.

The lead-in graphic is the Intel installer pane that announces a successful Wi-Fi driver install. What’s interesting about this? It’s inside a Wi-Fi based RDP session. I’m working on my production PC via Remote Desktop Connection to the X1 Extreme. It restored itself automatically once the driver install finished. It came back up, even though the connection dropped as that update occurred. No working driver means no Wi-Fi during the switchover from old to new.

What Makes Remote Wi-Fi Driver Update Magic Happen?

Good question! RDP apparently recognizes enough about the dropped session to bring it back to life. And FWIW, that occurs during the first “retry” — by default, RDP attempts resuscitation up to 5 times — without undue muss or fuss.

What makes this noteworthy? I can remember that even Windows 7 could not restore RDP sessions dropped during driver updates. Windows 8 (and 8.1) were hit or miss. It’s only since Windows 10 came along in 2015 (General Availability: 7/29/2015) that this capability has been both mainstream and dependable.

Once upon a time, Wi-Fi driver updates meant the end of open RDP sessions. Recovery was impossible: the only way back in was to fire Remote Desktop Connection up, and start afresh. It’s a small thing, really, but one I’ve learned to appreciate in modern Windows versions.

Thanks IEEE!

Modern Wi-Fi testifies to robust and practiced driver design. Indeed, it keeps working in the face of many predictable difficulties. Replacing drivers is a case in point, but Wi-Fi just keeps on chugging along. And that’s despite various source of interference, occasional hiccups with power, wireless gateways, and more. Having followed the technology as it’s grown and sped up I’m grateful it works well.

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

Transient Mysterious GeForce Experience Error

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It’s great that I love a good mystery, because I have one on my hands. Yesterday (November 30) I ran GeForce Experience to update the Lenovo P16 Mobile Workstation’s Quadro RTX A5500 GPU. An odd error message showed up at the tail end of the process. It read “Unable to install driver” but didn’t identify which one. Immediately thereafter, GeForce Experience announced a successful driver update (see lead-in graphic). I can only describe this phenom as a transient mysterious GeForce Experience error. As usual running things down means learning and figuring more things out.

Chasing A Transient Mysterious GeForce Experience Error

I did some searching around to see where GeForce Experience keeps its installer logs. It’s a long file-spec, like so:

C:\Users\<acct-name>\AppData\Local\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA GeForce Experience

My source for this insight came from an Nvidia Support article entitled “How to enable NVIDIA Graphics Driver and GeForce Experience installer logging.” The log files, obviously enough, end in the “.log” extension. There were plenty of them to look through, too:

Transient Mysterious GeForce Experience Error.logs

Four different readable log files, no joy in any of them.

I couldn’t find any errors in any of those logs, though, which is why I’m calling this a transient mystery. If I read the afore-cited NVIDIA Support note correctly, I probably needed to enable logging before installing the latest GeForce driver. But it’s kind of a Catch-22: I didn’t know I had an error until the error already happened. If I really, really wanted to get to the bottom of this, I’d roll back to my preceding OS image, enable installer logging, and then reinstall the driver. But because it’s working as it should be and is throwing no errors I can see (Event Viewer and Reliability Monitor) I’ll live with the status quo.

But that’s the way things go sometimes, here in Windows World. I’m just glad things are working as they should be.

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Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Samsung Printer Is Now HP

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Boy! The interesting things one can learn when updating drivers are legion. Case in point: I learned I needed an update for the Samsung Easy Printer Manager program. Upon searching for same, I found myself directed to HP (!) Customer Support. Indeed, that’s where the latest version of said utility now resides. You can see a screencap of that download page at the head of this story. Looks like my Samsung printer is now HP,  in name and in fact.

If Samsung Printer Is Now HP Then What?

HP is the former division of Hewlett Packard that now sells PCs and printers, as well as peripherals. To give you an idea of how long this has been going on, this press release bears a November 1, 2017 date. Whoa: talk about missing that bus by a mile…

When HP closed the deal they did so for US$1.05B. They also acquired a portfolio of 6.5K patents, and “a workforce of nearly 1,300 researchers and engineers with expertise in laser technology, imaging electronics, and supplies and accessories.” I guess that means buying an official laser toner cartridge (I still have a spare in my utility closet) will cost even more than it did the last time I looked. I found the product page, but I can’t find a price (looks like I might have to set up an account). Amazon references an “HP Store” and offers same for US$76, so that’s not too pricey. OK then: it’s all good.

Plus çe Change…

That’s French for a saying that roughly translates: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The technology landscape is chock full or mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs and divestitures. I have to laugh about this one, because I’m definitely coming late to that particular party. But at least, I had no trouble finding an updated version of the software I needed. And it works, too!

And that’s the way things go, here in Windows-World, from time to time.

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

KB5018496 Lands Poorly So Far

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KB5018496 is out as of October 25. It takes production-level Windows 11 22H2 systems to Build 22621.755 when applied. To be fair, it’s a Preview CU, so not entirely cooked yet. But I observe that KB5018496 lands poorly so far because

(a) I don’t see any of its cool gradual rollout features on any of my PCs (e.g. right-click in Taskbar to launch Task Manager)
(b) When I attempted to explore the new Microsoft Accounts (MSA) capabilities, it crashed when I attempted to open the P16’s camera. I know that works because I use camera-based Hello to log onto that machine and had just done so minutes before. Sigh.
(c) I was unable to verify my identity in Settings → Accounts, because of the camera issue, so also unable to backup my MSA data. Sigh again.

Again: this is a preview release. And I’m qvetching about gradual rollout elements that either haven’t made it to my PCs, or that aren’t yet working as they should be. It’s a kind of “business as usual” thing, I guess.

What KB5018496 Lands Poorly So Far Really Means…

It’s pretty much par for the course that a few rough edges will show up in a preview release. Thus, for example, when I went to Accounts → Windows backup in an RDP session, the PC “knew” it couldn’t use the camera for validation. So I got an email to my MSA address instead. That worked just fine. The relevant screencap appears as the lead-in graphic for this story.

I assume there’s some kind of driver hiccup with the camera when logged in directly. It threw an error code that pointed squarely in that direction. That should be easy to run down and fix, so I’ll report it to Feedback Hub later today.

I’ve been using the right-click access to Task Manager in the taskbar on Insider versions of 22H2 for a while now. Thus, I also know it’s just a matter of time before it, too, shows up in production versions of 22H2.

Self-Inflicted Wounds? Perhaps…

So why do I install previews on production PCs? Because I’m an Insider and it’s my job to take such stuff on, and report what I see and find. I make daily image backups on those PCs, so the worst that can happen is a rollback to the previous image. I don’t generally do real work on those PCs unless I’m on the road. And in that situation, I probably wouldn’t mess with a preview because I wouldn’t want to lose the time (or the work done) since the last backup anyway.

And that’s how things go here in Windows World. Stay tuned for further developments. I’ll qvetch some more another day, for sure!

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

P16 Safeguard Hold Lifted

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OK, then. I performed my daily ritual WU check on the P16 Mobile Workstation on Friday (Oct 14) . This time, the P16 safeguard hold lifted, and I was able to update to Windows 11 22H2. As you can see in the lead-in screencap, the 22H2 download was available during capture. Neat-o!

And indeed a quick visit to the 22H2 Known Issues page shows that my hold-up — the Intel SST drivers — appears as “mitigated.” Here’s what that looks like:

P16 Safeguard Hold Lifted.SST-info

The P16 blocking issue is now resolved, thanks to Intel driver updates. These appear in DevMgr under the “Software Components” heading.

With P16 Safeguard Hold Lifted, Upgrade Proceeds

I got a little concerned right after the first reboot (from the GUI-based portion of the install, into the post-GUI phase). The P16 sat at 0% complete on processing updates for what seemed like an eternity (about 4 minutes). But then, it started to chunk through the process and finished in about 20 minutes during that install phase.

I noticed that the update included a raft of driver updates –14 in all — by checking Reliability Monitor later on. The two items of greatest import show up in the software components category where various sound -related items reside.

Whatever the issue might have been, I’m glad to see it resolved. And so far, the P16 is running without apparent issues. I’m connected to it remotely via RDP right now, so that recent bugaboo is not present here, either. Good-oh!

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

Windows Upgrades Bring New Drivers

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Whenever one upgrades a Windows installation, the installer locates and installs a new slate of drivers by default. There are ways to overcome this by customizing the Windows install image (with DISM, for example). But I was forcibly reminded that Windows Upgrades bring new drivers. It happened two days ago when the Installation Assistant took the P360 Ultra to Windows 11 22H2.

Fortunately, I knew how to fix this. Because the latest Nvidia driver is the culprit, I simply switched to Intel UHD graphics. This took me from a black screen to working graphics output. I’ll roll back the affected driver this weekend. That will put things back to rights.

Showing Windows Upgrades Bring New Drivers

I had to roll back the Nvidia driver on the P360 Ultra to get the RTX A2000 GPU to work. That’s because there is a known issue with all drivers newer than 30.0.15.1165, as I learned from Lenovo’s engineering folks last week (see this Sept 16 item for details).

I’m a big fan of the GitHub DriverStore Explorer project (aka RAPR.exe). As you can see from the following screen snippet, there’s an older INF file on the U360 Ultra for my proper target version (30.0.15.1165). But alas, DevMgr won’t roll back to that version (I think it’s because the older version is a Quadro/Studio driver, while the new, in-place version is a Game-ready driver).

Windows Upgrades Bring New Drivers.RAPR

RAPR confirms that the new version is installed, and shows the old version, too. [Click image, then zoom to 200%.]

Luckily I still have the Lenovo update package that they provided. As its Properties window shows, file m3vdo008d.exe is exactly what I need. I know from recent experience – the first time I fixed this gotcha – that I can simply install this exe file, and it will replace the buggy new driver with the stable, working older driver. Sometimes, one has to run the Driver Display Uninstall (DDU) tool to completely remove all traces of the new, before installing the old. That’s NOT the case here, I’m happy to say.

Windows Upgrades Bring New Drivers.LenovoPkg

If I install this older driver, I can then use the Nvidia GPU without problems.

How Driver Trouble Happens During Upgrade

If a particular PC needs an older (or non-current) driver, Windows isn’t smart enough to steer around such potholes. As soon as I upgraded this PC, I knew I was going to have to fix the automatic update it would make to the latest (and incorrect) Nvidia driver. Sometimes, that’s the kind of thing you need to watch out for when upgrading Windows. Consider yourself notified, if not warned!

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Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Thunderbolt Software Upgrade Strategy

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At first I thought “Catch-22.” Those using PCs old enough to run Intel’s Thunderbolt Software have reason to ponder Heller’s famous catch. An updated replacement — namely, Thunderbolt Control Center — is available from the Microsoft Store. But if you run Thunderbolt Software, it doesn’t show up there. Nor is there an easy upgrade path. That’s why, in fact, I had to come with a Thunderbolt Software upgrade strategy.

Finding a Thunderbolt Software Upgrade Strategy

All I can say is “I got lucky.” I chose as my search string to dig into this topic “Thunderbolt Software vs. Thunderbolt Control Center.” It immediately struck gold in a Forum post from Mac/PC oriented website egpu.io. There, those same terms appeared in inverted order.

There’s a trick involved in making this upgrade. It works as follows: if one downloads newer DCH drivers for the Thunderbolt device in DevMgr → System Devices, updating that driver causes Windows 11 (or 10, for that matter) to update the related software automatically. It’s actually pretty easy. I’m going to upgrade my remaining holdover system (one of my Lenovo X380 Yogas, acquired in late 2018) and take you through the steps involved.

NOTE:For a Thunderbolt device to show up in DevMgr, you may need to plug in an actual Thunderbolt or USB4 device. That’s what I had to do on each of my three 2018 vintage systems that needed this upgrade.

Making the Transition, Step-by-Step

Step 1: Visit this Intel Download page and download the ZIP file available there. Don’t be put off by the NUC notation: I’ve run in on a Yoga 380 and an X1 Extreme, and it worked on both systems. It seems to work on any Intel Thunderbolt controller.

Step 2: Unzip the file into a target directory. I named mine TBdev to make it easy to identify.

Thunderbolt Software Upgrade Strategy.unzipped

Contents of the ZIP file in the V:\TBdev folder. The INF folder is where the action will be.

Step 3: Open DevMgr, navigate to the Thunderbolt controller, right-click, and pick “Update driver.” In the resulting pop-up window, pick “Browse my computer for drivers “(lower item). Browse to your TBdev\INF folder, as shown here, then click “Next.”

Click “Next” and the driver should update itself from the various files in the INF folder.

If this process succeeds, you’ll see something like the following Window appear.

Guess what? If this worked, you’re finished. Windows will now visit the MS Store on its own and install the Thunderbolt Control Center app for you. Until you next reboot your PC, you’ll see both the old software and the new side-by-side if you type “Thu” into the Windows 11 (or 10) search box:

Old (Thunderbolt software) on the left, new (Thunderbolt Control Center) on the right. Only TCC will work, tho…

After the next reboot, Thunderbolt Software no longer appears. Case closed!

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

Old School Driver Repair Still Works

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Whoa! I’ve had the Lenovo P360 Ultra SFF PC for a week now, and I FINALLY got the discrete Nvidia RTX A2000 GPU working. It showed only a black screen with the Acer XR382CQK monitor. With a Dell 2717 from my wife’s PC as a stand-in, it would run (briefly) then fall over (AppCrash on NvidiaContainer.exe). My suspicion of driver issues were confirmed by the ace Lenovo engineering team. And I was happy to learn that an old school driver repair still works.

What Old School Driver Repair Still Works?

Good question! Having just written a story for TechTarget about fixing black screens, this was chapter and verse for me. If the current GPU driver falls over, received wisdom goes “roll back a version. Keep going till it works…” I’m actually not sure how far that would have gotten me.

But what the Lenovo engineering folks told me falls in line with that approach. They simply said “install version 511.65” and furnished me with a Lenovo download link for same.

Long story short: I installed the older driver. When I rebooted the machine, the previously non-functional XR382CQK monitor worked like a champ in the miniDP port. I didn’t even have to lug my wife’s Dell 2717 into position instead.

A Further Bulletin from Engineering…

Here’s what one of the engineering team emailed to the group assembled to help me over this hump:

 I checked with our lab and there is a known recent issue with Nvidia’s latest driver 513.12 and later. There will be a P360 Ultra BIOS release by end of month to address the issue. However, the workaround in the meantime is to use driver 511.65.  The symptoms are similar to what Ed is seeing – driver crashes.

Given that insight, a quick confirmation that I was running 516.94, and a link to the download for that older driver version, I got straight to work. Problem solved! Nice to know the old school repair still works. Even nicer to get pointed at the last known working version by the Lenovo team.

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Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Realtek Audio Console Goes MIA

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There are two flavors of Realtek Audio drivers for Windows 10 and 11. The most prevalent are the High Definition Audio (or HDA) drivers. The less prevalent but slightly more capable are the Universal Audio Drivers (UAD). Confusingly, these show up in Device Manager as Realtek(R) Audio. More properly that would be Realtek® Audio, but DevMgr apparently doesn’t do metacharacters like the registered trademark symbol (®). Whatever you call it, the Realtek Audio Console Goes MIA in the MS Store.

Knowing When Realtek Audio Console Goes MIA

One used to be able to access this app through the Microsoft Store. No longer. Confusingly, the app says Realtek Audio Console in its title bar, but the Store listed it as Realtek Audio Control. Thus, for example, if you visit it at MajorGeeks.com (a usually safe and reliable download source), its Microsoft Store download link is broken. Likewise, a direct search at the Store produces no results. Ditto for a search at the Realtek downloads page.

Thus it looks to me that it’s at least possible that Realtek is de-emphasizing the UAD side of its audio drivers. In the absence of statements of direction or intent, it’s only possible to speculate. But it looks to me like UAD drivers and the app console may be orphaned, and no longer supported.

A Driver Search May Tell…

In looking at UAD drivers for Realtek, I see only Nahimic variants for the last half-dozen versions at Station-Drivers.com. None of these work with the plain vanilla FF00 audio codecs on my now-aging Z170 Skylake motherboard. I do have a B500 AMD rig that supports this Nahimic stuff, though.  In a couple of weeks, I’ll probe this mystery further and see if the Audio Console is available (and working) for that set-up.

Right now, I have a working UAD set-up with drivers that are now about a year old (version 9215.1, dated 8/3/2021). I have been unable to find any newer variants that work. Ditto for a newer version of the Realtek Audio Console (or Control). Very interesting!

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