Category Archives: Recent Activity

Copilot+ PCs, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

ASUS A14 Zenbook Travelogue

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From December 7 to 16, my wife and I drove to California to pick up son Gregory upon moving out of his dorm on the 11th. For this 10-day odyssey, we took the new Snapdragon X laptop along. This blog post provides a kind of technical ASUS A14 Zenbook travelogue, as we used that machine in the car, and in 7 hotels on our trip. TLDR version: works well, great battery life, and easy to pack and tote. That said, everybody noticed — and missed — touch screen support.

Snippets from ASUS A14 Zenbook Travelogue

Day 1 (Home to Las Cruces, NM): Unbelievably fast Windows Hello facial recognition. Used less than 15% of battery with Kindle Reader in 4-6 hours in the car. Tried to drive interface with finger on screen only to realize this otherwise excellent US$550 lapop does NOT include a touchscreen. No issues using hotel Wi-Fi.

Day  2 (Las Cruces to Phoenix, AZ):  Took less than an hour to fully recharge PC after extended use in car for reading. No 5G support meant I used my iPhone as a wireless hotspot for Internet access in the car. No issues using hotel Wi-Fi, except I had to run thru the hotspot to grab my Hyatt loyalty club info before I could get free, high-perf access. Sigh: it’s always something…

Days 3 – 6 (Los Angeles/Hollywood, CA): Wife Dina and I made regular use of the A14 in the Loews Hollywood Hotel. Easy Wi-Fi access, decent performance for the lo-fi connection (until I figured out we got high-fi because of our room deal). Only had to charge the laptop once during our entire stay. Great battery life!

Into LA, Then Back Home

Day 7 (Hollywood to Bakersfield): The family indulged my burning desire to visit Cafe Pyrenees and tackle more food than you can believe is included in a “dinner setup” (costs US$24.95 by itself). The garlic fried chicken was astounding, and the A14 likewise, with easy Wi-Fi hookups and great web performance.

Day 8 (Bakersfield to Kingman, AZ): The Holiday Inn Express was a big disappointment. The A14 was not: another day of great battery life, easy Wi-Fi hookup, good Web-based Outlook access and performance, and more. I’m now completely comfortable claiming that for light-duty computing (e.g. email, surfing, basic apps and applications) this laptop can run for a long day (12 hours) on battery. Just in case, though, I brought a RavPower RP-PB41 on the trip (its 26,800 mAh capacity can charge the A14 to 100% in about 7 hours: it’s slow because it outputs 5A where the A14 expects 4X that level).

Day 9 (Kingman to Big Spring, TX): We doubled up the driving for a 12-hour day on Dec 15 (we’d originally planned to stop in Albuquerque, NM). The A14 ran all day during our 12:15 drive, with about 17% battery remaining when we pulled into the beautifully restored Hotel Settles around midnight that day. Phew!

Day 10 (Big Spring to Round Rock, TX): The ~5hr drive home drew only about 25% of battery capacity, as I surfed and looked at the 1,015 email messages waiting for me in my inbox at the Webmail server for edtittel.com. I knew the next would be busy as I chewed through that imposing list, to filter the wheat from the chaff.

Final Thoughts and Concerns

Gosh! I’m hard-pressing to ding the A14 for much at all, except for its lack of touchscreen support. Copilot tells me that such capability adds US$75-150 to the cost of a laptop, but I didn’t really stop to check if that was an available option or not when I jumped on its Best Buy Black Friday pricing. As Copilot would have it, buying a touchscreen A14 model would add anywhere from US$259 to US$500 to the US$550 I paid for my current unit at Best Buy. So much for Copilot’s obviously optimistic US$75-150 incremental cost estimate, eh?

All in all, I find this laptop to be eminently suited for mobile, portable use — as long as you have a cellphone that can provide a mobile Internet hookup. Alas, ASUS does not offer an in-PC M.2 slot into which one might insert a 5G card. So it goes, here in Windows-World. Net results: mostly positive, with only a couple of niggles. Love this new laptop: will keep using it as a road machine.

 

 

 

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SAC Gains Gradual Rollout Toggle

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SAC stands for Smart App Control. It appears in Windows Security under the App & browser control heading. Over on WindowsLatest this morning, I read about a new change with mounting excitement. Starting with Build 26220.7070, SAC may now be turned on and off at will. Before this new change, once turned off, reinstalling Windows (clean install) was the only way to turn SAC back on. But alas, it seems that SAC gains gradual rollout toggle, because that feature is not available to me. Look at the lead-in graphic the text under the “Off” toggle on my ThinkPad T14s. It still reads “If SAC is off it can’t be turned on without reinstalling Windows.” Drat!

Not Yet Included, As SAC Gains Gradual Rollout Toggle

As it turns out the same thing is true for my Lenovo X380 Yoga, running Build 26220.7344. Apparently, neither of my qualified test PCs meets the initial gating criteria for the new version of SAC. Sigh.

The clean install requirement (and the one my machines must meet) for turning SAC back on, once it’s turned off, is a kind of deal-breaker for me. I do understand that Windows wants SAC to start with a clean slate. Indeed, that’s why this requirement is exacted. But it seems MS can now get past this immense previous hurdle.

Thus, my question is: When will my eligible test PCs get their turn? Here in Windows-World, answering such questions inevitably means waiting … and waiting … and waiting … until that turn rolls around. If history is any guide, it will take a while. I’ll keep you posted, but don’t hold your breath.

 

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Presence Sensing Pitfalls

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OK, then. I just returned from a 10-day hiatus during which time we drove to California and back. Purpose: to pick up number-one son at college and bring him home for the holidays. When I sat down at my desk, I noticed that the ThinkPad T14s would sense my presence, and start itself up unprompted, even though I was busy on my desktop. This illustrates one of the various presence sensing pitfalls that Windows 11 sets up, and the ThinkPad enables. Let me explain…

Working Around Presence Sensing Pitfalls

In theory, presence sensing uses the PC’s camera to figure out when you’re close by, and to start itself up when you move into some distance from the device. (See lead-in graphic.)  In practice, things are a little more complex and interesting. Why so? Here are some reasons:

  • Inside Settings, if you look for presence sensing through brute force, not much appears. If you search, that leads to Privacy & security > Presence Sending.
  • You can’t get to “Presence Sensing settings” directly, because they appear under System > Power & battery > Turn off my screen when I leave. There’s a section entitled “Wake my device when I approach” with other entailments, too. That’s where the real action is.
  • Looks like presence sensing works best when it’s for a primary machine, but not so much when it’s a secondary beast. I’m turning it off on the laptop for that reason.

Long story short: to defeat the presence sensing (I mostly use this unit via RDP anyway), I had to turn off “Wake my device when I approach.” That not only stops it from firing up while I’m sitting at my desk, it also keeps it from popping up and doing stuff every 30 seconds or so (mildly vexing).

It just goes to show that not all Windows controls are completely intuitive. Nor are they always labeled as you think they should be. I’m convinced that’s why MS had to put a link to “Presence Sensing settings” on the eponymous screen (“Presence Sensing”) in the Privacy & Security silo in Settings. Here in Windows-World, the only way to get where you need to go may be indirect. This is one such path…

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Screen Change Breaks Advanced IP Scanner

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Ooo wee ooo… Things got weird here at Chez Tittel this week. On Tuesday, I blogged about moving my Main display from left-hand monitor (1) to right-hand monitor (2). It gives improved visibility to the notification area. Alas, that screen priority change breaks Advanced IP Scanner, a favorite remote access monitoring and management tool of mine. Buckle up, kids: this is how the weirdness crept in…

How Screen Change Breaks Advanced IP Scanner

It drove me crazy, in fact. After the switchover, if I ran Advanced IP Scanner (I’ll abbreviate it as AIS from now on), it would launch. I’d see the window open briefly, and move to the right of my right-hand screen. Any attempts to bring it back into a visible spot on either monitor didn’t work. And it showed up on the Taskbar thumbnail as an empty white box.

Only when I went back to Settings > System > Display and reset the left-hand monitor as “Main display” did AIS reappear in viewable form. I’ve seen some quirks and oddities in my 30-plus year history with Windows, but this one ranks right up there near the top.

Because I have to choose between using AIS and easier access to the Notification area, I’m going with AIS (and have restored (1) as the main display). Why? Because I’m always messing with other PCs on my LAN and I like to remote into them. AIS makes it dead simple to open a Remote Desktop Connection into them via their current IP address. Local address tables get flaky when, as I often do, I switch units between Wi-Fi and wired Ethernet. So I’m choosing convenience over visibility.

And boy howdy, is that the way things sometimes go here in Windows-World. All I can say is “Happy Friday!”

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Hasleo Backup Suite (Free) Handles ARM PCs

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At the end of yesterday’s hopefully thrilling episode, I said I’d follow up on my experiences with Hasleo Backup Suite. I got it installed on the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s (a Snapdragon X based ARM PC). I’m pleased to report it works as it should. Not only did I make and restore a backup, I also built — and successfully booted into — the program’s emergency disk. So far, looks like the Hasleo Backup Suite (Free) handles ARM PCs just fine. As you can see from its tools menu above, it even includes boot menu placement, image handling of all kinds, MBR and VSS repairs, and more. Good-oh!

Proving Hasleo Backup Suite (Free) Handles ARM PCs

How do I get from saying “it looks like Hasleo works” to asserting that the program actually, definitely does the job? That’s going to take time and repeat experience. I’m setting up a daily backup schedule. I’ll be messing around with its other tools and facilities on an ongoing basis. If something is wonky, that will probably clue me in.

I do have one additional piece of positive evidence about Hasleo, however. User Stigg at ElevenForum.com started a long-running and active thread (33 pages, 645 posts) on July 8, 2023 entitled Hasleo Backup Suite. He reports on “extensive testing of Hasleo Backup Suite over the past months” and opines that “it’s looking very promising.” Subsequent long-term traffic and interactions on the thread bear that out.

Indeed, I am coming around to the idea that Hasleo Backup Suite (Free) is a worthy successor to Macrium Reflect 8 (Free), which is no longer being updated (nor works with ARM PCs — one must purchase a license for Reflect X to gain awesome ARM access). I’ll say this, though: Reflect X is at least twice as fast at backups and restores as Hasleo, so those for whom time is money might want to ante up anyway. ‘Nuff said.

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Another ARM Boot Boondoggle

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Right. So I’m in the process of covering my ARM PC assets to prevent further boot and BCD issues. One important tool in that coverage is backup/restore. Alas, I’m learning that most such toolsets — including all of the free ones I try to use by preference — don’t work (or work well) with ARM PCs. Yesterday, in fact, I got caught in another ARM boot boondoggle. Indeed, it produced the dread STOP error message “INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE” (0X0000007B). Let me explain…

Recovering from Another ARM Boot Boondoggle

Here’s the deal: most of the free backup/restore toolsets — including AIOMEI Backupper, EaseUS ToDo, Paragon Backup and Recovery Free, Cobian Backup and so forth — don’t work (or work well) with ARM-based PCs. What caused the boot error yesterday was EaseUs ToDo, which injects additional drivers into the Windows boot process. Not only does that not work on ARM PCs, but the program offers no warnings, nor informs users that proceeding with install results in an unusable system.

“Good thing I’ve got the Lenovo USB Recovery Key,” I thought to myself. At least I knew how to dig myself out of this mess. As far as I can tell, only the Hasleo Backup Suite Free and Macrium Reflect X (free trial, but pay for real use) offer backup/restore and rescue media capabilities that work on ARM-based PCs. Go figure!

One Reflect X License Left…

I just checked my Macrium Reflect account, and I’ve got one X license left. Right now, I have two ARM laptops here at Chez Tittel. I think I’ll give Hasleo a try on the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s. Shoot! I know from repeated use that the Lenovo USB Recovery Key will bail me out of any trouble I might get myself into.

Stay tuned: I’ll let you know how this adventure continues. It’s started to get interesting. And I mean more interesting than I’d hoped or expected. Sigh.

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Moving Windows 11 Main Display

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OK, then: now that my vision is limited thanks to cataract surgery last year, I’m adjusting what I can see without reading glasses. One of those things is relocating the notification area. Turns out it’s easier to see on the right-hand monitor in my dual-display setup. Moving Windows 11 main display — see the lead-in graphic for the source of this terminology — works through Settings > System > Display.

Moving Windows 11 Main Display, Step-by-Step

When you click into Settings > System > Display, your available monitors will appear in their positions as you’ve established them (or as Windows has done so on your behalf). The current “main display” (see greyed out first line under the Multiple displays heading) is highlighted in blue.

When I first entered that pane in Settings, Display 1 was highlighted. Here’s how I changed that to what you see in the lead-in graphic, step by step:

1. Click on monitor 2 at right (moves highlight from 1 to 2)
2. Click on the checkbox to the left of “Make this my main display” shown below unchecked

Once you’ve clicked that checkbox, your displays will pause for a second or two. They’ll also shrink for a moment. Next, Display 2 becomes main and that checkbox appears greyed-out. Done!

Accommodating Aging Eyeballs

I’m learning all kinds of tricks to make it easier for me to see what’s happening in Windows-World. The Zoom option in Outlook messages and Word documents, and the page Zoom functions in browsers like Chrome and so forth — all of which I blow up to 150% — are particularly useful. I can keep chunking along productively, as long as I can see what I’m doing. Learning how to make Windows work to those ends is helpful and lets me stay on the playing field.

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Settings vs Store App Updates

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Recent Beta and Dev Insider Preview builds have brought a new entry to Settings > Apps (e.g. 26220.7271). As you can see in the lead-in graphic it’s labeled “App Updates.” Quite naturally, this led me to wonder how differs from “Updates & Downloads” in the MS Store app itself. Comparing and contrasting Settings vs Store App Updates turns out to be more nuanced than I’d hoped. Indeed, the lead-in graphic also shows Settings reports all apps up-to-date at the same time as the Store is downloading an update to itself.

Digging into Settings vs. Store App Updates

Last May, MS Product Manager Angie Chen posted a blog on this topic. Entitled Introducing a unified future for app updates on Windows, it lays out new alternatives coming to  purely Store-based updates. But it wasn’t until I could see and try out the Settings alternative to the Store-based baseline that I could see some differences.

Indeed as Sergey Tkachenko puts it at WinAero: “…you can manage updates for certain Store apps that can receive new versions via Windows Update” (bold emphasis mine). As you can see in the intro screencap, the Store will happily update itself, while Apps> Update Apps apparently will not.

The Key: “Other” Update Channels Rule

The intro language in the May 27 blog post linked above states:

If you are already getting apps through the Microsoft Store (our recommended approach), there is no action needed—you will get the benefits described here by continuing to use that method.

Among other things, this means that store-managed apps — including the Store itself — continue to update through the Store Updates & Download faciliity, not through Settings > Apps > Update Apps. That showed itself immediately as soon as I went to check things out. Indeed careful reading of that blog post shows that developers must explicitly build apps to hook into Windows Update (ditto for management tools such as Intune or Autopilot) to make use of this capability.

In fact, nobody really knows how much this will change the way things work right now. As with other possible futures in Windows-World, those who build apps will have to take up this new update path before mere users — like your humble author — can walk down it. Right now, it seems limited to MS tools that don’t fall under the Store umbrella (e.g. PowerShell and Windows Terminal). So far, it looks more like a future possibility than a real, current alternative.

I’ll keep an eye on this, and let you know what happens…Stay tuned!

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ARM PC Throws Oh-My-Posh Curve

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There are lots of interesting wrinkles that distinguish ARM-based PCs running Windows 11 from their Intel- or AMD-based counterparts. Nothing huge or deal-breaking. Just interesting and sometimes, mildy vexing. In setting up Windows Terminal and PowerShell “the way I like it,” I encountered just such a wrinkle. Indeed, my new ASUS Zenbook A14 AMR throws oh-my-posh curve that took some research to work around. The lead-in graphic shows where I started out.

How ARM PC Throws Oh-My-Posh Curve Ball

I used the OneDrive connection through my common MSA (Microsoft Account) to inherit a lot of my local set-up and preferences. So it is with Windows Terminal and PowerShell, for which I like to use Jan DeDobbeleer’s excellent Oh My Posh (OMP) customization tool. Note the end of the prompt that shows up on the A14 in the preceding screencap: “CONFIG ERROR.” Not good!

In figuring out what causes this, I learned that the way ARM PCs handle some errors differs from AMD and Intel X64 CPUs. Indeed, the issue seems to come from a slight change in folder structures, where OMP expects x64 and doesn’t accommodate ARM automatically.

Fixing the CONFIG ERROR

Fixing CONFIG ERROR, in this case, is as easy as reassingning the folder from whence Oh-My-Posh reads its configuration file. This comes from changing where OMP gets its theme — namely:

oh-my-posh init pwsh --config "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\ohmyposh.cli_
28.0.0.0_arm64__96v55e8n804z4\themes\jandedobbeleer.omp.json" | Invoke-Expression

Note: I broke this command across multiple lines for improved rendering. Be sure to suck it into a text editor and remove the line-break in the middle before trying this yourself.

To make this change permanent, one must run notepad $PROFILE at the PowerShell prompt, and replace the current path specification for the startup-theme.  That means the path specification in the OMP invocation line must match the one shown in the preceding command string. Save the edited profielss and thereafter, when Windows Terminal boots into PowerShell, it will use the right version of the theme file to avoid CONFIG ERROR.

As you can see, after making that config change, I ran winfetch in a new PowerShell/Windows Terminal session (for something to see). OMP no longer throws a CONFIG ERROR. Problem solved!

 

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Digging Into Lenovo Digital Download Recovery Service

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On Monday, I was finally able to interact with the Lenovo Digitial Download Recovery Service (DDRS). I used it, with the company’s USB Recovery Creator tool, to create a UFD to reinstall the factory image onto my munged ThinkPad T14s laptop (ARM-based). Having now used it with amazement and appreciation, I’m digging into DDRS to better understand what it is and how it works.

More about Lenovo Digital Download Recovery Service

About a year ago, I tried to use this tool and got nowhere. One must place a “digital work order” with Lenovo, based on the Serial Number for the affected unit, for it to build a corresponding image that then works with the USB Recovery Creator tool. Earlier, I couldn’t get this to work for some odd reason or another. This time, all went swimmingly.

I did have to boot into the UEFI to obtain the system’s serial number. With that string in hand, however, I was able to place my order. Then when I ran the tool, it created the recovery UFD I would use to rebuilt the T14s. That took about 40 minutes to complete. As you can see in the following screenshot (from WizTree) this stuff falls into a 32 GB (FAT32) partition, of which 18 GB is actually occupied

This FAT32 partition contains 18GB of files, mostly image stuff.
[Click screencap for full-sized view]

In the RECOVERY folder, you’ll find an image file named M11A16AUS.WIM (appears at left in preceding screencap). It’s the customized recovery image that the tool will use to reinstall a factory fresh Windows 11 on the laptop. Let’s call it the “factory image.”

But There’s More to Do: Before, During & After

The whole recovery process is built around a massive and complicated set of scripts (mostly PowerShell). Here’s a 10,000-ft view of what happens next, over about a 100 minute time span:

  • Download and build media: Lenovo USB Recovery Creator tool downloads around 20 GB of recovery files to a USB drive (I used a modestly speedy full-sized Mushkin 64GB USB 3.0 device).
  • Boot from USB: with recovery media inserted, Secure Boot disabled, and F12 run to choose the drive as the boot source, the laptop passes control to the UFD.
  • Launch Recovery Environment: system boots into the Lenovo customer recovery shell built around WinPE with a variety of Lenovo tools and utilities further at its disposal. At this stage, the user confirms recovery, which wipes existing C:/boot/system drive contents.
  • Reformat and Restore: Recovery tool repartitions the internal (C:) drive, then deploys the factory image, complete with Windows, Lenovo device drivers, and Lenovo apps (e.g. Vantage).
  • System Boot and OOBE: The system reboots six times during the previous activities, and shows itself running a complex and convoluted unattend.xml install. After the final reboot, the laptop goes into the out-of-box-experience typical of a clean Windows install, but one based (in this case) on the Lenovo custom image.

Where Windows Wound Up

At that point I installed pending WU items and found the machine running Windows 11 25H2 Build 26200.7171. This is actually one build newer (thanks to an intervening Patch Tuesday) than ran on this PC before my ill-fated attempt to upgrade to Insider Preview for the Dev Channel.

Interestingly, Secure Boot and BitLocker are both turned off for the running image. I believe that makes it safe for me to attempt another Insider Preview upgrade to Dev Channel. This time, I’m going to make sure I have a current image backup with working recovery media first. That’s much faster than using the Lenovo Recovery UFD.

Next week, I’ve asked for an interview with the Lenovo engineers who built the DDRS and the Recovery Tool. That should shed further light on this amazing environment and toolset. I’ll share that info in a future blog post. Stay tuned, and Happy Thanksgiving (for those who celebrate same).

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