Category Archives: Win7View

Notes on Windows 7, Win7 compatible software and hardware, reviews, tips and more.

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Software Reviews, WED Blog, Windows 11

Windows 11 Gets Nifty New Paint App

September 29, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

As soon as I read about it online at WinAero, I jumped into the Store to visit Library → Updates on one of my two Dev Channel PCs. And indeed, a new version of Paint awaited me there. One quick update later, and I saw for myself that Windows 11 gets nifty new paint app. My quick scrawl appears on the canvas in the lead-in graphic for this story, and the update offer in the screencap that follows.

The latest Paint version gets a Windows 11 style makeover.
[Click image for full-sized view.]

MS Store Update Means Windows 11 Gets Nifty New Paint App

If you look at the lead-in graphic for the story you’ll see right away that Paint has had a thorough makeover. The top-line ribbon features new-style icons and controls. The Colors elements are all in circular — not rectangular — swatches. There’s not much new inside, except for the Text tool (upper right corner under the Tools heading). But the new iteration is cute, fun to look at, and as easy to use as ever.

Behind the scenes, though, there’s still some catching for Microsoft to do. The “Editor Colors” window remains unchanged with square outlines around basic and custom color areas.

The base app has been reworked, but the color palette hasn’t caught up yet.
[Click image for full-sized view.]

So far, it looks like the new Paint version is off to a good start. I’ll be curious to see how this unfolds as October 5 comes and goes. Some of the necessary catch-up work looks likely to come after that, based on what I see right now. But, as usual, time will tell — as will the contents of next Tuesday’s public release. Stay tuned!

Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, USB devices, WED Blog, Windows 11

Dual NVMe Enclosure Supports RAID

September 15, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Whoever built this product clearly saw me coming. After upgrading both of my older desktops, I find myself looking for ways to use their now-idled NVMe drives. One is a Samsung OEM 512GB NVMe from the 2014 vintage PC, and the other is a Samsung 950 EVO 1TB NVMe from the 2016 model. As it happens, Sabrent has an offering for just that. In fact, its dual NVMe enclosure supports RAID, too.

What Dual NVMe Enclosure Supports RAID Means

Thanks to built-in RAID support, this enclosure offers faster throughput than a single-drive configuration. It even handles Thunderbolt, so I can use it in my newer docks and on my newer laptops and desktops. At a list price of US$249 my initial though was: “Ummm. No!” But after I visited the Amazon page and saw it was marked down to US$149 (about double the price of two phantom-powered Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 NVMe enclosures) that response changed to “Ummm. Yes…”

The specs claim speeds up to 1,500 MB for single drives, but up to 2,500 MB for drives in RAID configurations (I’m guessing that means striped or mirrored, rather than JBOD). Watching some of the videos that Sabrent provides on how to set things up, my guess is confirmed.

Should I Take the Plunge?

Now, I have to decide if I want to further raid the exchequer to cover an additional US$149 outlay, on top of the ~US$1,300 I’ve already spend to get my production desktop hardware refresh funded. I’ll have to chew on this for a little while, and perhaps ask “the Boss” for permission. Should I indeed buy into this device, I’ll review it in a future blog post.

In the meantime, I must consider how deeply I feel like digging into available funds right now. That’s a perennial problem for hardware junkies like myself, and one I’ve wrested with before. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted.

Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, USB devices, WED Blog, Windows 11

USB-3/C Header Cable Mystery

September 14, 2021 Ed Tittel 2 Comments

OK then. I’ve got the parts for my second hardware refresh. I now understand I may have been rooked. The Asrock B550 Extreme4 mobo comes with a perfectly serviceable 19-pin USB 3.1/3.2 header block on the motherboard, but no cable to match. And upon looking around, I find precious few such cables available at any price. To me, this poses something of a USB-3/C header cable mystery. It’s a mystery I’d like to solve before I start building.

Solving USB-3/C Header Cable Mystery

The situation raises an interesting question: should such cables come with the mobo or the case? In my case (pun intended) I’m recycling something that predates USB-C and USB 3.2/Thunderbolt 3 or higher. Thus, I’m purchasing the 5.25″ drive bay plug-in shown in the lead-in graphic. It needs a 19 (sometimes called 20) pin connector to get from the mobo header to the front panel device.

Thing is, I can’t tell if the device includes any cables or not. I can tell, having just checked, that the Asrock mobo includes no cables except for some SATA cables for hooking up such drives. To span the distance from the front panel to the back of the motherboard, it looks like I need to buy 3 (!) 15 cm cables to be sure to get from the bottom and back of the case to the top and front. Sigh.

When in Doubt, Spend More $$$

Just to be safe, I’m going to order the cables along with the front-panel device. If that device includes cables I’ll be sure to email Amazon to get them to update the product info. It’s currently silent on that all-important subject (to me, anyway).

And indeed, these are the kinds of conundrums that face people like me trying to refresh hardware in anticipation of meeting Windows 11 hardware requirements. I can’t see any point in having an unused high-speed USB header on my motherboard without making those ports easily accessible. Stay tuned: I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Trick Restores Missing Chrome Scrollbar

September 9, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then. Here’s an oddity for my fellow Tenforums users (and possibly other heavy Chrome users). In navigating the forums there daily, I jump from forum to forum in order of appearance. Within each forum I read over new threads, as well as old threads with new content. Sometimes when I use the “Previous Thread” link at the bottom of each page to get to the next oldest item, that page comes up without a vertical scrollbar at the right-hand edge. Recently, I discovered that a certain trick restores missing Chrome scrollbar. Let me explain…

What Trick Restores Missing Chrome Scrollbar?

For a long while when the scrollbar disappeared I would switch between normal window and maximized window using the control at its upper right corner. When the normal window appeared, it would always have a scrollbar. And when I reverted to the maximized (full-screen) version, it would get its scrollbar back. This was a viable workaround, but a little too distracting to please me.

The trick I discovered last week is to use the down arrow to move the cursor deeper (downward) into the open web page. After the screen has to refresh to accommodate more new content at the bottom, the scrollbar also reappears. This takes little time, and is nowhere near as distracting as the two mouseclicks needed to revert to normal page size, then go back to full-screen mode. If you ever find yourself in this situation, try this approach. As it now works for me, it may do likewise for you.

What’s Causing This Bizarre Behavior?

I’m working on a dual-monitor rig. I run Chrome in the left-hand window with desktop extended across both monitors. My best guess is that sometimes, when I transition from one page to the next, the maximized view somehow “eats” the vertical scrollbar at the far right of the screen. Here’s what my layout looks like in Settings → System → Display.

With a Chrome windows on display 1 maximized, its right edge might sometimes impinge on display 2 territory.

Such is my theory, anyway. That said, I’m glad to have found a quick and easy workaround that keeps me chugging along without interrupting my concentration or workflow. These are the kinds of adjustments and adaptivity one must practice to do one’s job, and get things done, here in Windows-World.

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, WED Blog, Windows 11

Managing Windows 11 Defaults Gets Tricky

September 2, 2021 Ed Tittel 4 Comments

Oho! I just learned something interesting from Martin Brinkmann over at Ghacks.Net. It seems that in Windows 11, MS has re-jiggered the way default application selection works. In Windows 10 one could grab an application and associate it with all typical file or link types in one go. Alas, managing Windows 11 defaults gets tricky, because you must now choose them one at a time.

MS also supplies various defaults by default so to speak, which explains why Microsoft Edge shows up so persistently when opening web-related file types. Thus, for example, I count 22 such entries in Settings → Apps → Default apps → (Browser name here). I chose Google Chrome as my example in the lead-in graphic above. If you really want to make Chrome the overall default, you must jump into each of the 22 associated file or link types and pick Chrome from the pick list for each one.

Why Say: Managing Windows 11 Defaults Gets Tricky?

Maybe I should have said “labor intensive” instead. But “tricky” makes for a more compelling headline, so I’ll admit to taking just a wee bit of artistic license here. Truth is, as long as you know that this is how Windows 11 works, it’s the kind of thing you need to do once for those applications you want to make default when Microsoft supplies something different. This takes time and a little effort, but it’s not the end of the world as we know it by a long shot.

I’m hoping Nir Sofer reads this blog post, though, and whips out a Windows11Default tool to help automate this task. Seems like it should be fairly straightforward for someone with the right understanding of Windows internals to make this happen. I see a fascinating thread on this topic in the Spiceworld Forums that explains that GPOs and an XML file can do the trick. I’ll be noodling around with this for a while and see if I can figure something further out. Hopefully, Windows 11 and 10 work the same way in this regard. Stay tuned, and I’ll find out…

Hardware Reviews, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

GPU Buying Circus Resumes Briefly

August 26, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Those who need to know were probably already paying attention. Those who don’t, however, may find this story to be an odd mix of bemusement and horror. Around midnight last night, would-be GPU owners looking for reasonable prices started lining up at Best Buy outlets around the USA. At 7:30 this morning, the company started handing out tickets to the first 100-200 people in line. What were these people lining up for? The latest installment, as the GPU buying circus resumes briefly — long enough for the company to sell through its allotment of 17,000 30xx GPUs. Models include 3070, 3080 and even a few of the seldom-seen 3090s.

Why and How the GPU Buying Circus Resumes Briefly

Every now and then Nvidia teams up with Best Buy to release a fixed lot of graphics cards for sale to the public. These may be purchased at the maker’s MSRP. Otherwise, GPUs available for purchase through typical outlets — Newegg, Amazon, CDW and so forth — routinely sell for 2 or more times those prices. On eBay, the multipliers get even larger.

Why is this happening? There’s still a shortage of GPUs on the marketplace even though China has basically shut down its mostly coal-powered coin-mining operations. Those operations have moved elsewhere — some even to the USA — and are still buying huge numbers of GPUs. By holding these sales at Best Buy from time to time, Nvidia is helping a small percentage of gamers and PC enthusiasts buy equipment that’s otherwise too pricey to contemplate.

Why Am I Telling You This?

I’ve written recently about upgrading one of my desktops to a Ryzen 5800X CPU on an Asrock B550 Extreme4 motherboard, with 64 GB RAM, a fast NVMe SSD, and so forth. What’s missing from this configuration is the GeForce 3070 or 3070 Ti that would typically be part of such a refresh. I’ve got a second machine I’ll be rebuilding in similar fashion before the end of September.

Right now, I’m running older Nvidia GeForce 1070 Ti models on both of those PCs. (FWIW, these sell for US$800 on Newegg right now; I paid about US$400 for them 5-6 years ago.) I had briefly considered leaving the house at 4 AM this morning to line up for a shot at a card at my local Best Buy. But then I realized that if I’m not willing to wait 6 hours in line for Aaron Franklin’s world-class BBQ here in Austin, I’m not willing to do likewise for a GPU, either. It’ll just have to wait. Prices should come down sometime in the next 6-12 months. Or, I’ll wait for a windfall of some kind, hold my nose, and pay US$1,400 for a GPU that should cost US$600. Two of them, in fact. Sigh, and sigh again.

Note: Here’s a shout-out to Tom’s Hardware (for whom I write regularly about Windows OS topics) whose story clued me into this circus: Best Buy Restocks 17,000 Nvidia RTX 30 Series GPUs Tomorrow, August 26. It’s what prompted me to write this story.

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Check Windows TPM Status 2 Ways

August 25, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

What with Windows 11 looming ever closer on the horizon, more Windows 10 users will want to check TPM status on their PC. TPM is, of course, the Trusted Platform Module that provides hardware-level credential caching and encryption to protect systems from snooping and takeover. Today, I’ll show you how to check Windows TPM status 2 ways. One way uses a PowerShell cmdlet, the other way runs a Microsoft Management Console snap-in (an .msc file).

How to Check Windows TPM Status 2 Ways

Naturally, both methods require admin privileges. That is, you must run the cmdlet in an Administrative PowerShell session. Alternatively, you must be logged into an administrative-level account to access the proper MMC snap-in.

Way 1: PowerShell

Prosaically enough, the necessary cmdlet is named get-tpm. As its name portends, it provides detailed information about the presence and state of TPM on the target system upon which it is run. Go ahead, take a look:

Note all the details about TPM presence and status. Source: my i7-6700 PC, which has no TPM.

Way 2: Run TPM.MSC (MMC Snap-in)

To take this path, simply type tpm.msc into the run command box or the Windows search box. It does not provide as much detail as the PowerShell cmdlet, but it is a little faster and easier to run. That said, here’s what its output looks like:

The TPM plug-in for the MMC just provides basic presence/absence information, though more data appears when a TPM is present (see next screencap below)
[Click image for full-sized view.]

TPM Info from Win11-Ready System

For comparison purposes here’s a side-by-side rendition of the PowerShell cmdlet (left) and MMC snap-in (right) from my 11th generation Lenovo X12 Hybrid Tablet PC. It meets the Windows 11 hardware requirements and tells its story about the TPM capabilities present on that machine. Note: 11th generation Intel CPUs provide TPM 2.0 emulation in firmware, rather than in a separate TPM chip.

Click image for full-sized view.

Benchmarking, Hardware Reviews, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

New NVMe System Delivers Formidable Punch

August 23, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

The electrician visited our house early today to fix some switches. He also helped us find a GFI plug we didn’t know we had (duh!). He had to turn off power at the breaker box momentarily, so all the PCs went down. I took that opportunity to pop the case on the new Ryzen 5800X build. I moved the NVMe SSD from the M.2.2 slot to the M.2.1 slot. That’s when I learned this new NVMe system delivers formidable punch power, I/O-wise. Let me explain.

If New NVMe System Delivers Formidable Punch, How So?

We’re talking about the transition from PCIe x3 to x4, along with a new generation of SSD controller technology here. The lead graphic shows CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 results from my 2016 vintage i7-6700 system left and the 2021 vintage Ryzen 5800X system right. The underlying NVMe drives are Samsung 950 PRO 512GB left, and Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB right. The speed increase ranges from 1876.41 vs. 3444.19 (upper left), or 1.83x, to 124.9 vs. 226.81 (lower right), or 1.75x. The biggest differences occur in the upper right cell, and the one beneath it. Those ratios are 2.13 and 2.12, respectively.

Thus we’re talking about a speed boost ratio for I/O in the neighborhood of 7/4 at the slowest and 15/7 at the fastest. In roundish numbers, say 2:1. That’s pretty decent. I daresay it’s a big enough difference to be noticeable. I can tell the difference in ways that range from working with the filesystem, to performing backups, to running applications, and more.

Where Value Sits…

I’m still learning how the new system works, and what it can really do. I just ran WhyNotWin11 on the PC and it doesn’t have TPM turned on. I just checked the Asrock website. Happily it provides instructions on how to turn on fTPM in BIOS for that motherboard. It’s a single, simple option, so I’ll take care of it the next time I reboot. Then, the system should be ready for Windows 11.

Switching the NVMe from the M.2.2 slot to the M.2.1 slot delivered the promised speed increase. It also made the 2 previously blocked SATA devices on that machine visible. So far, it’s been a peach to work with. The speed and capabilities of this current-gen Ryzen processor definitely impress. I am indeed inclined to think the upgrade was worth the cost. I’m still waiting for Nvidia 3070 cards to come down in price before endowing that PC with more graphics oomph, though.

Stay tuned. I’ll report in on system temps and stuff, and take a few pics of the build later this week. Should be fun!

Benchmarking, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, USB devices, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

USB Flash Drive Follies 4th vs 11th Gen

August 19, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Just yesterday I got videotaped for an upcoming session at SpiceWorld 2021 Virtual. One of the subjects I covered for HPE covered “the aging of technology” and what that does to IT efficiency, security and resiliency. That got me to thinking. “How has USB fared as faster busses, faster connections, and faster media have evolved over the past while?” I decided to conduct some USB flash drive follies 4th vs 11th gen systems to see what changed.

What’s Up With USB Flash Drive Follies 4th vs 11th Gen?

It turned into a tale of two drives, two systems, and three means of attachment. These were as follows:

Drive 1. Sabrent mSATA SSD enclosure with Samsung 950 EVO mSATA 500GB SSD USB 3
Drive 2: Fideco NVMe SSD enclosure with Sabrent Nano NVMe 1TB SSD USB 3.1
System 1: 2014 Vintage Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (i7-4650U, 8 GB RAM, USB 3)
System 2: 2021 Vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X12 (i7-1180G7, 16 GB RAM, USB 3.2/Thunderbolt 3)

The three means of attachment were USB 3, USB 3.1 (both using Type A connectors) and USB 3.2 using USB-C.

Technology Trumps Bus Speed

First things, first. There’s simply no comparison between mSATA and NVMe devices. It’s an order of magnitude from the older mSATA SSD technology to the newer NVMe. That tells me — and it should tell you — it’s simply not worth buying mSATA devices anymore. If you’ve still got them (I’ve got half-a-dozen) you can still use them.

The aging effect shows very strongly in the mSATA results. They stay pretty much the same across both systems and across all USB connection types (3.0, 3.1, and 3.2). That’s because the mSATA enclosure is either 3.0 or 3.1 (I just checked: it’s 3.0).

Things get more interesting with the NVMe devices. They run at about half-speed when there’s no UASP support on the PC (as with the Surface Pro). Amusingly, I got the same results from my Belkin Thunderbolt 3 dock with a USB 3.1 cable plugged into the NVMe enclosure. But when I used a USB-C cable directly into a USB-C port on the ThinkPad X12 I got big-block read/write speeds of ~1050 MBps read/~1004 MBps write from the NVMe flash device. Compare that to ~455 read/~457 write through the Thunderbolt dock for the same device.

Very interesting! This tells me that USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 or better drive enclosures, coupled with PCIe x3 or better NVMe SSDs in those enclosures deliver the fastest external drive storage I can use today (on my newer systems with USB-C, of course). And it looks like the performance boost from using the fastest possible port and connection is also very much worth it. Good to know!

This just makes me more interesting in acquiring a Thunderbolt 4 dock to see if it can extend that performance to secondary ports (right now, I get best speed only from USB-C ports on the X12, of which there are only 2).

Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

WinKey+P Powers Display Projection

August 13, 2021 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Sometimes, it isn’t until things go terribly wrong that one appreciates the power of simple syntax. Check out this TenForums post, which explores the impact of the WinKey+P gone wrong: Win p key pressed. Because WinKey+P powers display projection, a user’s nephew’s wrong menu choice made him think he’d lost access to 2 of his 3 displays in a multi-monitor configuration. Not so!

WinKey+P Powers Display Projection — Usually Into a Menu

Normally, when you strike Winkey+P on a Windows 10 or 11 PC, you’ll get a pop-up menu like the one shown in the lead-in graphic. It highlights the current setting — Extend in my case, because I have my desktop extended over a pair of Dell 2717 monitors. Overall, it offers these four settings:

PC Screen only: (tantamount to striking WinKey+P once)
Duplicate: copies primary monitor to all other monitors (select by striking WinKey+P twice)
Extend: extend the desktop across all available monitors (select by pressing WinKey+P three times)
Second screen only: use only Display #2 for graphical output (select by pressing WinKey+P four times)

Our hapless user’s nephew struck WinKey+P once, which apparently forced his PC into “PC Screen only” mode. On my PC, however, I got the menu shown above, and was easily able to move among the selections using my mouse.

When Key Combos Go Wrong, Try More!

Interestingly, advice on TenForums about what to do in this situation is spot on. It reads “Did you try pressing ‘WinKey+P’ again? Sometimes a key acts like an ‘on off’ switch.” In this case, our user wanted to press WinKey+P 3 times to get to the extend option through the keyboard. There’s no discussion of using the menu instead, which I find infinitely preferable.

For some odd reason I’m reminded of one of William Blake’s epigrams from his Proverbs of Heaven and Hell:

The fool who persists in his folly soon becomes wise.

This turns out to be good, if oblique, advice when dealing with unwanted WinKey key combinations. As for myself: I’d have looked it up online, and found all the insight I ever could have wanted, and more.