Category Archives: Tips, Tricks and Tweaks

Want to know how to make the most out of your Windows 7 system?
Here we share the things we have learned for what to do (and what not to do) to make Windows 7 perform at its best.

Letters from the Ed, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10, Windows OS Musings

SpiceWorld 2019: Native Boot VHDs in Windows 10

September 25, 2019 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here, as promised, is the slide deck for my presentation at SpiceWorld 2019 this morning, about Native boot VHDs in Windows 10. Click this download link for the PowerPoint file (OneDrive).

Native Boot VHDs in Windows 10: Using GPT and Type-2 HyperVisor VHDs (.vhdx)

For GPT, add the “convert GPT” command to the DISKPART script, as follows:

create vdisk file=F:\W10PRO.vhdx maximum=51200 type=expandable
attach vdisk
convert gpt
create part primary
format quick
label=”Windows”
assign letter=W
exit

When creating a VHD file for native boot, always use MBR partitioning! To upgrade Windows on a native boot VHD, you must temporarily run it as a virtual machine. This means attaching that VHD to a VM.

An MBR partitioned VHD is easy to attach to a VM: mark its Windows partition active. OTOH, a GPT partitioned VHD with only a single partition for Windows requires that you manually create system partitions before it’s usable as a bootable VM (MSR and EFI along with the system partition at a minimum, recovery partition if a complete emulation of “normal Windows 10” is desired).

Say you want to use a GPT partitioned VHD for native boot for some reason (and we can’t think of a valid one). In that case, it is best to first create a Generation 2 VM in Hyper-V, then install Windows 10 on it. This takes care of the partitioning automatically, and does so correctly. That VHD can then be added to the boot menu for native boot, or used as a VM.

Hardware Reviews, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10, Windows gadgets

A Twist on Dual SATA Drive Docks

September 5, 2019 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’ve got a couple of nice dual SATA drive docks here at the office. They’re from a Taiwanese job builder named Inatek, model FD-2002. Right now, you can pick one up for under US$30 on Amazon (see preceding link). I’ve used them with great success for drives of all sizes, up to and including 8 TB (Toshiba X300 Performance: ~US$176). Right now, I’ve got one of them populated with 2 4TB HGST Ultrastar drives (~US$95). Until yesterday, I had the 8 TB Toshiba drive paired with an HGST Ultrastar 3TB drive (~US$40, a truly great deal price/performance wise). Then the twist came into play.

Turns out there’s a limit to how much storage will work in one of these low-cost dual drive docks. I hit that limit yesterday!
[Click image for full-sized view. Image Source: Amazon.]

What’s the Twist on Dual SATA Drive Docks?

Turns out that the bigger the drive’s capacity, the hotter it runs. Putting the 8 TB and 3 TB drives in juxtaposition worked fine, until I started using the 8 TB drive heavily. Then, all of a sudden, the 3TB drive started popping in and out of service. Not good! I’m not sure if it was an issue related to the power draw to the drive dock (more than it could handle seems pretty likely to me). OTOH, it could’ve just gotten too hot to keep working. When I took the 3 TB drive out of the dock, it was uncomfortably warm in my hands. I replaced it with a 2.5″ form-factor SSD drive and that combination has been running without a hiccup for almost 24 hours now.

Let this be a gentle warning, dear readers! If you want to pair up storage devices in low-budget dual drive docks, you may want to limit yourself to no more than 10 TB of total storage. Apparently, I hit some kind of wall when I attempted to make steady, serious use of 11 TB (8 + 3) in such a device yesterday. I’m tempted to try it again with a fan blowing on it, to see if lowering operating temps will permit it to keep working. If not, I’ll be more or less convinced it’s a power supply limitation. We’ll see!

Letters from the Ed, Software Reviews, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10, Windows 8.*, Windows gadgets

Interesting Win10 Gadget Conundrum

August 5, 2019 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I can’t help it. I still love Windows Gadgets. They came in — and went out — with Windows 7, supposedly because of security considerations. I’ve never had, nor heard of such issues in the wild. My old friend and security guru, Deb Shinder, also uses Gadgets. She feels the same away about their demise. Helmut Buhler created 8GadgetPack to bring Gadgets to Windows 8. He’s kept up with them, and they work well with Windows 10. (His current version is v29.0, released in May 2019, so it’s pretty up-to-date.) Each time you upgrade Windows, it sees Gadgets and kills them off. So he’s also written a “Restore Gadgets” routine that recognizes this act, and restores the pre-existing Gadget set-up after each OS-based cancellation. Lately, though, I’ve been posed an interesting Win10 Gadget conundrum.

What’s the Condundrum?

The two following screenshots show the puzzler I’ve been dealing with lately. Notice the display at the bottom of the two CPU Meter Gadget windows that follow. It’s a CPU utilization graph, that shows per-core utilization percentages. The graph on the left-hand-side fills up the entire Gadget panel, while the one on the right-hand-side fills up only about two-thirds. After the most recent Nvidia driver update (which applies to the left-hand item) the Gadget on that PC went from a partial graph area (which applies to the right-hand item) to the full graph area. The PC from which the right-hand item comes is a Surface Pro 3 that uses built-in Intel graphics circuitry that’s built into the i7-4650U processor in that machine. The PC on the left is my production desktop, as the i7-6700 CPU should indicate.

Careful inspection shows the utliization graph at the left fills the full Gadget frame, while the one on the right fills about two-thirds of the same area. What gives?

Here’s the conundrum: I’m pretty sure that there’s something in the nexus between .NET and the GPU driver that’s causing the CPU utilization display area issue. Installing Nvidia’s latest GeForce driver (Version 431.60, which shows a 7/23/2019 release date (but which I just installed today, 8/5/2019) on my production PC fixed the issue. It still persists on all of my systems running Intel on-chip GPUs.

A Minor Niggle Still in Search of a Fix

This is the kind of mystery that guarantees lifetime (or at least ongoing) employment for Windows wizards, gurus, and mavens. I’ll keep messing around with those Intel drivers until I find one that works like it’s supposed to. This has been going on at least since last February or thereabouts, though, so Intel’s obviously under no pressure to catch up with this minor and niggling little GUI detail. It gives me something to do when I get bored, so I can’t complain. And so it goes, here in Windows-World!

PostScript Added August 6, 2019

OK, so I updated my Lenovo T520’s graphics driver last night, too. It includes both an Intel on-chip GPU (HD 3000) and an Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M independent GPU. I updated the Nvidia device to Version 392.56 later yesterday afternoon. This machine had also been subject to the “reduced display” layout shown above for the Surface Pro 3. But after I remoted into that machine this morning, I immediately noticed that the CPU utilization graph at the bottom of the gadget now filled the entire pane, to wit:

This time I loaded Core Temp so that the “not running” error message didn’t appear. Makes the utilization graph a little easier to see and appreciate. So somehow, updating the Nvidia driver (even though I’m not using it) fixed the problem. As a consequence, I’m rethinking my theory of what’s causing the problem. But on my Intel-only systems, the problem persists. I’ll keep working on it . . .

Letters from the Ed, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10

iPhone Update Shows Remarkable Resilience

April 3, 2019 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Patience has never been one of my leading virtues. Yesterday, while updating my iPhone OS from version 12.1 to 12.2, impatience led me to observe that iPhone Update shows remarkable resilience. Once I’d started the update process over the air. I quickly realized it was going to take a long time to complete the download. At one point, in fact, the time bar said “1 hour remaining.” That’s when I plugged my iPhone into my PC, fired up iTunes, and restarted the update process from there. Indeed the download was MUCH faster to my i7 7700 PC with its near-GbE connection via Spectrum.

All went swimmingly until the machine started its first reboot. It paused forever when the White-on-Black Apple logo appeared on the screen. Figuring that more power to the phone might help speed things up (it didn’t), I disconnected the phone from the PC and plugged it into an nearby iPad charger. Bad move! The update process crashed immediately and I got the “plug back into iTunes, idiot!” screen on the phone shown in the following screenshot:

Egad! I didn’t realize that once you start an update through iTunes, it must run all the way to completion through iTunes. Now I know. Sigh.

Several Interesting Things Happened Next

Thank God for the depth of understanding for human ingenuity/stupidity that the developers who wrote the iOS Update code for Apple baked into the process. The phone’s status screen shows that, even without an OS, it knew enough to show me what to do. On the iTunes side, the program also immediately requested that I reconnect the iPhone via USB so it could attempt repairs. It was smart enough to tell me that it could re-try the update. And if that failed, it could restore the backup which I had fortunately made just before commencing the update process. And if that failed, it said, it could restore my phone to ground zero with a factory reset image. Now THAT’s some quality software engineering.

Of course, now that I know that if I break the USB link between iPhone and PC while an iTunes based update is underway it will then crash, I’ll never do that again. But I was tickled to death to understand that my idiocy wasn’t also rare enough to be unforeseen. I gotta hand it to those Apple update developers. They did a kick-ass job of anticipating what might go wrong during the process, and building in the necessary error-handling smarts to fix things as needed.

All’s Well That Ends Well

I was lucky. The update picked up more or less where it left off and ran to completion. It took a bit longer, overall, than other OTA updates have taken in the past. I neglected to factor in the trade-off between faster download to the PC and USB 2 based file transfer speeds from PC to iPhone. For whatever reason, even though I started out with iTunes through a USB 3 port on my PC, the recovery didn’t work until I plugged the Lightning cable into a USB 2 port. And so it goes here at Chez Tittel, where random bits of lunacy mingle with similar bits of the quotidian. May you learn from my mistake!

Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10

Nightmare On Arbor Drive: Virus Infestation

October 26, 2018 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Today’s blog post title is more literal than readers may infer. I woke up last night at 12:51 dreaming that my production desktop had been infested. It must’ve been a historical drama of sorts. That’s because it featured a screen takeover scenario. I still remember when you could “catch” viruses and spyware of an interesting sort. They would cause a web browser to spawn an infinitude of Windows. Thus, as I was coming awake, it was from sitting at my keyboard trying to launch an admin command prompt window. It would let me start killing processes and bring the takeover of my desktop to a screeching halt. As Halloween is five days away as I write this, it seems seasonally appropriate in a ghoulish way.

In 2005, when I wrote this book, malware didn’t carry the same risks of financial loss, identity theft, and denial of services that it does today.

Ruminating Over Nightmare On Arbor Drive: Virus Infestation

Back in 2005, I wrote a book for Wiley in its PC Magazine series. It was entitled Fighting Spyware, Viruses and Malware. This title was no best-seller, but it did OK. For me, it was a great excuse to get paid to learn something I needed and wanted to know. In those days, protecting oneself against malware was more straightforward than it is today. The digital world of “cops and robbers” — bad guys trying to foist attacks and steal info of value, good guys doing their best to stymie them — is now more seriously weaponized than in earlier times.

Backup, Backup, Backup

I have a “most important weapon” against malware these days. This is aside from the usual panoply of anti-malware, threat protection, and safe computing practices. I’m talking daily image backups. There’s nothing safer than blowing away the entire preceding and infected or suspect installation, replacing it with a bare metal rebuild. That may not always work against the most insidious of UEFI/BIOS malware or rootkits But it puts paid to everything else. It’s also much faster to restore an image than to clean up after an attack. I’m not inclined to keep a suspect (or infected) image around, either. Macrium Reflect is my weapong of choice. It restores my oldest and slowest PC (a 2013 i5 mobile CPU tablet) in between 15 and 20 minutes. I’ve never been able to get through detection, cleanup and subsequent screening and inspection in under a couple of hours.

“Be careful out there” is as relevant for those who travel the highways and byways of the Internet as it is for the real world. Make sure you’ve got your antimalware act together. Keep a current working backup ready should you need it. Remember also that it’s easier to avoid trouble than to work your way out of it. And for those who observe the holiday, Happy Halloween!

EdFiles, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10

PCs Now Eight Ninths Patched for Spectre Meltdown

April 3, 2018 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, my long and sometimes odd adventures with Spectre and Meltdown patches are finally concluded. Eight of the nine systems here at Chez Tittel are now patched. That’s as far as I think I’ll ever get because my wife’s PC is built around a Jetway NF9G-QM77 mini-ITX motherboard. Its most current BIOS update is September 2017 from a company for which no word on Spectre/Meltdown updates is available. Thus, for my PCs now eight ninths patched for Spectre Meltdown is as far as I’ll get. It’s been a wild ride. I’d like to document it just a tad to explain what others should be going through, too. Or what they should expect to go through soon.

Steve Gibson’s Inspectre utility finally gives the T520 and its Sandy Bridge CPU a clean (but slow) bill of health.

Getting to PCs Now Seven Eighths Patched for Spectre Meltdown

It all started as we got back from our end-of-year skiing/snowboarding holiday just after New Year’s. Word on these vulnerabilities emerged as soon as January 2. But I didn’t find out until I returned to my desk on January 5. After driving back from the northeastern part of Colorado, I wasn’t ready to deal with a major security flaw. But there it was, and we all had to deal with it. It soon became apparent that Meltdown and Spectre Variant 1 could be handled via OS-level patching (all complete now, thank goodness). However, Spectre v2 required a firmware patch. Or, as it turned out, a series of firmware patches. That’s because the first set for Haswell and Broadwell patches caused as many problems as they were supposed to solve.

The Timeline from Discovery to (Mostly) Mitigated

Here’s a rough timeline for how things unfolded for my PCs, as far as those firmware updates went:

January 2018
Surface Pro 3 gets a firmware patch 2nd week (1 of 8)
Dell Venue Pro 11 gets a firmware patch late 2nd week (2 of 8)
On 1/15 Intel advises against applying firmware patches
February 2018
Not much happens with firmware patches
March 2018
Microsoft issues firmware patch for Skylake, Coffee Lake, Kaby Lake 3/8 (3 of 8)
Dell XPS27 (Haswell) gets a firmware patch 2nd week (4 of 8)
Asrock issues firmware updates for Haswell, Skylake, Coffee Lake, Kaby Lake 3/15 (5&6)
Lenovo issues firmware updates for Haswell, Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge 3/15 (7&8)

Hiccups and Lessons Learned

I have an issue with the Dell Venue Pro following its first semi-successful BIOS/UEFI update. It closed the Spectre v2 vulnerability but left the machine unable to reboot normally. I must pop the battery out and remove the power cord before the unit will boot after a shutdown or restart. Thus, I can’t apply the latest update to the UEFI. Among other things, it is supposed to address that very problem. I’m going to have to find and run a flash utility that works from an alternate boot.

That’s what I did with the two Lenovo laptops. Their Lenovo Windows Flash utility works only in Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. But I’m running Win10 on those machines. Fortunately, Lenovo also makes the update available in ISO form. It boots to alternate (optical) media and flashes the BIOS from DOS. Even though the Windows utility crashed my Win10 laptops, I eventually booted into DOS to flash them anyway. Along the way, I had to remember to reset boot to support both Legacy and UEFI modes. That’s because DOS is so old, it boots only in legacy mode. On the T520 that was how the machine was set; the X220 Tablet was “UEFI only.” I couldn’t boot to the optical disk until I made that change. Sigh.

One of the Asrock motherboards (Z170 Extreme 7+) delivered the update in a Windows-based flash executable. It was easy to apply. The other, a Z97 Killer Fatal1ty, required using the Instant Flash tool within UEFI. I had to format a USB flash drive to FAT32, unpack the ZIP file to that device, then run the tool from UEFI to apply that update. Took a while, but worked just fine.

No Hiccups Are Nice, Too!

Except for the issue with the Dell Venue Pro and the second UEFI/BIOS update, the Dells and the Surface were by far the easiest to deal with. The Dell Support utility checked for the updates, grabbed them as they became available, and applied them with zero muss and fuss. Ditto for the Surface Pro 3

All in all, while it took longer than I think any of us expected it to, the overall process wasn’t too horrible. Let’s hope this kind of thing doesn’t become too routine, either!

EdFiles, Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10

Bypass Adblock Detection Gains Importance

March 29, 2018 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Ok, then. I patrol a large number of websites daily looking for blog fodder and article topics. Many of those sites are ad-financed. Of those, some won’t show themselves in browsers with adblockers turned on. They use a technology called “Adblock Detection” to determine when browsers are blocking ads. If an adblocker is detected they take “corrective measures” to induce visitors to turn ads back on. Of course, I — and many other users — would rather not do this. Thus, we seek out countermeasures. In this case, that means figuring out how to bypass or circumvent adblock detection. And of course, that’s why I entitled this post bypass Adbock Detection gains importance.

Why and How Bypass Adblock Detection Gains Importance

If you visit WindowsCentral.com in a browser with an adblocker turned on you’ll see a message like this, instead of the website’s actual content.

Admiral’s adblock detector keeps adding annoying wrinkles.
[Click image to see full-sized view]

In the past week or so, Admiral has added a new wrinkle to its adblock detector. Previously, one could simply click the “Close” item on the adblock detection notice. Then, it would go away and leave you alone. Now, you can do this and browse for up to 30 seconds (or until you transition to another page on the site). When the timer goes off, or when you open a new page on the same site, you’re presented with the same display. After three or four repetitions, this becomes intolerable. I’d more or less decided to avoid those sites until I realized the dictum in my next heading must hold in this situation, too.

Where’s There’s a Will, There’s a Workaround

Once you learn the terminology — that is, adblock detection and the need for a bypass — there is no shortage of information and advice on how to get around this despicable (but all-too-understandable) behavior. My favorite nostrum for this problem comes from TechJunkie.com (itself, ironically enough, an ad-financed website). I like their solution because it involves very little effort on my part. It does, however, require using Firefox to make this as simple as possible. One need only click File → New Private Window inside Firefox, then surf to the site of one’s choosing from inside that window. The same Admiral window pops up once, but stays quiet when closed after that. Works like a charm.

Other adblock detection bypass techniques get more interesting. You can use Google cache to interact with a snapshot of the site instead of a live, interactive version. You can use the Wayback Machine in similar fashion, and interact with a different snapshot. There are also scripts from Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey to kill the scripts that invoke the site’s adblock detection and response behaviors. Guiding Tech also suggests disabling JavaScript for offending sites. For me, all of these involve too much poking around in the browser GUI. I’m best-served by a hands-off technique myself, so I’m using Firefox for those sites going forward — at least for now, until the adblock detectors add another wrinkle. Then, I’ll find another workaround or countermeasure, as the game of cops and robbers goes on!

Recent Activity, Software Reviews, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks

Understanding HomeDev PatchCleaner

February 20, 2018 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I strongly recommend the PatchCleaner utility from Australian consulting and software company homedev. It keeps an eye on the contents of the %windir%\Installer directory. Usually, that’s C:\Windows\Installer where the OS stashes installer .msi and patch .msp files. At any given moment, you might need one or more of those files. That’s because they can be called on when patching or installing software components (both Windows and third-party items, in fact). That’s why the developers recommend moving “orphaned” files to another drive/directory rather than deleting them outright. However, the tool will happily delete files when so directed. Here’s some output from the program on my production PC. Examined properly, it should aid readers in understanding HomeDev PatchCleaner.

The bigger box at bottom is the output from the second details item for orphaned files in the small box at top.

What’s Involved in Understanding HomeDev PatchCleaner?

PatchCleaner shows a line of data that conveys some important information. Namely, it discloses what’s in the Installer folder that isn’t necessary. The tool identifies such orphaned files by seeking out references to their names in other executables and OS files. Those that lack such references are considered orphans. In the preceding screencap, this key line reads “9 files are orphaned, 289.66 Mb details…” Clicking on that blue details item produces the orphaned files window shown below. There, I’ve zeroed in on an older installer file for Macrium Reflect (version 6.3.1821, now completely obsolete and out-of-date).

In general, I agree with homedev’s advice to move files from the C:\Windows\Installer directory to another directory. But, as I’ve been watching and working with the program, I’ve observed there is a specific class of items that it is almost certainly safe to delete rather than move. These items can be generically described as “applications that update often.” As shown, Macrium Reflect — which gets monthly updates, give or take — is one of those items. Another includes various Adobe programs such as the Flash Reader or Acrobat DC. These get updated about as frequently as Reflect (but usually take an .msp extension).

On some heavily-patched and infrequently-cleaned PCs, I’ve seen this number exceed 10 GB. My PCs, of course, are kept pretty clean, so mine seldom approach even 1 GB. As “the boss” (my wife, Dina) likes to say “the more often you clean, the less you have to clean up each time.” That’s as true for PCs as it is for her house, where by her grace and kindness I am also allowed to reside.

EdFiles, Recent Activity, Software Reviews, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10

Oh my! AOMEI OneKey Recovery Gets Interesting

April 4, 2017 Ed Tittel 1 Comment

I’ve been working with and learning about recovery partitions on Windows boot/system disks lately. My explorations led me to a decent but flawed tool that does some nice things for Windows OS recovery. It’s called AOMEI OneKey Recovery, and it’s available in both free and commercial versions. In theory, installing this program is easy. You must make space on your system/boot drive. Then, AOMEI OneKey Recovery adds partitions to that disk for boot-up and repair. As a bonus, its recovery partition incorporates a backup of your Windows OS partition. But in practice, AOMEI OneKey Recovery gets interesting. It’s particularly so when it comes to sizing the disk space that the program needs for its partitions. Here’s what the nominal 256 GB SSD drive on my Dell Venue Pro 11 7130 looked like when the program finished its work:

Alas, considerable trial and error was required to properly size the F: partition I had to give AOMEI OneKey Recovery to work with.

Lack of Sizing Data Means AOMEI OneKey Recovery Gets Interesting Indeed!

To begin with, the program provides no guidance on how to size the partition from which it will create its partitions. These are labeled AOMEI and AOMEI Recovery Partition in the preceding screen capture from the Disk Management utility. I started small (at around 2 GB), and went through too many muffed attempts last night. I got increasingly vexed as I kept upping the size of the F: partition that OneKey Recovery used for the AOMEI partitions shown. For each try, I had to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to reduce the size of the C: partition. Then I used that space to expand the F: partition. Things didn’t work until the F: partition hit 44 GB in size. Finally, it created the disk layout depicted in the preceding graphic.

The problem was, resizing the C: partition requires a reboot to do its thing. For each attempt, I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to shrink the C: partition. Then I could grow the F: partition by the same amount. Each iteration took 3-4 minutes to complete because of the time involved in shifting partition boundaries and waiting for the reboot to complete. By the time I’d done this five times I was ready to spit nails. Surely AOMEI could expend the programming effort necessary to analyze the files on the C: partition and estimate the partition size needed to accommodate them? I would have been much happier with my experience in using the software if I didn’t have to keep repeating my attempts to set up those pesky partitions.

It’s Not All Tar and Feathers, However…

To give credit where it’s due, AOMEI OneKey Recovery was reasonably well-behaved aside from the lack or partition sizing information or guidance. It added itself nicely to my Boot Configuration Database (BCD data) on the Dell Venue Pro 11. Better yet, it didn’t mess with the Macrium Recovery Partition already installed on that drive. In testing of its onekey functionality, it worked quite nicely. The program offered to restore my backed-up runtime environment to the C: partition without a hitch. It took about 10 minutes to create the two partitions shown. Thus, I’m guessing it would take about the same amount of time to restore the contents of its Recovery Partition to C:, should that become necessary. I’ll try it out this weekend, when I have some spare time to devote to that task. I’ll follow up with an update then.

On balance I think this is a good tool for a free program. But because it does require resizing of the C: partition to create the space needed for its partitions, a commercial partition manager is needed to put it to work. Not coincidentally AOMEI makes one of those, too. But I prefer MiniTool Partition Wizard, mostly because I already know and understand how to use that program.

Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10

ExpressCard USB Insights Come Later Not Never

April 3, 2017 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’ve got a pair of Lenovo laptops I bought in February 2012, as I was preparing to write a book on Windows 8. The book never happened, thanks to an unexpected spate of legal work that year. But those laptops are still kicking and surprisingly capable considering they’re now over 5 years old. One of them is an X220 Tablet with a 12.5″ touchscreen (a very early production touchscreen PC). The other is a T520 with a 15.6″ 1366×768 display. Both units incorporate a dual-core i7-2640M processor, each with built-in Intel HD Graphics 3000 circuitry. The T520 includes an Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M GPU as well. ExpressCard USB insights come courtesy of the plug-in slot for ExpressCard devices on each machine.

These laptops have been through some upgrades along the way from early 2012 to the present day. Both now incorporate 16 GB RAM (2 x 8GB Patriot Memory PC3-10600 SO-DIMMs). Both now boot from Plextor PX-256M5M mSATA SSDs. In 2014, I purchased a StarTech 2 Port ExpressCard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card to endow them with faster USB connections. This last facility provides the subject for today’s blog. That’s because I noticed some important things about working with that adapter as I started prepping for the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update. (It’s due to make its public debut on 4/11/17, but is already available in ISO form to Insider Preview members like yours truly).

For under $30 (Newegg) this plug-in ExpressCard brings two USB 3.0 ports to older laptops like mine. It also comes with a couple of interesting “catches.”

ExpressCard USB Insights Come As I Prep PCs for Win10 Creators Update

In prepping my PCs for the upcoming upgrade, I’m performing a raft of housekeeping tasks, including:

1. Running Disk Cleanup in admin mode, to clean up system files and such
2. Running DriverStore Explorer (aka RAPR.exe) to remove outdated or obsolete device drivers
3. Using the DISM command to clean out the component store with the /startcomponentcleanup /resetbase options
4. Running HomeDev’s excellent PatchCleaner utility to clear out obsolete or orphaned entries from the Component Store
5. Performing complete image backups using Macrium Reflect. Thus, I can easily roll back to 1067.14393.969 or .970 if something goes wrong enough with the upgrade for Windows rollback to fail.

In working with the Lenovo units, I attempted to switch the StarTech card from the 520 to the X220 Tablet while those machines were running. Alas, the USB 3 devices (flash drives and external disks) weren’t recognized at run-time. Further investigation turned up a Device Manager error: “a driver is missing or not completely installed.” To answer the question “Can I plug in or unplug these devices at runtime?” I tried inserting and removing the card on each laptop.

Curiously, the X220 Tablet requires that the card be inserted at boot-up to be recognized and used. But the T520 recognizes the card (with USB drive(s) already inserted) when inserted at run-time. Neither unit allows a USB device to be unplugged. In fact, using “Safely Remove…” to do this properly only shows an option to eject the StarTech card completely. It’s labeled as “Eject USB Root Hub (xHCI).” I also had to close all open applications accessing devices plugged into the card, before it could be ejected. A considerable amount of time, trial, and error is what helped me develop my ExpressCard USB insights, such as they were.

Where’s the “Mount” Option for ISOs?

Another interesting factoid: the “Mount” option that appears in most PCs with built-in USB 3.0 interfaces when one accesses a folder with an ISO file present does not appear in File Explorer in either Lenovo laptop. This fails to appear when a USB 3.0 drive is plugged into the StartTech USB 3.0 adapter. Curiously enough, that same option is also missing from the right-click menu when the same UFD goes into a USB 2.0 port on those machines.

That said, I get the right-click “Mount” option for the very same UFD on all of my other PCs, laptops and tablets.. But then, all of them sport native USB 3.0 ports of some kind or another. When this option is missing, however, one can still use the PowerShell command called “Mount-DiskImage.” This makes an ISO show up as a virtual DVD in File Explorer, as recounted in this TechNet Windows IT Center article (last updated 3/8/2017 as I write this blog post).

{Note added 12/18/17: My friend and colleague Kari Finn points out that you can also mount an ISO on any Win10 system by right-clicking the ISO file and using the “Open with …” option from the context menu. Selecting “File Explorer” when the target is an ISO file also triggers mount behavior. Useful shortcut, actually!}

I have to chuckle that I’ve had this card for three years now, and am just now really learning how it works (and sometimes fails). In acquiring ExpressCard USB insights later is indeed better than never. At least, that’s what the title of this blog post suggests, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Cheers!