Category Archives: Windows 10

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Possible RDP Session Startup Delay Fix

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I have numerous PCs in my office right now, and a couple more elsewhere in the house. My usual modus operandi is to work from my primary desktop, and use Remote Desktop Connection (and the RDP protocol) to jump onto and work with those other machines. I do this dozens of times daily, as I check various Windows versions, VMs, and more. At least 1 time out of 4, when I start up an RDP connection it sits on the remote PC’s lock screen for some time (minutes, even). Only recently have I researched this, and come up with a possible RDP session startup delay fix. You can see it in the unchecked box at lower left in the lead-in graphic: persistent bitmap cache.

What Is This Possible RDP Session Startup Delay Fix?

Another workaround is to close the opening session, then open it again. This almost always works. But in reading over a set of possible fixes in an April 2024 TheWindowsClub story on this very topic, I came across one I’d neither heard of before, nor tried. So, of course, I tried it: it involves unchecking the “Persistent bitmap caching” entry on the expanded Remote Desktop Connection app’s Experience tab as shown above.

I tried that on a couple of PCs that were showing significant delays in starting RDP sessions just now. And guess what? After that tweak, they opened right up. I’m guessing the delay might come from loading the cache at session startup, which the app uses to speed reproduction of already-known (and cached) screens. So it’s gonna be a tradeoff: faster startup at first, but slower response when screens need to move across the network that would otherwise already be stored.

I’m not sure it’s a total win, but it’s interesting to try such things out and see how they work for you. To me that’s the essence of getting things right in Windows-World — namely finding and using the right controls, to do what you need in a way that you can live with.

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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Outlook Search String Magic

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This is an IDKYCDT item. I work with Outlook every day, and have done so since the 1980s. You’d think I’d have learned a long time ago about how to make Outlook search string magic stand up and bark. Not so: in trolling the Internet today I learned about the “isread:no” string in Outlook search, which shows you all unread messages for the current search focus. Indeed, it’s the bomb when applied to my inbox, where things can sometimes pile up alarmingly.

You can see a sample search string of this type in the lead-in graphic. It reads the sender field (from:) in messages, and shows those that match what’s on the other side of the colon. In this case, recent stuff from one of my main project editors at Actual Tech Media.

Exploring Outlook Search String Magic

By itself, this isread:no string is a big boon to my productivity. But naturally, I’d like to find a compendium of all such strings. The closest I could come as an MS Support note entitled “How to search in Outlook.” It lists a pretty good number of such strings. But it isn’t really structured, appropriately organized, or complete in that specific area . Ditto for another support note “Use Outlook’s built-in search filters.”

In fact, the more I look around, the less I’m able to find a useful resource. I’m thinking I should reach out to the father of the AskWoody newsletter — Woody Leonhard himself, author of many books on Word and Office — and see if he can point me in the right direction. Who know where this may lead? Can’t wait to find out.

Stay tuned!

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

OneNote Updates Sticky Notes

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Here’s an interesting tidbit. If you install or upgrade OneNote on a Windows PC, it will also upgrade to a new version of Sticky Notes. Check the lead-in graphic: it labels this new version as such, and the old version (lacking that same (new) label)shows up in the Start menu. Hence my assertion that OneNote updates Sticky Notes. But wait: there’s more…

Exactly How OneNote Updates Sticky Notes

This dual appearance persists even after you add the (New) version via a OneNote update (or install). If you quiz that version for its About info, you’ll get the OneNote for Microsoft 365 info . It shows up as (line broken for WordPress readability, original is a one-liner):

Microsoft® OneNote® for Microsoft 365 MSO
(Version 2408 Build 16.0.17928.20114) 64-bit

OTOH, if you quiz the older version, it calls itself a UWP app with version number 6.1.20 (and a 2020 copyright date). Go figure!

Two Versions, or One?

If you want to keep both versions, that’s fine with me. If you want to lose the old version, I’d recommend using WinGet to uninstall same. The name of this app is “Microsoft Sticky Notes” so you need to enclose it in quotes (internal spaces) to get it to work. Or, you can uninstall it using the app id, as follows:

winget uninstall --id 9NBLGGH4QGHW

instead. Your choice. I did the latter on one of my X380 test PCs and it worked correctly. Now, I see only Sticky Notes (New) in the Start menu. Just for grins, I did likewise on my Windows 10 production PC: it behaves in exactly the same way, so this works for both OSes. Cheers!

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Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10

StartMenuExperienceHost.exe Knocks ReliMon Over

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When searching for Windows blog topics, I occasionally drop in on Reliability Monitor (aka ReliMon). FYI, it’s actually a special version of the more general-purpose Performance Monitor (PerfMon). This morning, I saw what I can only describe as a bad-to-worse stability index chart. See the lead-in graphic. Upon examination, I concluded that StartMenuExperienceHost.exe knocks ReliMon over with daily errors. Ouch!

Handling StartMenuExperienceHost.exe Knocks ReliMon Over

Digging into the details, I see this element present every day (multiple times on some days) for 16 of the past 17 days. That’s a new personal record for me, and it’s interesting. Why? Because this system hasn’t been giving me any obvious trouble, repeat SMEH errors notwithstanding. (Hope that abbreviation is obvious…)

So naturally I went looking for enlightenment about SMEH and the related MoBEX error that occurs for each instance in the detail page. Unsurprisingly, I found a registry hack to address the issue at TenForums.com from well-known VIP member Samuria. Apparently, it involves a well-known permissions inheritance issue for values inside the

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

key. I’ve applied the fix Samuria recommends, and will observe ReliMon over coming days to see if it helps.

The Enduring Value of Internet Community

Though one must exercise caution in picking up and running with fixes from the Internet, there are gradations of trust and merit in play, too. Because I’ve been an active member of TenForums for years and have seen many, many useful tips from Samuria over that entire interval, I’m comfortable with following his advice. That makes this a “safe fix” IMO. But if you have a recent backup handy, and know how to restore it, you can always get back to where you started. That’s my fallback position, and I’m sticking with it. Cheers!

I’ll keep you posted as I see if this helps … or not. Stay tuned!

Sept 13 follow-up #1: No dice, but…

I got a comment from fellow TenForums VIP OldNavyGuy that told me two things: he tried the reghack and it didn’t work for him. He also build a new user profile and moved over to that, then killed the old one. He reports that did away with the ongoing torrent of StartMenuExperienceHost.exe errors. I’ll try it sometime, and see.

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Benchmarking, Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Fast UFDs Need Fast USB Ports

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I just learned something amazing. I’ve long known that performance depends greatly on USB port selection. Indeed I posted about this nearly two years ago to the day: USB-C Port Choice Really Matters. Amusingly, it wasn’t until this morning that I figured out this caution applies to USB-A ports as well. Indeed, fast UFDs need fast USB ports for them to deliver their fullest capabilities. The speed difference is shocking, too: more than 20X faster for large read/writes; 2-10X faster for small ones. Let me show you…

CDM Shows That Fast UFDs Need Fast USB Ports

Check out the lead-in graphic at right. It shows CystalDiskMark (CDM) results for the same Kingston Data Traveler Max 256GB UFD I just had delivered from Amazon yesterday. It’s rated at 1,000 MB/s read, and 900 MB/s write on that purchase page. As you can see, CDM reports better numbers than those for queue depth of 8 on a 1 GiB object, and somewhat less for a queue depth of 1.

What’s fascinating, however, is the results shown on the left. These popped up in a pretty new ThinkPad T14s Gen6 Copilot+ PC I received from Lenovo last month. As the user manual confirms, both of its USB-A connectors top out at 5 Gbps, which makes them plain-vanilla USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.2 Gen1). As you can see given that I’m testing the same device in two different USB-A ports, the difference is down to the port. And that difference is MAJOR!

Here’s a Potential Workaround

You can purchase a dongle/adapter that is female USB-A on one side, and male USB-C on the other. It will let you plug a fast USB-A UFD into a presumably faster USB-C port. I bought a 2-pack of these from Amazon back in 2021. You can see there’s some pass-through loss (compare upper right results, and you’ll see what I mean) when taking this approach. But gosh! It’s still MUCH faster than a 5Gpbs connection. ‘Nuff said.

If you buy a fast UFD and your laptop or PC has only 5 Gbps USB-A ports, spend the extra $5-6 that a USB-A to USB-C adapter will cost. You’ll get a major performance boost as a result, even if it’s not as good as a native 10 Gbps USB-A port. Cheers!

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Recent Activity, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Windows App Will Replace Remote Desktop

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I’m finally starting to get some clarity on the emerging Windows App, now out in preview. That clarity comes courtesy of a nice story from Martin Brinkmann at gHacks entitled “The Windows Windows app is real — replacing remote desktop app.” But I’ve got a problem with this tool –identical to the problems I had with the Teams (Work or school) version. I don’t have a qualifying MSA among the half-dozen or so I have set up. So, even though the Windows App will replace Remote Desktop, I’m still unable to use it. Sigh.

How Soon the Windows App Will Replace Remote Desktop?

Having been through this with Teams earlier this year, I  imagine Windows App will follow a similar trajectory. MS must eventually loosen its exclusive requirement for an Entra related MSA. Why say this? Because of 2 inescapable facts:

  1. The population of personal MSAs dwarfs that for the other kind
  2. Unless MS adds personal MSAs, it can’t replace Remote Desktop

All this said, the Windows App is now available in preview form. MS has various Learn assets for the program but none of them provides information about timing just yet. The best place to start is with What is Windows App? It leads to other useful info, too. My best guess is that this will be another element that distinguishes the 24H2 Windows 11 release from its predecessors.

Finding the Windows App…

Because “Windows app” is a generic term, and “Windows App” is the name of an MS Store object, some sleight of hand is needed to run it down. Best to search the store with “Windows App” (including caps) enclosed in quotes.

According to the MS Learn article Link to your app, you can synthesize the Store URL for an app by appending its Id string to this base string:

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/

WinGet will happily provide that ID using either its list or show capabilities. Here again, I had to enclose “Windows App” in quotes to make this work, to wit:

As you can see, WinGet says the ID = 9N1F85V9T8BN, so that URL should be https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/9N1F85V9T8BN. Let’s see…

Works! Now, all I have to do is get a “real” Work or school MSA so I can use the gosh-darned thing. But that’s another kettle of fish entirely, here in Windows-World. Stay tuned.

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Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows Update

Windows 10 Beta Access Proves Elusive

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On June 4, MS announced it was (re)opening the Beta Channel for Windows Insiders on Windows 10. So I stood up a Windows 10 VM on my trusty Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen1 Mobile Workstation to try this out. Bizarrely, after joining the Beta Channel the next update informed me it was loading a Windows 11 Beta version. Indeed, either I couldn’t figure out how to get the actual Windows 10 Beta to download and install, or that version was mislabeled. That’s why I aver that Windows 10 Beta access proves elusive.

If Windows 10 Beta Access Proves Elusive, Then What?

As you can see in the lead-in graphic, after I “got away” from an apparent Windows 11 beta install, I did manage to get into the Windows 10 Insider Preview Channel. Right now, it has the same release as does the Beta Channel anyway (see Aug 22 blog post).

From that vantage point, and that build number (19045.4942) I was then able to “upgrade” myself to the Beta Channel. This is apparently a case where if a single-step approach doesn’t work, a more tentative two-step (Insider Preview first, then Beta) channel changing strategy does. Go figure!

Little by Little, Step by Step

If you can’t get where you need to go in Windows in one fell swoop, incremental progress will have to do. As you can see in the closing screencap, the test VM is now in the Beta Channel and running the associated most current Windows 10 release (likewise 19045.4942, which is how I could make the switch both quickly and easily).

Enrolling in Insider Preview, then switching to Beta works like a charm.

Here in Windows-World, even if the obvious method doesn’t seem to work, a less direct approach can still get you where you want or need to go. I’d call this another case in point.

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

Reinstall Solves Nvidia Driver Issue

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This morning, I noticed a new GeForce driver for the RTX 3070 Ti on my production system via the NVIDIA app. Perforce I installed same. Then the screen flashing started: on and off, and on and off, and … you get the idea. I’ve been here before, but usually when an old driver needs replacing. I tried to roll back (but the option didn’t light up) so I used the REINSTALL facility you see at the upper right of the lead-in graphic. I’m happy to report that such a reinstall solves NVIDIA driver issue. The blinking/flashing is fixed. Good-oh!

Why Reinstall Solves Nvidia Driver Issue

When a graphics driver misbehaves  — as in going into blink mode — it’s usually because the driver itself is messed up. Or it might be that communications between the driver and the device aren’t working properly. Either way, something needs to change.

Ordinarily I’d use the rollback facility on the Driver tab for the RTX 3070 Ti to revert back to the previous version. But, as you can see in the next screencap, the “Roll Back Driver” button is greyed out. Alas, that means there’s nothing to roll back to. Looks like the new NVIDIA app doesn’t keep old driver versions around. What to do?

Because it’s greyed out, I can’t use Roll Back Driver.

Fortunately, as you can see in the lead-in graphic, the NVIDIA app offers a REINSTALL option for the current driver. Because the installed version was blinking I figured I had nothing to lose by giving REINSTALL a try. So I did just that.  Just to make sure everything got replaced, I also checked the installer’s Clean Installation option. And fortunately for me, it worked!

The desktop is back to normal, and the blinking is behind me now. All’s well that ends well in Windows-World, especially when it comes to misbehaving graphics drivers.

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Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

MS Store Splits Updates & Library

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You can tell it’s been a busy week. I just now tried out the new Microsoft Store organization as of version 22407.1401.2.0. In that iteration, MS Store splits updates & library in the left-hand menu, as you can see in the lead-in graphic (lower left). The item is actually labeled Downloads when none are pending. You can see a down-arrow from the cloud symbol in that screencap (above Library) to show that updates are available. This makes it faster and easier to get to updates inside the Store, and to know when to do so. I like it!

When MS Store Splits Updates & Library…

Alas, it also did away with its settings controls inside the Store. No more three dots to the right of the user icon. I couldn’t even get Microsoft Store itself to come up inside the Microsoft Store. Instead I had to use WinGet list “Microsoft Store” inside Windows Terminal/PowerShell to show me which version was running on this Canary Channel PC:

Unable to access “About” info for the MS Store, I got it from WinGet instead.

This is a good change. And I also realized that because the Microsoft Store is pre-installed on modern Windows versions, there’s no “store page URL” available for that app itself. Instead, uninstallling and/or reinstalling requires some PowerShell magic, as explained in this MS Answers tutorial (from the always helpful Andre Da Costa).

That’s probably why I also had to turn to PowerShell and WinGet to obtain the current Microsoft Store version number, too. That’s the kind of thing that keeps life interesting, here in Windows-World.

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

NVIDIA Driver Forces POPCNT Support

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Hey! We’ve known it was coming for some time now. In February 2024, Tom’s Hardware reported: “Microsoft’s PopCnt restriction appears to be unbreakable.” This CPU instruction is part of the SSE4.2 Instruction set for Intel processors. It’s SSE4.2a for AMD CPUs, and also present in Snapdragon X as well. Indeed it’s been part of the computing landscape since 2008 for Intel, circa 2009-2010 for AMD, and since inception for ARM (including Copilot+ PCs). But now, with the introduction of version 555, NVIDIA driver forces POPCNT support. How so? Check the lead-in graphic. Windows 10 and 11 systems that lack POPCNT support will BSOD if they install this latest GPU driver version. Ouch!

Sussing Out NVIDIA Driver Forces POPCNT Support

You can read about this in the NVIDIA release notes for 555 (source of the lead-in graphic). It’s entitled “EOL Windows driver support for older CPUs without POPCNT instruction.” That pretty much says it all. The note recommends using Sysinternals Coreinfo to check for POPCNT support. (Indeed, it worked to show such support on the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Copilot+ loaner PC.)

But on Intel and AMD PCs, I found it easier to use Franck DeLattre’s excellent CPU-Z tool to look for the SSE4.2 (or SSE4.2a) instruction set instead. The ARM version of CPU-Z is less than helpful in providing POPCNT info because it doesn’t natively map to any ARM instruction set. Here’s what comes up on my ancient i7 SkyLake desktop (running Windows 10 for lack of CPU support).

Note the “Instructions” entry that reads SSE4.2 (bottom of “Processor” block): that’s what we’re looking for, when using this tool to check for POPCNT support on Intel CPUs. WindowsLatest reports that CoreInfo doesn’t work reliably on all systems, and recommends other CPU check tools besides CPU-Z. Be sure to check it out for those details if one or the other of these tools doesn’t cut it on your rig.

Older PCs: Avoid NVIDIA 555

The real takeaway from this news is that owners of older PCs whose CPUs don’t support POPCNT should avoid updating to NVIDIA driver versions number 555 or greater. Otherwise, they’ll have to boot into WinRE, and use DISM at the command line to uninstall that driver to end a BSOD loop on that machine. You’ve been warned! I’d be inclined to take this as a early indicator that a hardware refresh should be in your future, too…

 

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