Category Archives: Windows 11

Device drivers, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Speccy ToughBook BSOD Analysis

December 28, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s an interesting situation: after installing Piriform’s Speccy hardware inspection tool on the new loaner Panasonic Toughbook FZ55-3, it crashes every time I run the program. Indeed, you can see the corresponding BSOD screen in the lead-in graphic. The stop code is SECURE_PCI_CONFIG_SPACE_ACCESS_VIOLATION. The culprit: the cpuz149_x64.sys driver. After some online research, my Speccy ToughBook BSOD analysis tells me that this driver is attempting PCI data access that Windows 11 disallows.

To be more specific I found an Open Systems Resources (OSR) community discussion that lays out exactly what’s going on. The datails are nicely covered in an MS Learn item. It’s named Accessing PCI Device Configuration Space, dated 3/13/2023. Essentially it constrains developers to use the BUS_INTERFACE_STANDARD bus interface, and specific read-config and write-config IO request packets to interact with said bus. Based on its BSOD error, the cpuz149_x64.sys driver apparently fails on one or more of those counts. That made me wonder: is there a workaround?

Speccy ToughBook BSOD Analysis Says: Don’t Use That Driver!

For grins, I found the offending item in my user account’s …\AppData\Local\Temp folder hierarchy. I renamed it with a sy1 extension. Then I tried Speccy again: it still crashed. Drat! The program is “smart” enough to see the file is missing and supplies a new one. Now that folder shows the old renamed .sy1 file and a .sys replacement (with today’s data and a recent timestamp).

When I rename to deny access to the current instance, Speccy supplies a new one.

That can’t work. Inevitably, the program promptly throws another BSOD. According to the Speccy forum, this happens with Memory Integrity enabled (as it is on the TB, and I want to keep it that way). This is what causes the BSOD. What to do?

If You Can’t Fight, Switch!

Fortunately, there are plenty of other freeware hardware profile and monitoring tools available. I happen to like HWiNFO64 myself. So I’ve removed Speccy and am using it instead. It is well behaved in its PCI bus access behavior and causes no BSODs.

Frankly, I’m surprised Piriform knows about this issue and hasn’t switched to a different driver (apparently, it comes from Franck Delattre over at CPU-Z, judging from its name). But boy howdy, is that ever the way things go sometimes, here on the wild frontier in Windows-World. Yee-haw!

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11

Fixing Windows 11 Boot Loop

December 18, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Last Friday, we picked son Gregory up at the airport: he’s home for the holidays from college. That evening, he mentioned his laptop — a 2019 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga — was “stuck on updates.” Boy, was he ever right: i found myself fixing Windows 11 boot loop as the machine hung after the post-GUI reboot in attempting to get through the 23H2 feature upgrade. Stuck, stuck, stuck indeed.

Fixing Windows 11 Boot Loop Takes Thought & Recall

As soon as I turned the PC on, I could tell it was cycling on processing updates. It just couldn’t seem to get past the spinning circle stage after the initial reboot. Multiple tries later — 3 of them, to be exact — the Windows bootstrap facility presented me with the recovery menu. “Aha!” I though “now I’m getting somewhere…”

Of course, then I had to remember to turn off secure boot in the UEFI so I could actually transfer control to a bootable WinRE environment on a flash drive (UFD). Startup repairs didn’t do it. The Macrium Reflect Rescue Media’s “fix boot problems” didn’t do it, either. But when I stuck the DaRT (Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset) UFD into the machine it finally got through a boot-up to alternate media.

On the next reboot, Windows recognized it was stuck in the middle of a failed update. It then commenced rollback to the previous 11 version and reached the desktop. At that point, I was able to run another Reflect backup (I did), and then start rolling forward again.

All’s Well That Ends Well

The pending Cumulative Update completed successfully, and rebooted correctly. I then fired off the 23H2 upgrade and crossed my fingers. This time, it completed without a hitch. The X390 is now fully caught up, cleaned up and has been backed up one more time.

I’m not sure what caused the first 23H2 attempt to hang in a boot loop, but it didn’t fall prey to that again. I think it may have been the attempt to apply the CU, then the 23H2 upgrade, in a single go. This time around, I made sure to reboot after the CU, before attempting the 23H2 upgrade. By the time I worked through all the steps, the whole shebang took about 2 hours to fix. We were all glad when it was done — me, especially.

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Thoughts & concerns, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Final 2023 Insider Channel Flights

December 15, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

It’s a consistent pattern. I’m looking at the most recent “flight announcements” in the Windows Insider blog. All of them include this sentence: “This will be our last <Name> Channel flight until January 2024” where <Name> is one of: Canary, Dev or Beta. The most recent instance popped on December 14. Its header appears as the lead-in graphic above.

Why Say: Final 2023 Insider Channel Flights Are Out?

Beyond the flat assertions from MS indicating they’re on pause until after New Year’s, I’ll observe this is a typical thing for Windows development. It’s been ongoing as far back as I can remember. Indeed, it usually hits in the 2nd or 3rd week of December, before the major end-of-year holidays get going in earnest.

This makes pretty good sense to me. Productivity usually slumps between December 20 and January 3 or 4 (depending on what day of the week New Year’s hits — next year it’s a Monday). MS is smart to call a hiatus by the middle of the month, to give everybody time to gear up for, and then recover from, the hollidays. Most other businesses (except those in leisure and hospitality) tend to do likewise.

Take a Deep Breath, And …

Indeed, I just wrote my last weekly blog/column for GoCertify yesterday (it will publish Monday). And I’ve noticed the pace of work will be letting up with the websites and publications I write for starting next week.

Does this mean I’ll be taking a break from this blog, too? Yes and no. I probably won’t blog on December 24 and 25 or January 1, but other than that it should be close to normal as it ever gets here at Chez Tittel. I should have more time to fool around with my PCs, so I should find plenty of stuff to share. Do stay tuned if you’re so inclined, but I hope you’ll have time to enjoy the end-of-year break in your own special ways. Cheers!

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

Counting MS 2006 Drivers

December 12, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Yesterday’s post about generic, MS-supplied device drivers got me thinking. These drivers bear an issue date of 6/21/2006, which coincides with Windows Vista’s RTM date. To be more specific, I wondered how many such items might appear in the Windows DriverStore. With counting MS 2006 drivers in mind, I asked Copilot for a PowerShell script to count them for me. Just for grins I compared that count to the total items as well.

Scripting Out Counting MS 2006 Drivers

You can see the results of my query to Copilot in the lead-in graphic. That query was “Write me a PowerShell script to display number of Windows drivers dated 6/21/2006 and total driver count.” As it turned out, on my Lenovo X380 ThinkPad running Windows 11, those numbers were 517 (2006 count) and 701 (total count). On my i7Skylake homebuilt system running Windows 10, those numbers were 511 and 672, respectively.

I’ll show the PowerShell commands below, but first I want to observe I had NO IDEA that MS supplies roughly 5 of every 7 drivers that Windows uses (over 70%). From looking at the items in the DriverStore more closely thanks to PowerShell, I see that this is because many of them are class, bus and service drivers. You can thus understand them as part of the driver stack between the OS and the function driver (at the bottom of the stack, it actually interacts with devices).

Here’s how MS shows this architecture in its MS Learn article “What is a driver?”

The driver at the bottom of the stack that communicates with a device is a function driver; according to the MS Learn item, filter drivers do “auxiliary processing” which may involve monitoring, verifying, translating, or otherwise manipulating in- and out-bound stack communications. By convention app to device communication moves down the stack, while device to app communication goes the other way.

PowerShell Details

Here’s the PowerShell that Copilot handed to me in response to my query, including comments (start with a # character):
#Get all the drivers from the online Windows image $drivers = Get-WindowsDriver -Online -All # Filter the drivers by the date of June 21, 2006 $drivers_2006 = $drivers | Where-Object {$_.Date -eq "6/21/2006"} # Count the number of drivers with that date $drivers_2006_count = $drivers_2006.Count # Display the number of drivers and their names Write-Output "There are $drivers_2006_count drivers dated 6/21/2006 in the online Windows image." Write-Output "The names of the drivers are:" $drivers_2006 | ForEach-Object {Write-Output $_.OriginalFileName} # Display the total number of drivers $alld = $drivers | Where-Object {$_.Inbox -eq "True"} Write-Output "There are $alld.count total Windows drivers in the online Windows image."

Some of the lines shown above break across two lines in the browser, but are actually single PowerShell commands. If you run them, you must put them on a single line. I just ran the commands in sequence, one at a time as you can see in the lead-in graphic. I cheated, though: I simply output $alld.count in the last line shown. The PowerShell shown above wraps this in some explanatory text.

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

New Canary Notepad Builds Character

December 8, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

When I saw @JenMsft’s Tweet yesterday, I knew I had to have it. A new Notepad version now includes character counts in the (bottom-line) status bar. If you squint, and look bottom right, you can see it in the lead-in graphic: 10,852 characters. Thus, when I declaim that the new Canary Notepad builds character, I’m not talking about personality traits like gumption and perseverance. I’m talkin’ numbers, baby!

Exactly How New Canary Notepad Builds Character

Over time, MS has been revamping and improving the Notepad app. Indeed, it now comes from the MS Store and lives in the Program Files\WindowsApp file hierarchy (version 11.2311.29.0 has these particular goods). Indeed, I’ve seen some discussion that it might even gain more code editing and formatting smarts, a la Notepad++.

But this current version far exceeds the capability of its predecessor (e.g. the version still running in Windows 10). That older iteration lacks the bottom status bar completely. It’s got no settings controls, either: you must do all that stuff using menu bar entries.

A Different Update Drill…

Optimistically, I went looking for the newest Notepad version on one of my Canary test PCs when the news about the character counts came out. I should’ve known better. I had to open the Store, click the Library entry, then Update all. After that, as you can see in the closing screencap below, I obtained “new Notepad satisfaction.”

Once I visited the Store, I was able to update Notepad to see its new character count ability.

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

Canary 26002 Gets Energy Saver

November 30, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Once upon a time, if one wanted to manage laptop batteries intelligently, one needed the OEM to provide a utility. No more. With the latest Insider Preview, Canary 26002 gets Energy Saver capability built in.

You can see this on display in the lead-in screen shot. It shows the notification area expanded to include a new “Energy Saver” entry (right). What’s more. if you right-click that item, it will open Settings for you. There you can easily get to the Power & Battery display (left) that shows Energy saver is turned on and always running.

Why Canary 26002 Gets Energy Saver Is Good News

Many, many years ago — I think it was in the early 2000s — I translated an article for Toms Hardware from German into English. It dealt with the issues involved in keeping batteries alive as long as possible. This could be a problem for units whose chargers remain plugged-in more than running off battery.

Indeed, it had long been the case that laptop makers had to furnish a special utility that would monitor battery charge levels, usage patterns, min/max for charge and discharge (and more) to keep track of things. You can see evidence of this even in my 2021 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 Mobile Workstation. Here are its Battery Details (from Lenovo Commercial Vantage):

Lenovo tracks all kinds of battery levels and stats.
[Click image for full-sized view.]

With this latest addition, the OS can keep track of this kind of thing for any and all battery-powered PCs. It can also manage charge levels and energy consumption to ensure long batter life while also minimizing actual energy consumption. This is a great step forward, and a good thing for laptops, users and the environment. I approve!

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

Windows 11 Canary Grants Wi-Fi List Refresh

November 21, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s a good, if subtle, addition to Windows 11’s bag of networking tricks. In Build 29997, Windows11 grants Wi-Fi list refresh capabilities. Let me explain, starting in pictorial form. Take a look at the lead-in graphic. There’s a refresh button (a circular arrow) at the lower right (cursor is perforce parked on it; you’ll need to right-click the image and show it in its own tab so see what I’m talking about). But the “Refresh network list” button is the real key. That means the Wi-Fi interface is forcibly scanning its locale to rebuild a current list of available Wi-Fi resources. Very handy, to get this right from the Taskbar.

When Windows 11 Canary Grants Wi-Fi List Refresh, What Then?

This is always a good thing to do when searching for networks. MajorGeeks does a good job of explaining the “old regime” — namely: “How to Reset Network Settings In Windows 10 & 11.”

That means clicking through the following sequence: Start → Settings; → Network & Internet (Win10) or Advanced network settings (Win11) → Scroll down, then select “Network reset.” I count 5 mouse clicks required.

The new ways take 3 clicks if you’re using wired Ethernet, 2 if already using Wi-Fi. For wired Ethernet, that’s Select Network icon in taskbar → Select Caret to left of Wi-Fi “Available” button in network pop-up → Click on “Refresh list” button at lower left of network list pop-up. For those using Wi-Fi, clicking the Wi-Fi icon on the taskbar skips the first wired step. Easy-peasey.

Does This Change Matter?

To those who switch Wi-Fi networks regularly, it is a nice little touch. For everybody else, it’s mostly nugatory. But hey, improving Windows is most definitely a matter of “little by little, step by step.” FWIW, I really like this change and think it makes Wi-Fi networking more usable on Windows 11. What’s your take?

Here’s a shout-out to Sergey Tkachenko at WinAero. His November 16 story brought this nice but subtle change to my attention. Spacibo, Sergey!

AI, Cool Tools, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Windows 10 Copilot Is Coming

November 20, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then. Rumors have been swirling for weeks, but MS made things official on November 16. To see that, please check the “firstPublishedDate” field in this MS Support note: How we are maximizing value in Windows 10. It also tells us that Windows 10 Copilot is coming, initially in the Release Preview channel for Insiders.

What Windows 10 Copilot Is Coming Really Means

MS puts things this way in the afore-linked Support note:

We are hearing great feedback on Copilot in Windows (in preview) and we want to extend that value to more people. For this reason, we are revisiting our approach to Windows 10 and will be making additional investments to make sure everyone can get the maximum value from their Windows PC including Copilot in Windows (in preview). We are also adding the “Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” toggle to Windows 10.

Aside from seeking a larger audience (there are 1.0-1.1 B Windows 10 monthly active users, versus around 400 million such users for Windows 11), what else does this change do for Microsoft? Good question! It certainly confirms their commitment to integrating AI into the desktop and its supporting apps and platforms on as many levels as possible.

What Else Does Windows 10 Copilot Tell Us?

Methinks it says MS has learned from history, and does not necessarily expect the world to turn on a dime when Windows 10 EOL comes in October 2025. Taking Windows7 as a case in point, that tide didn’t really turn until 2-3 years after its EOL came along. And in the interim, a lot of customers (especially the US DoD and other government agencies) paid big for “extended support” to keep Windows 7 alive and secure while the migration got underway.

Could it be that MS wants to make the productivity advantages of Copilot available to its largest user base? Definitely. Could they recognize that it is likely to stay in the lead position until 2027. Absolutely. Could this move lower the impetus to migrate, or does it simply acknowledge the most likely outcome in the marketplace? You tell me!

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

OneDrive Quit Flap Flopped Magnificently

November 10, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I have to laugh. In the past week-plus, a huge to-do has emerged around OneDrive. Seems that MS decided not to let users quit the program without providing a reason. That is, users had to pick from a list of options to explain why they were exercising the “Quit OneDrive” option shown in the lead-in graphic before the program would cease operations. Today, MS removed that requirement as this OneDrive Quit flap flopped magnificently with users. They didn’t buy in!

Why OneDrive Quit Flap Flopped Magnificently

Simply put, the overwhelming consensus from users varied between “WTF!” and “You can’t make me do that!!!” MS was testing this survey and got savaged by respondents. According to Sergey Tkachenko at WinAero “Following negative customer feedback, Microsoft has decided to revert the OneDrive exit confirmation.” Again: LOL!

Here’s the list of options that MS presented to users as they attempted to exit OneDrive (screen-capped from the afore-linked WinAero story, since I missed to the whole shebang):

7 Ways to Leave Your OneDrive.(Credit: WinAero)

Now the quit option has reverted to its former less vexing version, as shown here:

So Quit, Already…

Case closed, I guess. Somebody, somewhere is surely thinking: “Let’s not do THAT again for a while, OK?” And boy bowdy, is that ever the way things go in Windows-World from time to time. The last laugh is the best one, they say — so let it rip! Still chuckling…

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

WU Finally Proffers 23H2

November 9, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then. The wait is over — for the Ryzen 5800X system anywho. I just checked WU on that machine and got an offer. Now that WU finally proffers 23H2 on that system, it’s kind of an anticlimax. Took less than 3 minutes to download and install, reboot and everything.

As WU Finally Proffers 23H2, I Install It!

I’ve been deliberately waiting on this offer, to see how long it would take for WU to make it happen. Now I know: this time, it took 9 days after the original info came out for WU to come knocking at my door. One wonders, sometimes, how these things happen. I’m just glad the new release is finally arriving through “official channels.”

On my “big beast” test PCs — most notably, the P16 and P1 Gen 6 Mobile Workstation Thinkpads — I wasn’t inclined to wait. I simply grabbed the MSU file that Shawn Brink posted at ElevenForum.com, and had at it right away. I could be patient where the Asrock B550 (Ryzen 5800X, 64 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) and Dell Optiplex 7080 (11th-gen i7, 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) were concerned.

So, whatever the holdup may have been, it came off sometime in the last 24 hours (I last checked these PCs in the morning yesterday, so it could be more like 30 hours, but no more). And now, things are upgraded.

Known Issues Sez…

I’d wondered if the BitLocker or Intel Smart Sound Technology issues on the Known Issues list might have been involved. I see they’ve both been “Mitigated.” But neither has been updated since October 31. So neither is an obvious culprit for the hold on those two PCs, either.

Sigh: I may never know what slowed the offer, or what eventually made it come through. Can I live with that? Heck, yeah! That just the way things sometimes go, here in Windows-World. By now, I’m used to it…