Every now and then, I step back from the day-to-day Windows routine. I like to reflect on what I’ve seen and done. Looking at my Update History, I see 30 problem-free upgrades since July 2022. It’s end-of-April, so that means 30 updates in 9 months (3.33 updates per month). And nary a lick of trouble with any of them either in the Dev or Canary channels. Remarkable!

What 30 Problem-Free Upgrades Since July 2022 Means

This is on the 2018 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga. It’s an 8th-gen Intel i7-8650 CPU, 16 GB DDR4, 1 TB (nominal) Toshiba SSD. On my newer X12 Hybrid ThinkPad (11th-Gen i7-1180G7, 16 GB DDR4, 1TB (nominal) WD SSD), I had to clean install Canary after my initial attempts to upgrade from Dev Channel to Canary failed. That was a pain!

But the X380 Yoga keeps chugging along. It’s a little slower than the X12 hybrid — as you’d expect, given the age difference (2018 vs 2020) — but it’s proved rock-solid and completely reliable. My son has an X390 Yoga (2017 model,  i7-8665U CPU, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) that’s been equally reliable as his carry-around, note-taking machine for use in class.

ThinkPad, ThinkPad, All the Way…

Looking around the house right now, I have 6 laptops here (plus the one in Boston with son, Gregory). 5 of 7 are ThinkPads, one’s a Lenovo Legion, and the last (and soon-to-be-retired) is a 2014 vintage Surface Pro 3. I have come to be a big believer in ThinkPads because:

1. I like the keyboards
2. The maker provides easy access to technical manuals for DIY upgrades
3. These laptops have handled everything I’ve thrown at them and just keep working
4. Shopping around delivers amazing buys (I paid under $1K each for the two X380 and one X390 Yoga I currently own; ditto for my former X220 Tablet and T25 Notebook machines, now retired).

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you certainly can judge a notebook/laptop brand on a decade-plus of mostly stellar experiences. I’m completely sold on the ThinkPad brand.

Personal Note…

I’ve been quiet since April 28 for good reason. We flew to Boston on May 1 to pick son Gregory up after his first year at college (move-out day was May 4). Then we spent the next 4 days in NYC on a family adventure that included more walking than I thought I could handle. It was great! We’re all glad to be back at home, and I’m glad to be resuming a normal work schedule tomorrow. I wrote this blog post just before I left to have something to post immediately upon my return home. Let the games resume!!!

Windows 11 is a little trickier to install with a local account and no working Internet link than was Windows 10. That said, there’s a “trick” you can use to take a Windows 11 Install network bypass. It relies on a specific command file in the %windir%\System32\oobe folder named BypassNRO.cmd. See the lead-in graphic for this small but weighty 1KB file.

Warning! Do NOT open this file to “see what happens…” Let me tell you instead and skip it for yourself: it reboots your PC (as it would during install to change modes). To open the file, visit it in Explorer, right-click with left Shift key depressed, and choose “Copy as path” from the pop-up menu. Then paste that path specification into Notepad, Notepad++, or your favorite text editor. It’s a three-liner that turns off input echo, adds a registry key (to bypass the network requirement), and then restarts the PC instantly.

How-to: Taking the Windows 11 Install Network Bypass

Start the install process with the Internet disconnected (this is key). When the Windows 11 installer tells you “Oops, you’ve lost Internet connection” don’t press the Retry button. Click Shift+F10 to open a command prompt instead. Type OOBE\BYPASSNRO, then hit enter (no spaces, because it’s a file specification — the installer runs in %windir%\system 32).

The PC will restart, and you’ll see a different screen that reads  “Let’s connect…” (see below). Notice the link at lower right that says “I don’t have internet.” Click that.

At that point, you’ll be prompted to create a local account for login post-install. The OOBE process will complete without having to use an MSA (Microsoft Account, with associated e-mail address) during the process. This can be helpful for all kinds of reasons (including easier scripting for automated installs).

Credit Is As Credit Is Given

I have to thank user SproutTheRobot at MS Answers for providing the screenshots and instructions for using oobe\bypassnro. I’d also like to thank the users at ElevenForum.com in the thread What is “oobe\bypassnro”? for their illuminating discussion of this process. It’s what led me to the MS Answers item cited here. Thanks, people!

Saw an interesting story at gHacks last week. Entitled “Where are the desktop wallpapers?” it provided a link to the Windows folder where one can find Windows 11 wallpapers. That was interesting, but it also led me to search through its various folders and files. Here, I’ve gone a bit further, so you’ll find all the Windows 11 wallpapers listed and described — and their folder hierarchy.

The lead-in graphic shows the complete folder hierarchy for all of Windows 11’s default wallpaper files. For ease of understanding, I list that as a primitive “text hierarchy” below:

C:\Windows
--Web
----\4K\Wallpaper\Windows (2)
----\Screen (6)
----\touchkeyboard (8)
----\Wallpaper
------\CapturedMotion (4)
------\Extended (0)
------\Flow (4)
------\Glow (4)
------\Lenovo (1)
------\Spotlight (2)
------\Sunrise (4)
------\Windows (2)

There are a total of 37 files inside 11 folders with actual content. I’ll list things out in more detail in the next section. The default Windows wallpapers appear in the folder named C:\Windows\Web\4K\Wallpaper\Windows just for the record. I’m not sure what the others are for, but you can use them if you like.

Windows 11 Wallpapers Listed and Described

I’ll provide the full path to each populated folder, then follow with a short description of the files in each one. Folders appear  as next-level heads below.

C:\Windows\Web\4K\Wallpaper\Windows

Again, this is the default that Windows 11 uses for wallpaper images, of which there are two. Files included:

img0_1920x1200.jpg: 2K bloom (light background)
img19_1920x1200.jpg: 2K bloom (dark background)

C:\Windows\Web\Screen

This includes 6 files, of which four are bloom variants, and two others different. Here’s the list:

img100.jpg: 3840x2160 bloom detail (dark blue)
img101.jpg: 3840x2400 lunar eclipse (blue/light edge)
img102.jpg: 6400x4000 sunrise/set over lake
img103.jpg: 3839x2400 multi-color bloom
img104.jpg: 3840x2400 grey-to off-white bloom
img105.jpg: 1920x1200 medium blue solid color

C:\Windows\Web\touchkeyboard

This includes 8 files, 4 each in both light and dark themes. It includes a mix of image including folded surfaces, foreground/background surface, light and dark curves.  Because the filenames (in bold) are long, I used a smaller font for compactness. Here’s the list:

TouchKeyboardThemeDark000.jpg: 2736x1539 folded surface against shaded blue
TouchKeyboardThemeDark001.jpg: 2736x1539 folded surfaces against shaded orange to blue
TouchKeyboardThemeDark002.jpg: 2736x1539 foreground surface orange to dark, similar background
TouchKeyboardThemeDark003.jpg: 2736x1539 red light & dark curves against blue to pink sky
TouchKeyboardThemeLight000.jpg: 2736x1539 dark000 with light bkgrnd
TouchKeyboardThemeLight001.jpg: 2736x1539 dark001 in light colors
TouchKeyboardThemeLight002.jpg: 2736x1539 dark002 in light colors
TouchKeyboardThemeLight003.jpg: 2736x1539 dark003 in lighter shades

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Captured Motion

There are 4 files taken as freeze frames from some kind of computer-generated animation. Here’s that list:

img24.jpg: 3840x2401 surfaces in red, transparent, yellow...
img25.jpg: 3840x2400 ribbons in red to pink
img26.jpg: 3841x2400 laminated surfaces in orange, red, etc.
img27.jpg: 3840x2400 oil droplets in reds, purples, etc.

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Flow

Different versions of the same kind of bloom image used for the Windows 11 default wallpaper, four files. These are:

img32.jpg: 3841x2400 bloom image in light-blue to gray hues
img33.jpg: 3841x2400 different bloom image greenish hues
img34.jpg: 3840x2400 another bloom image in pinkish hues
img35.jpg: 3840x2400 another bloom image in img32 palette

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Glow

Different, cropped (or closer-in) versions of the lunar eclipse img101 mentioned earlier, four total, to wit:

img20.jpg: 3840x2400 close-up in purples
img21.jpg: 3840x2400 close-up in purples and blues
img22.jpg: 3840x2400 close-up in oranges and reds
img23.jpg: 3840x2400 close-up in blues and greens

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Lenovo

I’ve actually got this image as wallpaper on a couple of Lenovo PCs, so Lenovo uses it for sure. There’s just the one image in this folder:

ThinkStation_wallpaper_2560x1440.png: logo on beach

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Spotlight

Another bloom image and photo composition, with unique filenames, two in total:

img14.jpg: 3840x2400 classic blue bloom image
img50.jpg: 560x350 composite photo triptych

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Sunrise

Reworked versions of the sunrise scene from img102 listed earlier. Each one of the four images here is slightly different:

img28.jpg: 3840x2400 sun on horizon
img29.jpg: 3840x2400 different shoreline, clouds
img30.jpg: 3840x2400 different sun render
img31.jpg: 3840x2400 different shoreline, sun render

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows

Both files here are the same as those in the default wallpaper directory up top. Filenames are shorter (but reference the same image numbers). They are:

img0.jpg: 3840x2400 classic bloom (light background)
img19.jpg: 3840x2400 classic bloom (dark background)

And that’s it for the Windows 11 wallpapers. You can use this as an inventory to show you what’s there, or as a roadmap to go find things for yourself. Cheers!

After recent updates to Office on Windows 10 and 11, AI support shows up in Task Manager. It’s in a process named “ai.exe” of which you can see four instances in the lead-in graphic. That comes from my Windows 10 production desktop, but you can also see this running in Windows 11 versions as well.

That said, this facility comes from Office, not OS, upgrades. That means it won’t show up on PCs that aren’t running Office 365 or newer standalone versions. Nevertheless, I find it interesting that MS is moving AI into its own processing environment away from the executables for individual office components (e.g. Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Teams and so forth). In fact, I’m guessing that the reason I see four instances in Task Manager reflect recent use of all four of those components recently on this very PC.

What AI Support Shows Up in Task Manager Says…

It tells me that MS is really getting serious about supporting AI throughout its application stack. I have to presume that support in the OS itself won’t be too far behind. Yesterday’s announcement that new Surface devices will support Neural Processing Units (NPUs) to speed AI workloads therefore comes as additional confirmation. To me,  this represents a shift in the kinds of things that OSes and apps can do, and handle, as part of normal operations. AI is here, and it’s not going away.

Read more about what’s going on here in this Windows Latest story dated April 10. It’s got much more detail about the processes, folders, and executables that have recently popped up in Windows 10 and 11. Personally, I find it fascinating, and hope to see tangible impacts in my work with Office apps soon. So far, after a six-day stretch during which I’ve worked in Word all day long (8 hrs +) I haven’t really noticed anything… But here’s hopin’, right?

I’m flummoxed. I just upgraded PowerShell from version 7.3.3.0 to 7.3.4.0. It’s the latest stable version, as you can plainly see at GitHub. But even after updating, that preceding version still shows up using winget list powershell. An explicit uninstall request reports “No installed package found matching input criteria.” Hmm; WTF? I can only call this a PowerShell update oddity version confusion problem!

If you look at the left-hand tab in the lead-in graphic, you’ll see two versions of Powershell, one numbered 7.3.3.0 and the other 7.3.4.0. But when I try to uninstall the older one, winget can’t find it. And indeed when I try to open it in the right-hand tab, it comes up at the current (latest) version. I’ve seen something like this before, so I start thinking about causes and workarounds. Read on to see how I resolved this one…

Resolving PowerShell Update Oddity Version Confusion

I’m of the school that says if you can’t do it one way in Windows, you can almost always find another. If I poke around in my file system searching on “pwsh.exe” (the name of the powershell executable file), I see an app-based instance of the 7.3.3.0 version in ProgramFiles\WindowsApps. And sure enough, inside Settings → Apps, I find three (count ’em) versions of PowerShell. Here’s a snap:
AFAIK, I only need the middle one, so I right-click to uninstall the other two. When I’m done, I check Windows Terminal, and it tells me I need to reset my default profile. I do, and choose version 7.3.4.0. When I open a new Terminal window and run winget list powershell again, it shows only a single (and correct) version. Problem solved!

Now, all I have to do is figure out why the winget uninstall didn’t work, but a manual uninstall inside the Apps widget in Settings did the trick. I’m gonna have to think about that for a while… Stay tuned!