Backup/Restore, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows OS Musings

Failing Backup Signals Regime Change

July 17, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, I think that’ll do it for my current production PC. I noticed this morning what when my scheduled backup started, it failed almost immediately thereafter. Further investigation into the Macrium Reflect logs shows me it has failed since last Friday. That’s because on the weekends I’m not usually at my desk at 9AM when the scheduled job runs. Upon further investigation, the N: drive where I target my backups had gone missing (it came back after a restart, though). Nevertheless, this tells me it’s time to start acquiring parts to build a replacement PC. That’s why I aver that a failing backup signals regime change. My 2016 vintage i7 Skylake needs to go.

Why Failing Backup Signals Regime Change

It’s just not right that a drive attached to one of the SATA ports on my Asrock Z170 motherboard should drop off the map over the weekend. And now, dear readers, you know why I schedule my backups to occur while I’m working at the PC: it’s the best way to get timely notification that “something aint’ right.” That’s what happened this morning, and that’s what tells me:

I’ll need to keep a close eye on this daily until I transition to a new PC, to make sure scheduled backups run to completion
It really, really is time for me to transition over to a new primary production PC

For sure, 7 years isn’t a bad lifetime for a heavily used, major storage PC. Indeed, I’ve got a nominal 17.1 GiB, or approximately 15GB of storage on this beast. Of that total, about 40% (6GB) is occupied, so I’ll throw a couple of new 8 GB SATA drives into my new BOM for the build, along with 2 2TB NVMe PCI-e x4 or x5 SSDs.

It’s Now Official: I’m Transitioning

I’ll wait until August 1 or thereabouts to start pulling parts together for the new build. I’ve already got an Nvidia 3070 Ti GPU and a Seasonic Focus PX-750 PSU I can use. I’ll need a new case, a CPU, 64 GB RAM, the aforementioned SSDs and HDDs, and a motherboard. That will give me something to think about — and report on here in my blog — as the month winds down.

I think I’ll call my old buddy Tom Soderstrom, who still reviews motherboards and CPUs for Tom’s Hardware, to ask for his recommendation on a new build. I need to decide on AMD vs. Intel, after which the rest will follow pretty naturally. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted.

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

Windows Terminology: Enablement Package KB (eKB)

July 14, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

In Microsoft’s Windows Client roadmap Update: July 2023 (published yesterday, July 13) I came across a new (to me, anyway) buzzword with associated acronym. As I add to my Windows terminology, enablement package KB (eKB) is now on the list.

Here’s the quote that got me looking around to learn more (I bolded those key words):

The upcoming Windows 11, version 23H2 shares the same servicing branch and code base as Windows 11, version 22H2. What does it mean for you? If you’re running Windows 11, version 22H2, it will be a simple update to version 23H2 via a small enablement package (eKB). Do you remember updating from Windows 10, version 1903 to 1909? Or how you’ve managed recent updates beginning with Windows 10, version 20H2 through 22H2? It will be that simple. Moreover, since both versions share the same source code, you don’t need to worry about application or device compatibility between the versions.

There’s also a Note of some interest as well. It reads:

Note: The eKB is not available on Volume Licensing Service Center. Media packages contain the complete Windows 11 operating system.

In fact, that last item is what really caught my attention and got me looking around, because eKB is an abbreviation/acronym I’d not seen before. My take: if MS thinks eKB is a thing, I’d like to know what kind of thing it is. Here goes…

Chasing Down Windows Terminology: Enablement Package KB (eKB)

A search on the acronym took me back to March 2022, to an answers.microsoft.com post. Entitled “What is Enablement Package KB (EKB)…?” it took me to an early instance of that terminology. It also references the KB5003791 announcement, which talks about enablement packages in general (though it doesn’t use the eKB term itself).

In the simplest of terms, it means that we’ll transition from 22H2 versions of Windows 11 to 23H2 versions through a small and simple Cumulative Update (CU), rather than a lengthy Windows install-based upgrade. A long story, for a short conclusion.

And if you look at the big quote above, the part that starts “Do you remember updating…?” provides some recent, notable examples of an eKB even if it doesn’t tie it directly to that term.

Now I know what an eKB is. And, if you’ve read this through, so do you. Cheers!

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Canary Build 25905 Gains Upgrade Repair Install

July 13, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I guess it’s been a long time coming, because MS has waltzed around this topic for two years or more. The latest top-level Insider Preview now includes the option shown in the lead-in graphic. That’s right: Canary Build 25905 gains upgrade repair install capability via WU, built-in. This may make it unnecessary to visit UUPDump to generate ISOs which may then be mounted for such use.

What Canary Build 25905 Gains Upgrade Repair Install Means

Visit Start → Settings → System → Recovery, then look for the item labeled “Fix problems using Windows Update” (as shown in the lead-in graphic). This takes you through a number of screens en route, as shown here:

First you must grant permission for the repair to start

After you click OK (irrespective of whether or not you allow a timed reboot), you’ll move into Windows Update where you’ll see a display like this one:

Windows downloads and installs a repair version of your OS, before moving into the post-GUI phase.

This can take a while: on my 2018 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga, it took an astonishingly long 45 minutes to download and install to the first reboot. I was able to keep working until then, but after that, the installer took the desktop away for about another 10 minutes. When it’s time to reboot to continue the repair install you’ll see something like this:

Once the GUI installer gets done, you will restart to complete repairs.

After the restart warning, it takes another 3 minutes to get to the actual reboot. Then the real post-GUI work begins. All in all it took 55 minutes to get to a desktop as the repair install completed: 45 minutes for download and initial install; 10 more minutes for reboot and post-GUI install.

Trade-offs, Trade-offs

Here’s the deal: it takes about 12 minutes on the same PC to use a mounted ISO to get through the same process. But that means building a current ISO from UUPDump which takes about 25 minutes to complete. Thus it’s a matter of more personal effort to do it manually via UUPDump (37 minutes) for a little less time versus the ease and convenience of letting WU handle it for (but taking 55 minutes to complete). Interesting!

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

Ongoing Build 22631.1972 Oddities

July 12, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Hmmmm. Yesterday was “Update Tuesday.” As I made the update rounds on my small PC fleet, I noticed something odd as I was downloading updates for my Beta Channel test PC (a Lenovo X380 Yoga). It’s depicted in the lead-in graphic, and led to further, ongoing Build 22531.1972 oddities when all was said and done. Please, let me explain…

Working Through Ongoing Build 22631.1972 Oddities

First, take a look at the lead-in graphic. Hint: consternation hits at the bottom of the update list. Note the same update occurs twice, each with “Completed” status — namely KB5007651 (a Defender antimalware platform update). Weird!

Immediately after, it gets weirder. First, I rebooted once the updates completed (twice, just to be on the safe side). Then I ran DISM … /StartComponentCleanup. I observed the following outcome:

Error 6824 “another …pending transaction” pops up. A first!
[Click image for full-sized view: this one’s hard to read.]

As usual, I went haring off to Google to see what was recommended. Heck, I even tried it out on Bing’s ChatGPT sidebar. Here’s what came back:

Alas, a second (and even a third) reboot didn’t clear the error, either. The same condition held upon repeated retries of the afore-cited DISM command — namely:

dism /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup

I’m thinking it’s time to try an in-place upgrade to repair this Windows installation. It should rebuild the component store which is likely to fix this issue and the strange ongoing presence of 13 spurious items therein in need of (impossible cleanup). I think I’ll visit UUPDump and build an image for 22631.1972. Hopefully, that will do the trick. Stay tuned!

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

Android Subsystem Gets Easy-Peasey

July 11, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

In reading over yesterday’s news, I found Paul Thurrott’s story on GA for the Amazon Appstore on Windows 11. Being both curious and adventurous, I went ahead and installed same on one of my Lenovo test PCs (a beast: the P16 Gen1 Workstation with i9-12950HX, 128 GB RAM, 1.5 TB NVMe SSDs). There’s a little more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye, but things are arranged now so that for Windows 11 Android Subsystem gets easy-peasey. Let me explain…

What Android Subsystem Gets Easy-Peasey Means

Amazon has built its Amazon Appstore as a Windows Store download. If you grab and install it, and the Windows Subsystem for Android is absent on the target PC, the installer first makes sure this underlying environment is up and running. Then it installs itself. The whole process took about 3 minutes on the admittedly over-powered P16 Workstation. But it required no extra effort on my part to get the Amazon Appstore installed and running.

Just for grins, I downloaded and installed Wordle from the Appstore to make sure things were working. It’s been a while since I ran the Android version. I’d forgotten how obnoxious and ad-laden the free version of that app really is. Suffice it to say: NOW I remember!

Android apps run in their own self-contained windows on the desktop, inside the WSA (Windows Subsytems for Android) container process as shown in Task Manager at top.

Overall, Amazon has done an excellent job of making the install-to-download-to-desktop process simple, fast and easy. Feel free to give it a try on Windows 11. As far as I can tell it runs on all current versions, production and Insider Preview releases alike. Good stuff!

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, Uncategorized, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Gadget Fixes Notification Issue

July 10, 2023 Ed Tittel 1 Comment

I have to laugh. Sunday morning, I was at my desk before 8 AM having made it back from my daily walk kinda early. I forgot that I’d turned on the external speakers (I usually use headphones). No sooner did I get to my desktop than my speakers started chiming as a flood of notifications bonged in — pretty loudly, too. And because those notifications appear on top of the notification area of the taskbar, I couldn’t get to the volume control to turn the volume down. This caused some mild panic, because I didn’t want to wake up other family members still asleep Ultimately, I used the Sound item in Control Panel to reduce the volume. But a gadget fixes notification issue one and for all, after I get past that initial flurry.

The Levels pane in the Sound item for the default output lets me turn things down…”

How a Gadget Fixes Notification Issue

Gadgets appear elsewhere on the desktop, so they aren’t rendered inaccessible when a flood of notifications appears. I can go to the Volume Control gadget shown as the lead-in graphic above any time, and click on the sound level I want to raise or lower volume levels.

The name of the gadget depicted is “Volume Control.” It appears on Page 3 in the 8GadgetPack collection (lower right; details at bottom).

Volume Control 1.2 makes it easy to raise or lower volume without accessing the notification tray Volume Control.

This may not seem like a big thing, but when you’re trying to let sleeping … err … family members …err lie, it’s kind of a lifesaver. ‘Nuff said!

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

PowerToys Team Closes WinGet Gap

July 7, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Now THAT’s what I like to see. Yesterday morning, I noticed a new version of PowerToys (v0.71.0) was out. So quite naturally, I ran WinGet to upgrade same. No dice. At 11:45 AM (Central) I tweeted about this. I observed it was “kind of surprising to see a new PowerToys release…without a matching WinGet upgrade manifest.” 8 minutes later, the team leader responded “we’re working on it.” And by that afternoon, the PowerToys team closes WinGet gap. There’s a working manifest for version 71 in place. Neat-o, and thanks, people!

PowerToys Team Closes WinGet Gap Quickly

It’s a real testment to the energy and drive of the teams involved that things were already in progress as I reported in. (In fact, I heard from the WinGet team lead, too.) This morning I installed PowerToys on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme (8th-gen i9, 32 GB RAM, 1.5 TB SSD) and got the latest version. That sequence appears as the lead-in graphic above.

If you look at that graphic, you’ll see that WinGet found only a Zoom upgrade. Oops! That’s because PowerToys wasn’t installed on this PC — yet. But when I did install the .exe version (Microsoft. Powertoys) 0.71.0 (shown as v0.71.0 in the thumbnail at lower right) appears. That’s exactly what should have happened,. It also shows the WinGet manifest for that version of PowerToys is present and working properly.

Always Nice When Things Work Out…

I must say that both the WinGet and PowerToys teams have always been great to work with. They respond to input, questions, and feedback quickly. And when they have to act, they tend to do so sooner than later. Thus, my thanks to Demetrius Nelon (WinGet team lead) and his merry munchkins, as well as Clint Rutkas (PowerToys team lead) and his peppy people, too. Please: keep up the good work.

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Sussing Out WinTerm Color Schemes

July 6, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

In my writing and research work for TekkiGurus, I’m pursuing a GitHub project that works within the Windows Terminal environment. It’s called ColorTool. Simply put, ColorTool shows the colors used in the console window; it also lets you tweak them. Its color charts are kind of interesting and I’ve trying to figure them out. MS has a tendency to show them inside an Ubuntu command session inside Windows Terminal. I show them as they pop up in PowerShell in the lead-in graphic. As I’m learning how this all works, I’m sussing out WinTerm color schemes, too.

Bing Chatbot Helps When Sussing Out WinTerm Color Schemes

I’ve been reading a lot, and asking around to try to learn how to decode the values that show up in the display form of a Windows Terminal color scheme. So far, it’s proved rather more challenging than I had expected. So far, I’ve been attacking output strings to tease out their meanings. This is what I’ve learned so far, mostly thanks to the Bing Chatbot in Windows 11 Canary (Build 25393):

The string “gYw” that appears in the columns of rows 2-10) stands for gray, yellow and white. It uses prevailing foreground color, whatever that may be.
The values 30m through 37m that appear as row heads (first column left) are ANSI escape codes for foreground colors
The values 40m through 47m that appear as column heads (second column through 9th column left) are ANSI escape codes for background colors.
Looking at the color chart, the text strings “gYw” show the foreground color, while the solid bar for each column shows the background color.

In profound contrast, Ubuntu puts foreground colors as columns, and background colors as rows. I also shows escape sequences instead of color names. Initially, this bamboozled me. But now I see what’s going on…

Notice that background appears as double rows with escape codes at left in column 1, and foreground colors appear as the text for escape codes in rows 2-9).

Wow, it’s all starting to make a certain amount of sense. And I mostly have the Bing Chatbot to thank for explaining such extremely low-level details. Apparently, those who work with terminal/console color charts know all this stuff already.

Now, I finally understand that a color scheme assigns a range of color values to the 8 ANSI escape codes for the foreground colors 30m through 37m (which may also be expressed as ESC[30m …). It does the same for the 8 ANSI escape codes for the background colors, too (40m through 47m, likewise ESC[30m).

OK, Now I Know What’s What

Suddenly, I feel armed with the information I need to make sense of the Windows Terminal color schemes and their related color charts. This should make my jobs of explaining them, and their customization, a WHOLE LOT easier. I’m jazzed…

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

Understanding Windows Validation OS

July 5, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s something new to me that’s apparently been a thing for some time now. It’s called a “Validation OS” and includes an image file named ValidationOS.wim. When I tell you it’s a mere 193 MB in size and represents a (mostly) read-to-run image for Windows 11 22H2, that should raise your eyebrows. By comparison the 22H2 Download from the Download Windows 11 page weighs in at 5.4GB! One key point in understanding Windows validation OS is that it’s minimalist and limited by design. That’s why I show adjacent file listings from the Explorer Download folder as the lead-in graphic here.

Overview: Understanding Windows Validation OS

Here’s how MS describes this Windows 11 OS version and its purpose (from MS Learn’s Microsoft Validation OS documentation; bold emphasis mine):

Microsoft Validation OS is a lightweight, fast, and customizable Windows 11-based operating system that you can use on the factory floor to diagnose, mitigate and repair hardware defects during Windows device manufacturing. Validation OS boots into a Command Line environment to increase reliability on the factory floor and supports running Win32 apps, smoothing the transition from early hardware bring-up to retail OS and apps development.

The Validation OS offers only a command line interface as delivered. But by using DISM to operate on the .wim file you can add whatever packages you like to this bare-bone OS image. The list of optional packages available for use with this image includes (paraphrased from the afore-linked) Validation OS reference at MS Learn:

PowerShell: provides PS and basic modules/cmdlets
Basic connectivity (HID, USB and Serial device connections)
Disk tools (built-in Windows disk tools, including diskpart.exe)
GDI Plus: add graphics capability through GDI Plus support
.NET Framework 4.5: permits use of basic .NET features
Plug and Play: provides support for plug-and-play devices
Windows Device Portal: lets OS access WDP server for driver downloads
Other drivers: by class, includes memory, core system extensions, network drivers, and more

What the Validation OS Good For?

It is intended for developers and OEMs to provide a quick-to-boot-and-run, lightweight version of Windows 11 they can use to test specific hardware configurations. Developers can use it to simplify and speed up driver creation and maintenance.

But gosh, a lightweight version of Windows 11 is also handy for rescue and recovery purposes, too. Those who know how to use DISM will be able to use its add-package capabilities to extend and customize this Windows image (it will also be necessary to take this approach for updates as well).

This one’s definitely worth exploring and possibly putting to work, for admins who test configurations and updates prior to deployment, and for anyone in search of a good starting point for a customized, bootable repair/recovery environment.

Note: here’s a shout-out to Sergey Tkachenko at WinAero, whose July 4 story “Microsoft’s Validation OS Again Received and Update (Quietly)” clued me into this version of Windows 11. Thanks!

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

Testing Bing Chat AI Text Generation

July 3, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Hmmm. This has been interesting… I’ve been using the Bing Chat tool in the Canary Channel version of Windows 11 lately. I just asked it to shed some light on a Windows Console (aka Windows Terminal) tool that I’ve been working with lately. Let me provide the query I used while testing Bing Chat AI text generation:

“Give me 400 words about the Winodws Console colortool”

I’ll provide the results as a blockquote under the next heading. Then I’ll explain what’s good about it and where — IMO at least — it falls a little short.

Results from Testing Bing Chat AI Text Generation

Notice that the chatbot correctly interprets my mistyping of Windows as “Winodws” in the input, and gives me the answer I wanted. Good stuff! Here’s what it told me:

The Windows Console Colortool is a utility that helps set the color palette of the Windows Console. It can be used to apply the new default color scheme and several alternate pre-defined color schemes or even schemes of your own ¹. The tool is open source and hosted on GitHub ².

To use the Colortool, open up Command prompt and run: colortool [scheme name in schemes/ e.g: campbell]. Right-click on the window title to access the ‘Properties’ dialogue box. Once the properties dialogue box opens press OK (which saves the color change)¹.

Notice it provides highlighted, hyperlinked text to additional references (which show up in the lead-in graphic as footnotes 1 and 2). It’s essentially a rewrite of descriptive information from the colortool’s github page. Curiously, that does not show up as the primary reference here (it’s number 2, though). Concerns about the accuracy of the material I’ve seen voiced in other analyses are apparently NOT an issue when you ask the chatbot to keep the text short. Everything it says it 100% accurate and verifiable.

OK Then, What’s Missing?

The text does not explain that the ZIP file for the colortool must be downloaded and unpacked into a folder that’s either included in the $PATH environment variable, or made the focus of the Command Prompt (or PowerShell) session in which the tool gets invoked. It just assumes all those details have been handled and jumps straight into the syntax and behavior of the tool itself.

That’s all well and good, but makes a telling demonstration of why AI chatbots can help, but not necessarily take over, for knowledgeable human actors with a more nuanced understanding of the context in which they’re operating. At least not yet, anyway…

It’s extremely interesting stuff, and is definitely going to help me with my job of explaining things to readers in the future. If you’re running the Canary Build (25393) for Windows 11, click the Bing symbol at the upper right of the default Edge window to dig in and try it for yourself. Great fun!