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

RTFM Stymies New PC Build

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I have to laugh at myself. I’ve been trying to assemble a Ryzen 7 PC build here at Chez Tittel. But I’ve been unable to get to the UEFI on the PC. Turns out it’s for a very, very good reason. Today’s post bears the title “RTFM Stymies New PC Build” to recognize a certain lack. Let me explain…

If RTFM Stymies New PC Build . . . Order Parts!

My chosen CPU is a Ryzen 5800X. It’s a gaming CPU. As such, it includes no inbuilt GPU capability. Instead, it assumes builders will pair it up with one or more presumably high-end graphics cards.

Sigh. Guess what’s missing from my Bill of Materials? Indeed, no GPU. So, I finally broke down and ordered an Nvidia 3070 Ti from Amazon for a whopping US$1,200 or thereabouts. I’ll actually install that in my son’s PC — he’s the gamer in the family — and take his old 1070 Ti into the new build instead.

About that RTFM Thing

I just sort of assumed that because my Asrock B550 Extreme4 motherboard had graphics outputs, I’d be able to make the build work sans external GPU. But for that to happen, the CPU must include GPU circuitry. The 5800X does not, so no wonder the BIOS wouldn’t post: it had no display to talk to.

You might be amazed to learn it took me hours to figure this out. Then again, you might not… But whatever that reaction might be, the fix is in the mail so to speak. I’ll get the card next Tuesday, and try again. I predict a successful Windows 11 install. I’ll be interested to see how the Ryzen CPU does with the latest flagship OS. I’m still hearing occasional rumblings of performance and other issues for AMD PCs in this realm. Soon, I hope to find out first hand. Stay tuned.

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AdwCleaner Roots Out PUAs

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For months now, I’ve been seeing traces of a low-risk “potentially unwanted app”  (PUA) on one of my Dev Channel test PCs. You can see the Windows Security log trace entry for this item above. It’s named FusionCore.C and it shows up as low-risk adware. This morning I ran Malwarebytes’ AdwCleaner (v 8.3.1) to see if it would make it go away. It did, so I can report that AdwCleaner roots out PUAs. It’s free and doesn’t install so it inflicts no system footprint, either.

Because AdwCleaner Roots Out PUAs, Use It!

Now that Microsoft Defender has shown itself to be a great first-line of security defense for Windows PCs, I don’t recommend third-party AV or other real-time protection tools anymore. That said, cleanup tools like AdwCleaner can be helpful. That goes double, because while Defender flags FusionCore.C and other adware instances, it doesn’t offer its own clean-up capability (or even remediation advice).

When you run the AdwCleaner executable (adwcleaner_8.3.1.exe), it finds the two offending PUA elements right away. These consist of a .tmp file and and .exe file. Both have FusionCore.C in their file names. If you check those items under the PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) heading, you can flag them for quarantine and removal. The following screencap shows the two items checked for potential quarantine.

AdwCleaner Roots Out PUAs.checked

All you need to do to flag items is to check the box to the left for each one you’d like to quarantine or remove.

Then, simply click Next to get to the quarantine Window. On this PC a bunch of pre-installed Lenovo items also appear (I don’t care about those: I actually USE most of them). I check none of those items, which are hidden behind the fore-window that says “Cancel” and “Continue.” I choose “Continue” and the items get quarantined. I run another Defender scan and sure enough, the PUAs no longer get reported. A visual inspection of the source folder (shown in the lead-in graphic) shows the items are no longer present there as well. Good-oh!

AdwCleaner Roots Out PUAs.quarantine

Click “Continue” and the checked PUA items go into quarantine, and off Defender’s scan radar. Done!

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Insider stuff, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11, Windows OS Musings

Windows 11 Watermark Warns Against Unsupported Hardware

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OK, then. With the advent of Build 22557 (Dev Channel), MS is  testing a new watermark. It shows up on some PCs running Windows 11 that don’t meet hardware requirements. This Windows 11 watermark warns against unsupported hardware. It’s shown in the lead-in graphic above. The image source (shown at 200%  native resolution) comes from a story at WindowsLatest.

What If Windows 11 Watermark Warns Against Unsupported Hardware?

Rumors have been flying for weeks that MS planned an on-screen “nag” for non-compliant PCs. MS has been straight-up all along. Install and run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, and you may be ineligible for future updates. MS won’t support PCs running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, either.

Even so, lots of people are doing it anyway. Consider the number of threads and posts on this topic at ElevenForums.com. For example, there’s the “Let’s install Windows 11 on a incompatible hardware” thread. It’s up to 35 pages/697 posts as I write this ditty.

Clearly, certain intrepid do-it-yourselfers don’t care about Microsoft’s warnings. Personally, I think it’s a bad bet. The reason I had to turn to WindowsLatest for a screencap of the watermark is because I’m not running Windows 11 on incompatible hardware here at Chez Tittel .

The old saying goes: “You pays your money and you takes your chances.” But this is one chance I won’t take. I have other things that need doing…

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

Fixing MIA Advanced Startup Takes Time

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Last Thursday (2/17), I wrote about how “Advanced Startup” had gone missing on all my upgraded Windows 11 PCs (5 of them). Though the repair was simple and straightforward, fixing MIA Advanced Startup takes time — lots of it, in fact. Though I was able to grab the latest production ISO with ease, I had to use UUP Dump to build ISOs for the Dev and Beta channel versions of Windows 11. All by itself, that took about an hour (or a bit more). Then came a series of repeated in-place repair upgrades to set things right.

Fixing MIA Advanced Startup Takes Time (and Plenty of It)

My maneuvers could have gone better, too. I had no trouble grabbing the latest files for the Dev Channel ISO. But I misidentified my target for Beta Channel, and ended up having to go through the ISO construction process twice for that Windows 11 version. Sigh.

And while the in-place upgrade repair install itself seldom takes more than 15-20 minutes to complete on any given PC, getting to that point takes longer than that. My average “build time” for the ISO ran about 30 minutes (so doing one over put a big ding in my afternoon).

All’s Well, and Ends Well Nonetheless…

Right now the final repair install is running on my Beta Channel X380 Yoga. I’ve gotten all three of the other machines installed and cleaned up now. I’ll do likewise for my straggler as soon as the install completes, and I get past the OOB (out of box) experience.

It’s interesting that this repair leaves a Windows.old behind, just like any other typical Windows install. I find myself turning to TheBookIsClosed’s excellent “Managed Disk Cleanup” to help sweep away the leftovers after the party’s over. Next, I’ll run Macrium Reflect on each of these PCs to catch a pristine image for possible future restoration. I pray I don’t need it, but better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!

Houston, We Still Have a Problem…

Turns out that the repair install on the Beta version did NOT fix the MIA Advanced Startup. For some reason, this X380 Yoga still does not show the Advanced Startup option along with “Reset the PC” and “Go back.” I’m filing this one with Feedback Hub, and glad to report further that the Shift+Restart key works, as does the shutdown command, to bring up the WinRE environment after a reboot.

The mystery continues…much to my ongoing interest and delight. It’s rare that an in-place repair upgrade fails to fix this kind of thing, but here’s a case in point for me to noodle at further. Love it!

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BackgroundTaskHost Feedback Hub Response Received

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Woo hoo! I saw a notification from Feedback Hub when I logged into my X1 Carbon this morning. Indeed: “BackgroundTaskHost Feedback Hub Response Received” hardly does justice to my sense of vindication and delight. AFAIK, this is the first time one of my FB Hub posts has engendered a reply. And if you look at the text in the lead-in graphic you’ll see they plan to fix it “in a future build.” (Note: you may have to open the graphic by double-clicking to read the text because of how WordPress handles such images.)

Party Time: BackgroundTaskHost Feedback Hub Response Received

I’ve reported a sizable number of FB Hub items, but this is the first time I’ve seen such a response. It’s nice to know the mechanism is doing its job. MS developers and engineers need input on what’s working and what’s not, for sure. But it’s even nicer to get a response back, and to understand that doing one’s bit can actuallly result in changes. Hopefully, improvements even.

All I can say is: I’m jazzed. This is a great way to get my Friday off to a good start. Considering what I need to accomplish today, this may be just the lift-off I need to help me along the way. Not to mention a forthcoming second cup of coffee, too!

Added to a Collection, It Was…

The feedback item I submitted has been added to a collection of similar items. It’s entitled “Getting an Application Error dialog pop up in recent Dev Channel builds due to backgroundtaskhost.exe.” Funny thing in my case is that I never saw the pop-up: all I saw was copious errors in Reliability Monitor, as described in this January 24 post. But hey: I’ll take my responses and their notoriety where I can get ’em. Cheers!

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Solving Advanced Startup Windows 11 Mystery

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Here’s one to ponder. On all of the PCs I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11, a Settings option is missing. I’m talking about Start → Settings → System → Recovery  →Advanced Startup. As you can see in the lead-in graphic above, it does not show up under Recovery options. That’s what has me solving Advanced Startup Windows 11 mystery. All this said, here’s what shows up on my only “native Windows 11” PC — the Lenovo Yoga 7i — which I received last October with Windows 11 pre-installed.

Look! On the Yoga7i the option appears (it’s missing in the lead-in graphic above). Go figure…

Solving Advanced Startup Windows 11 Mystery Means…?

As I started poking around, looking for fixes, I quickly realized this missing menu item is on nobody’s radar. When I asked Shawn Brink (the chief moderator and tutorial magnate at ElevenForum.com) he advised an in-place upgrade repair install to see if it would fix the problem. Other than that, I found no insight or wisdom online to lead toward a cure.

However, I did discover a bunch of workarounds, all of which still work:

  • Anyplace you can get to the Restart option in Windows 11 (the various Power menus available from Start, the lock screen and so forth), if you hold down the Shift key while clicking or touching Restart, it will call up the Windows Recovery boot screen
  • You can run a special version of the shutdown command in PowerShell, at the command line, or in Windows Terminal:
    shutdown /r /o /f /t 00

This has the same net effect as using Advanced Startup in the Settings/System/Recovery menu anyway. So even if the in-place update repair fails, I can still get where I need to be on the systems where the menu option is MIA. That repair is 90% complete right now on my X1 Carbon, so I’ll be able to report on results fairly soon.

And the verdict is…SUCCESS!

Needless to say, I awaited the results of the restart and further updates with more than usual interest. It took about 10 minutes to complete the GUI-based portion of the repair, and another 5 minutes to get back to the desktop, and another 3 minutes for the out-of-box (OOB) experience to complete. And when I did, my first move was to visit Settings → System → Recovery.

Bingo! There’s the missing menu item, complete with the “Restart now” button. Thanks a bunch, Brink. I’ve long known that the in-place repair install fixes many Windows ills. Now I know for sure that it fixes another Windows 11-specific malady. The mystery of the missing Advanced Startup menu item is now also solved.

 

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Build 22543 Brings New Battery Info

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I updated my Dev Channel PCs to the latest build recently. And, as reported at WindowsLatest, the Settings app gets a few interesting new wrinkles. Chief among these changes, Build 22543 brings new Battery info into System → Power & battery → Battery. You can see for yourself what it looks like in the lead-in graphic.

The most obvious feature is a time series chart of battery levels. Mine’s a boring 100% across the board, because this test PC stays plugged in via a Thunderbolt/USB-C dock that delivers 85W of charging power. BTW, the dock also delivers multiple USB-C and USB 3.2 ports, GbE, dual HDMI, and an audio jack port as well.

If Build 22543 Brings New Battery Info, Check It Out!

While Battery & Power (shown above) is the most obvious change to settings, I see minor tweaks throughout. Fonts and layout show minor changes (check out the Display info on PCs with multiple displays). The contrasts with earlier Windows 11 versions are minor, but compared to Windows 10 you can readily see Settings is slowly but surely getting a major makeover.

FWIW, I like what I see. Overall, Windows 11 Settings screens seem cleaner, more streamlined and modern than their Win10 counterparts. Looks also like “Add device” capabilities in Settings (Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Add device) are ramping up. It’s not hard to see the old-fashioned “Devices and Printers” facility fading away in its wake.

The Increasing Pace of (Settings) Change

We’ve known for years that MS is working its way into Settings and away from the old-fashioned Control Panel. It will still be a while before that changeover is complete, but its evidence is everywhere. I hope I can learn where things are, and how they work well enough to remain productive before the old gives way completely to the new.

Whatever happens along the way there’s no doubt it will be an adventure. Stay tuned, and I’ll do my best to provide some hopefully useful info and guidance.

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Stacking Restartable Updates Works OK

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It’s not a crazy question. It goes something like this: should users/admins install and restart after a single Cumulative Update, or can they allow multiple such updates in series? I just tried the latter on a couple of PCs, and everything turned out OK. I believe it may take a little longer to do them one at a time anyway (because of the time delay of the “extra restart”). But recent experience strongly asserts that stacking restartable updates works OK.

If Stacking Restartable Updates Works OK, Let ’em Rip!

This time around, Windows 11 got KB50100474 (.NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8) plus KB 5010414 (CU for Windows 11 x64…). I ran the drill on my Lenovo X1 Carbon (production Windows 11) and my Lenovo X380  Yoga (Beta/Insider Preview Channel Windows 11). Both got to the desktop through the reboot process in under 2 minutes. In my experience with various updates, that’s pretty fast in general for any single CU let alone 2 of them together.

Running DISM’s start component analyze and cleanup functions afterward, I found 2 reclaimable packages resulted from the updates. Cleaning them up regained affected PCs about 1.93 GB of disk space in the component store. It took about 8 minutes to complete. Worth doing, for sure!

Note: Don’t be disturbed by the “double progress bars” (see next screencap) for the /startcomponentcleanup bit. That always happens unless you reboot the PC before running this command after applying an update.

After stacking two CUs it’s no surprise that 2 reclaimable packages show up in DISM analysis of the component store.

I must say MS has Windows 11 working pretty well of late. I have yet to experience anything serious in the update/maintenance department since last October, when the official release emerged into public view. Good stuff!

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New Ventoy 1.0.66 Version Available

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Thanks to Martin Brinkmann at Ghacks.net, I just learned there’s a new Ventoy 1.0.66 version available. Among other cool features, it now supports an “experimental” (beta) feature to boot most supported image formats from a local disk. Check out the GitHub page and its  documentation page at Ventoy.net for a complete recitation.

With New Ventoy 1.0.66 Version Available, Grab One!

I’ve been writing about Ventoy since April 2020, when I first learned about this outstanding tool. Here’s my first-ever Ventoy item: Bootable USB Tool Ventoy (Win10.Guru). The Ventoy,net site has long since overcome its initial underprovisioning issues. Indeed, the tool is now available through both GitHub and SourceForge as well. It’s also added lots of bells and whistles along the way.

If you don’t already know and use this tool, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Be sure to check out the many content items on the Ventoy Document page for news, how-tos, explainers, and information about the tool’s growing collection of interesting plug-ins.

Make Ventoy Your Go-To Install/Repair Tool

Right now, I’m still using a 256GB SSD in a Sabrent NVMe drive caddy (USB 3.2 Gen 2) for my collection of tools and images. I have 29 images on the drive, which include many versions of Windows 10 and 11, plus the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT), the MacriumRescue ISO, BOOTPE.iso, various memtest utilities, and more.  I’ve still got 94 GB of disk space free on the drive and will no doubt keep adding to it over time.

It’s a great tool: worth downloading, using, and updating as needed. Cheers!

 

 

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PowerToys 55.2 Fixes Things Up

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If you read this blog regularly, you may be aware that in early January I reported about a fix for a strange Zoom issue. Seems that for some odd reason, the Mute Video Conference feature in PowerToys when enabled clobbers Zoom. Turn it off in PowerToys, and it works again. A workable, if not entirely satisfactory, repair. I’m pleased to report that PowerToys 55.2 fixes things up. I have a feeling it’s .NET related and comes thanks to the tool collections update to the .NET 6 framework and so forth.

But hey! I’ve been busy for the past two weeks. Cliff Rutkas and his team could’ve slipped an earlier fix past me. Be that as it may, I can now use both the Video Conference Mute feature in PT55.2 *and* Zoom on the same PC. Good-oh!

PowerToys 55.2 Fixes Things Up . . . and More!

While I’m on the subject of PT (any version) I’d like to extend my further thanks and appreciation to that team for the work they’ve done on the toolset lately. Installation has become much more routine. There’s been no need to stop mid-way through the initial “turn off old components” section lately, jump into Task Manager, and kill stuff before the installer can proceed. Instead, the process sails through to completion without human intervention — just the way I like it!

This tool is definitely gaining polish and capability. I had already liked it quite a bit. Now I like it even more. If you’re not familiar with PT be sure to check out (and read over) its documentation. It will definitely clue you in, and get you going with this terrific Windows toybox full of handy little tools.

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