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MCIO Ups the Ante on OCuLink

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For most of computing history, the connectors with the fastest, most reliable PCIe signal paths lived in rack servers. They did not sit on your desk inside a palm-sized box. That divide is eroding quickly. MCIO, short for Mini Cool Edge IO, is a connector standard that Amphenol Communications Solutions developed. Better yet, the PCI-SIG formally adopted it for PCIe CopprLink internal cabling. Standardized as SFF-TA-1016, it packs PCIe Gen 5 performance, and soon Gen 7, into a slim 0.60 mm-pitch form factor. Until recently, you would only find it in a data center. In 2026, it is showing up in mini PCs you can buy on Indiegogo, as I learned reading news at TechPowerUp this morning.

How MCIO Ups the Ante on OCuLink

You can see how the MCIO receptacle compares with USB-C, which Thunderbolt 4/5 and USB 2/3/4/5 use. It’s a little bigger but not much. Indeed, MCIO deserves a closer look. It is a next-generation internal interconnect under the OverPass platform. Its defining characteristic is density without compromise. The connector’s 0.60 mm pitch keeps it compact while supporting data rates from 16 Gbps up to 64 Gbps per lane at PCIe Gen 5. Developers are also working on PCIe Gen 7 variants that run at 128 GT/s using PAM4.

Lane configurations span 4x, 8x, 16x, and 20x. The same connector body handles both cable-to-card and card-edge applications. That versatility reduces BOM complexity. It also supports PCIe, NVMe, and SAS, and the connector is rated for cable runs up to one meter. Designers originally created it to enable modular, scalable, easy-to-service data center architectures. As it turns out, those same traits also fit compact, high-performance personal computing.

Bandwidth Showdown: MCIO vs. the Field

To appreciate what MCIO brings to the table, it helps to line it up against the standards it competes against (and leapfrogs). Thunderbolt 4 tops out at 40 Gbps total bandwidth. But it tunnels PCIe thru an Intel controller, adding overhead at every step.

USB4 v2.0 is where things get faster: up to 80 Gbps, or asymmetric 120 Gbps when video bandwidth gets priority. It is the current mainstream performance sweet spot, and it appears in more mini PCs and laptops. Thunderbolt 5 pushes the ceiling higher, delivering roughly 63 Gbps of effective compute bandwidth, or up to 120 Gbps asymmetric for display workloads, with PAM-3 signaling. In real-world eGPU tests, Try Some Tech measured roughly 5.6-5.8 GB/s of host-to-device throughput.

OCuLink is an enthusiast’s current favorite for eGPU use (see my June 8 post on this topic). It’s a native PCIe external connection that sidesteps tunneling overhead entirely. In the same real-world testing, OCuLink hit roughly 6.6 GB/s host-to-device—beating Thunderbolt 5 by approximately 16% in sustained throughput. USB6 is still on the horizon as of mid-2026, not yet officially released, with predictions pointing toward roughly 160 Gbps using PAM-4 modulation.

Then there’s MCIO 8i running PCIe 5.0 x8: approximately 256 Gbps bidirectional at PCIe 4.0 speeds, and up to 512 Gbps bidirectional at full PCIe 5.0. That’s not an incremental improvement over the competition: it’s a category jump. GPD’s G2 eGPU enclosure, which launched in 2026 using MCIO 8i, claims just 2% performance loss when running an RTX 4090 externally. No Thunderbolt or OCuLink setup has come close to that. OCuLink typically imposes a 4–25% performance penalty depending on the workload; Thunderbolt 5 can push past 25% in bandwidth-intensive scenarios.

Data Center Roots, Professional Credibility

MCIO didn’t earn its reputation in hobbyist labs. It earned it in RAID controllers, host bus adapters, JBOD enclosures, NVMe storage arrays, AI inference servers, and high-density compute racks. In those environments, signal integrity and sustained throughput are vital. PCI-SIG adopted MCIO in its CopprLink cable spec in 2021, and Amphenol announced the PCIe Gen 7 variant for CopprLink internal cabling in 2025. It targets AI inference clusters and next-generation high-bandwidth networking.

Molex also manufactures MCIO connectors under the Mini Cool Edge brand, and the pricing reflects the standard’s enterprise practicality: raw surface-mount 8x PCIe Gen 5 connectors can be found for around $2.41 per unit, while a pre-assembled 16x cable assembly runs closer to $66. In enterprise bill-of-materials terms, that’s modest. For context, a Thunderbolt 5 controller chip alone can cost more than an entire MCIO cable assembly—one reason system designers are increasingly drawn to MCIO for cost-sensitive high-performance designs.

MCIO Shows Up in Mini PCs and eGPUs

GPD is best known for its gaming handhelds. But it made a significant statement in April 2026 by announcing two MCIO-equipped products at the same time. First came the GPD BOX mini PC, powered by Intel’s Core Ultra 300 “Panther Lake” processors. Second came the GPD G2 eGPU enclosure. The G2 launched on Indiegogo at $385 early-backer pricing ($459 MSRP) and is designed to pair directly with the GPD BOX over MCIO 8i. Beyond the headline MCIO port, the G2 is a capable dock in its own right. It includes a 16-pin GPU power connector (12VHPWR), an M.2 storage slot, USB 3.2 ports, dual connectivity via USB4 v2.0, and 100W USB Power Delivery output.

TOPC, another Chinese mini PC maker, also entered the MCIO space in 2026 with the TA255—an AMD Ryzen 7 H 255-powered system priced at approximately $394 (16 GB) to $438 (24 GB). The TA255’s MCIO port runs at PCIe 4.0 x8, delivering 128 Gbps—double the bandwidth of a standard OCuLink PCIe 4.0 x4 connection. That said, its current CPU generation stops it from reaching full PCIe 5.0 speeds.

One important caveat worth calling out: unlike OCuLink or Thunderbolt, MCIO is not hot-swappable and was not designed for casual cable-swap scenarios. It requires a deliberate, secure connection. For users building a modular compact workstation or eGPU setup intended to stay put, that’s a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. For users who want to plug and unplug an external GPU the way they’d swap a USB drive, MCIO is not the it—at least, not yet.

Should You Care About MCIO?

Let’s be honest: MCIO isn’t mainstream. As of mid-2026, device support is limited to a handful of mini PCs and eGPU docks. Most of them are Chinese OEMs with uncertain global reach. If you need broad compatibility today, USB4 v2.0 remains a safe, widely supported choice. If you own a capable mini PC or handheld and want the best eGPU performance, OCuLink is a good choice.

But if you’re thinking a few years out—or building a compact computing setup around modular, high-performance components—MCIO deserves serious consideration. PCI-SIG’s formal adoption of MCIO in its CopprLink cable spec for PCIe Gen 7 signals real institutional backing. It’s not just a niche vendor experiment. I expect to see MCIO appear in more PCs, edge boxes, and workstations in 2026/2027 as the ecosystem matures.

In connector technology, the server rack and the desktop have always eventually converged. On that trail, MCIO looks like the next proving ground. Stay tuned: this story is moving faster than most. Ultimately, it should mean that external NVMes work and run the same as internal NVMes. That’s HUGE.

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OCuLink Offers A Viable TB4/5 Alternative

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Before we dig in, let me define the terms in the title so nobody gets left behind. OCuLink — short for “Optical-Copper Link” — uses the SFF-8611 and SFF-8612 cable specs, originally bred in the enterprise SAS and NVMe world, and now showing up on consumer PCIe expansion cards, eGPU docks, and mini-PC expansion modules. The reason OCuLink offers a viable TB4/5 aleternative is: it carries native PCIe lanes over a compact four-lane connector. Zero protocol translation is involved.

TB4 is Thunderbolt 4 — Intel’s certified 40 Gbps interconnect standard. It runs the Goshen Ridge controller and dominates today’s laptops and docks. TB5 is Thunderbolt 5, Intel’s 80 Gbps follow-up, running the Barlow Ridge controller. It started appearing on premium Copilot+ laptops and high-end docks in late 2024.

Intel has owned the high-speed external storage conversation for nearly a decade. I must ask: “Is there a credible alternative path for builders and prosumers who’d rather not pay the Thunderbolt toll?” Table 1 above says yes, emphatically. The rest of this post explains why the math works out that way.

Why OCuLink Offers a Viable TB4/5 Alternative

Start with the Intel moat, because it’s real and it matters. Thunderbolt certification ties nominally to the USB4 spec. In practice, Intel controls the gate through its mandatory certified controller requirement — Goshen Ridge for TB4, Barlow Ridge for TB5. Each controller adds $15–$25 to a device’s BOM. That cost tags along through the supply chain straight to your invoice. The certification program itself isn’t free either, which is why you see so many USB4 ports on budget laptops and mini-PCs that carry the USB4 badge but quietly skip PCIe tunneling entirely — because PCIe passthrough is optional in the USB4 specification. A port can wear the USB4 label, deliver USB 3.2 storage speeds, and be perfectly compliant. Go figure! Intel doubled the bandwidth ceiling with Thunderbolt 5. But the same certification architecture stayed intact. That structural dependency hasn’t gone anywhere.

The Tunneling Tax

Then there’s what tunneling costs you, and this part tends to get glossed over in spec-sheet marketing. Both TB4 and TB5 move PCIe data over a tunneled protocol stack built primarily for display connectivity. The protocol treats NVMe storage as a secondary concern. That overhead carries a measurable real-world cost. TB5’s 80 Gbps headline pipe delivers only around 6–7 GB/s to an NVMe enclosure in independent benchmarks

Alas, this lands below the sequential read ceiling for a single Samsung 990 Pro or WD Black SN850X. The bandwidth also gets split in ways the spec sheet doesn’t advertise. Run a TB5 dock with a 4K display and a storage enclosure at the same time. The NVMe gets whatever lanes aren’t already committed to display output. No firmware update can fix that. It’s simply how the tunneling protocol divides resources between display and storage traffic.

OCuLink sidesteps all of it, and the reason is almost embarrassingly simple: it carries native PCIe — no tunneling, no overhead, no protocol translation between the cable and the drive controller. The SSD on the far end of an SFF-8611 cable sees the host’s PCIe bus directly. It behaves exactly as if it were seated in a motherboard M.2 slot.

You need no Intel controller, no certification fee in the BOM, and no spec-version negotiation between host and peripheral. Any PCIe host with an SFF-8611 port talks to any OCuLink enclosure. The connector standard is generation-agnostic. OCuLink scales to PCIe Gen5 today, with a theoretical ceiling over 15 GB/s. Thunderbolt 5 can’t get close within its tunneling architecture. Intel spent a decade building a toll road. OCuLink is the county road that goes to the same place, faster, for free.

What Are OCuLink’s Trade-Offs?

I’d be doing you a disservice if I left it there. That’s because OCuLink’s edge comes with genuine limitations you need to price into a buy-in. Cable length is the hard ceiling for which there’s no current engineering workaround. Passive copper OCuLink tops out at 0.5 to 1 meter depending on implementation. TB5 copper passive reaches 2 meters. TB5 optical reaches 40 meters or more. For a storage enclosure sitting six inches from your PC, cable length is a non-issue. For anything across a room or mounted in a rack, it’s disqualifying. Know your use case before you order anything.

Hot-plug behavior is the next honest caveat. PCIe never supported hot-swapping natively. OCuLink inherits that reality. Some enclosure implementations handle safe removal gracefully through driver-level coordination. Others expect a full shutdown first. At minimum, eject the device properly from Windows before pulling the connector. TB4 and TB5 hot-plug is standardized, reliable, and boring in the best possible way. You unplug, Windows notices, the drive disappears from Explorer. No drama.

Ecosystem and Power: The Remaining Gaps

The OCuLink consumer ecosystem is thin compared to Thunder-bolt’s. The OCuLink ecosystem embraces dozens of enclosures from small-batch vendors. Thunderbolt counts hundreds of certified peripherals from Belkin, CalDigit, OWC, and others. Support responsiveness, documentation quality, and return policies reflect that gap. Also, OCuLink carries no power delivery over the connector itself — any drive or enclosure needs its own power source. TB4 and TB5 deliver up to 100W over the same cable that carries data. None of those are dealbreakers for a desktop prosumer. They could be for a road warrior expecting plug-and-play.

For desktop and prosumer builders, or anybody running a PCIe expansion card that exposes an SFF-8611 OCuLink port, you get a legit, lower-cost, higher-throughput alternative to Intel’s certified Thunderbolt ecosystem. The bandwidth math in Table 1 speaks for itself. OCuLink over PCIe 4.0 x4 already beats TB5’s real-world NVMe ceiling. PCIe Gen5 doubles that figure again with no new Intel controller, no certification program, and no tunneling tax required. Those are the deets. Intel built the tollbooth. OCuLink is the on-ramp they forgot to close.

It’s worth considering, and maybe buying into. I’m doing just that myself. You may want to do likewise, if you like the numbers as much as I do.

 

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GNUBG Shows WinGet Pin Rationale

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Since Monday, I’ve noticed that WinGet is updating GNU Backgammon every day, aka GNUBG. You can see in the lead-in graphic this happens because the app reports its version number as unknown. Of course, that means WinGet wants to update it, even though that’s unnecessary. How to avoid this unwanted repetition: the WinGet Pin command. Thus, GNUBG shows WinGet Pin rationale, and lets me turn down the noise.

How GNUBG Shows WinGet Pin Rationale

The lead-in graphic also shows that the current installed GNU Backgammon version matches the one that WinGet wants to install. That proves it’s a reporting error from the app itself, not the typical “current version is less than winget database version” that supplies a usually valid reason to run the update process.

Obviously, this will go on until (or if) the developers fix the game, or until a real, new version comes out. So here’s what I did to stop the madness: I ran winget pin –id GNU.gnubg

Once pinned, WinGet stops its repeated GNUBG updates. Good!
[Click image for full-sized, more readable view.]

I’ve seldom had to use WinGet Pin on the PC fleet here at Chez Tittel. But every now and then — as with GNUBG here — something pops up that calls for a timeout. Now, I just have to remember to keep an eye on the app so I can unpin or force-update when a REAL one shows up. That’s just one of the small things that keeps me on my toes, here in Windows-World.

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NVIDIA Extends ARM on Windows’ Reach

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Just a couple of weeks ago, Lenovo sent me the Qualcomm X2-based Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 laptop. Over the weekend, NVIDIA upped the ante with a Computex announcement of its RTX Spark CPU, also ARM-based. Developer in collaboration with MediaTek, this new CPU family, aka N1 and N1X, shows that NVIDIA extends ARM on Windows’ reach. Indeed Microsoft has announced a “Surface Laptop Ultra” build around this silicon, and ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI are also on the bandwagon. Acer and Gigabyte will follow shortly after that, and we’ll have both laptops and desktops running RTX Spark to choose among. Big news!

What NVIDIA Extends ARM on Windows’ Reach Means

Let me be clear about what’s going on with this upcoming architecture and systems that will use it. It’s aimed squarely at the top end of the market. I’m guessing such systems could easily cost upwards of US$5K, because they are aiming at high-end creators and AI developers.

Here’s a list of noteworthy features that NVIDIA and the OEMs are touting as relevant to potential buyers of such top-flight PCs:

  • Up to 6,144‑core Blackwell RTX GPU for high‑performance graphics, AI acceleration, and workstation‑class compute in thin‑and‑light designs.
  • 20‑core Arm‑based Grace CPU (co‑developed with MediaTek) delivering strong performance‑per‑watt for mobile and small‑form‑factor desktops.
  • Up to 1 petaFLOP FP4 AI compute enabling local execution of large AI models, agentic workflows, and advanced inference without cloud dependency.
  • Unified memory architecture (16–128GB LPDDR5X) shared between CPU and GPU, reducing bottlenecks and enabling massive 3D scenes, large‑context LLMs, and high‑resolution media workflows.
  • Ultra‑low power envelope (single‑digit watts to ~80W) allowing OEMs to build ultra‑slim laptops with all‑day battery life while retaining workstation‑class performance.
  • Full RTX software stack support (CUDA, TensorRT, DLSS 4.5, OptiX, Reflex, G‑SYNC) for creators, developers, and gamers on Windows.
  • Native support for on‑device AI agents via NVIDIA OpenShell and Windows 11 optimizations, positioning PCs as proactive “teammates” rather than passive tools.
  • High‑bandwidth NVLink‑C2C interconnect (600 GB/s) between CPU and GPU for low‑latency, high‑throughput compute.
  • Advanced media engines including 4:2:2 hardware encode/decode, AV1 encoders, and Blackwell‑class video pipelines for 12K editing and pro‑grade content creation.

A LOT to Take In, MORE Left to Understand

Whoa! That’s a lot of capability with a pretty rarified set of target buyers. Given current RAM and storage pricing, and rising costs for PC hardware in general, it’s clearly a small sliver of the market. But it’s got huge potential, and could ultimately redefine how Windows works — for a certain subset of users/consumers.

I think it’s pretty cool. I hope I’ll get  a chance to check one out later this year. In the long run, though, what will make the difference is how and when such special capabilities trickle down to garden-variety PC users. I’m intensely curious to watch this unfold, and see how it all plays out. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted!

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WinRE Ignores Inactive HDMI Output

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I guess it figures. If you examine yesterday’s blog post carefully, you’ll see it includes an obvious iPhone shot of a Windows boot screen. I’d hoped to replace it with a real screencap. Instead, I learned something interesting: my AGPTEK HD Video Capture device works fine with Windows OS running; not so with WinRE/WinPE at the helm. That’s because WinRE ignores inactive HDMI output ports thanks to its slimmed-down minimal graphics. Let me explain…

Why Say: WinRE Ignores Inactive HDMI Output

Simply put, if the runtime environment doesn’t require HDMI graphics, WinRE doesn’t use them. Given that the ASUS Zen14 has a perfectly good built-in display, with its own video channel, WinRE doesn’t feed any signals to the external HDMI port when it’s running.

My AGPTEK HD Video Capture box will cheerfully record any signals sent its way, once its “Record” button is pushed. It writes output to a UFD, from whence it may be copied and edited. I could have used it to capture a frame from said video showing the boot screens I wanted, but the box couldn’t grab them.

What WOULD Work?

It turns out I need an active frame-grabbing device not a passive, pass-through capture device if I want to grab WinRE and other WinPE-based screens through the HDMI port on the A14. Most of them cost between US$240 and 450, whereas the AGPTEK cost me US$65. Here in Windows-World, once must make sure to pay for what one needs. Otherwise, when one gets what one has paid for, it may not suffice to meet them! Live and learn, I always say…so obviously, I’ve learned that I need to buy another box!

 

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ASUS Snapdragon Shows Odd Boot Anomaly

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Here is a puzzle that took me longer than I care to admit to fully unpack. I built a recovery USB — clean DISM export, proper bootloader, everything by the book — set it first in the UEFI boot order, and rebooted an ASUS A14 Zenbook expecting to land in a familiar Windows Recovery Environment. Instead, I got the ASUS recovery stub. Every single time. I moved the USB higher in the boot order. I tried the firmware boot menu. I watched the machine apparently select the USB and then, silently and without apology, drop me into ASUS’s own mini-recovery UI anyway. The drive was not defective. The boot order was correct. The machine just did not care. This is my reason for saying: ASUS Snapdragon shows odd boot anomaly.

Getting Past ASUS Snapdragon Shows Odd Boot Anomaly

What I kept landing in was not Microsoft’s WinRE. It was ASUS’s recovery stub from firmware. It’s a minimal launcher, typically just a few hundred megabytes, that presents three or four tiles: Reset this PC, ASUS Recovery, and Advanced options. It looks vaguely like WinRE. It shares some ancestry with winre.wim. But it is ASUS’s gatekeeper, not Microsoft’s recovery environment, and it exists specifically to intercept the boot process before you can get anywhere else.

Here is the mechanism. ASUS, like most Tier-1 OEMs, configures its UEFI firmware with a hardcoded recovery boot path that fires during the BDS (Boot Device Selection) phase. It hits before the standard UEFI boot manager even looks at the user’s boot order. The firmware scans the internal NVMe for a partition stamped with a specific GPT partition type GUID — not the ordinary Microsoft Basic Data GUID, but a dedicated Recovery GUID or a custom OEM namespace. When it finds that partition, it hands control to the stub immediately. Your carefully ordered boot menu is consulted afterward, if at all. The USB was never really in the running.

Secure Boot adds a second layer of obstruction. Let’s say your hand-built USB carries an unsigned or self-signed bootloader (common with DISM-assembled media not signed against Microsoft’s KEK). Then,  the firmware rejects it silently and falls through to the next trusted entry in its internal list. That entry is the ASUS stub. So even when the BDS phase does get as far as examining external media, an unsigned USB is invisible. The machine looks like it’s ignoring you. It is, technically, but for a specific cryptographic reason (yes, really).

The WIM Recompression Tax

Once you understand why your DIY USB is being locked out, it helps to understand what the OEM actually ships in its place. It also explains why making a genuine ASUS recovery drive takes the better part of an hour. It starts with WIM compression. Microsoft’s stock winre.wim uses LZX compression and typically lands somewhere between 500 MB and 1 GB on disk. Manageable. Sensible. But ASUS’s customised image, once you add the recovery launcher, platform drivers, UI payloads, and potentially a full factory image, can balloon to several gigabytes of uncompressed data before anyone has touched the compression knob.

When you kick off the “Create ASUS Recovery Drive” process in MyASUS, what actually happens under the hood is a DISM /Export-Image /Compress:max operation (or its functional equivalent)  applied to an enormous source WIM. Maximum LZX compression, and on newer builds you may even see solid-block LZMS compression, which squeezes harder but runs even slower.

Here’s the critical detail: WIM compression in DISM is largely single-threaded. It reads every file, applies the compression algorithm, writes the output, and verifies integrity as it goes, all on one logical core (yes, really). On an otherwise fast NVMe-equipped laptop, that process still takes 40 to 55 minutes, not because the machine is slow, but because the algorithm is doing an enormous amount of intense, serialised work. The hardware isn’t at fault; the workload is.

Getting to USB-Based (Alternate) Boot

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Getting external media to boot on an ASUS machine requires working around the firmware, not just the boot order. There are two reliable paths. First: disable Secure Boot in UEFI setup (DEL at POST, not F8 — more on that distinction in a moment). With Secure Boot off, unsigned bootloaders no longer get silently rejected. Second: on older platforms with CSM support, enabling CSM forces a legacy BIOS boot path that bypasses the UEFI BDS handoff to the stub.

The Bottom Line: Build Custom Recovery Media

Whether you use the MS supplied “Create a recovery drive” facility, or turn to the MyASUS toolbox to do likewise, the best way to protect an ASUS Zenbook A14 is to build recovery media from that PC. As I learned through a series of failed recovery attempts with other, supposedly generic, all-purpose recovery media, that stuff doesn’t fly inside the Zenbook’s firmware envelope.

Learn from my mistake, and follow this advice as soon as  you can. Otherwise, you too, will fumble around until you find the MyASUS in WinRE tool that does cloud-based image reconstruction instead. If all you want is WinRE running a command prompt, that’s not a good alternative. Do it now: don’t delay!

The Secure Boot Perspective (2 Days Later)

I just ran the Garlin scripts on the recently rebuilt ASUS Zenbook A14. Looks like one benefit of a constantly updated cloud-based restore is the ability to slipstream new stuff in (or replace older, outdated images with newer, current ones). The concluding status report from  that check script is pretty telling:Shoot! They’ve even revoked the CA-2011 certificate. Good stuff!!!

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MS Readies Copilot Key Remap

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How often do I use Copilot? Multiple times a day, sometimes for hours at a go. How often do I use the Copilot key on a Copilot+ PC to access same? NEVER (I tried it out on an early laptop, saw it worked, and never used it again). I’m pretty sure most other users work the same way. Thus it came as no surprise and something of a relief to read news that MS Readies Copilot key remap in some upcoming Windows 11 update.

Why MS Readies Copilot Key Remap

This plan surfaced in a recently published Microsoft Support Note entitled ” Understand updates to the Copilot key on Windows devices,” Copilot finds no publication date for this item, but guesstimates it appeared on May 18  (yesterday, as I write this post).

Here’s how that note starts out:

Starting in 2024, hardware manufactures released new Windows 11 devices that include a dedicated Copilot key that provides quick access to Copilot experiences in Windows. This Copilot key sometimes replaces the Right Ctrl key or Context Menu key on select devices.

Customers who rely on the Right Ctrl key or Context menu key for keyboard shortcuts or assistive technologies (such as screen readers) experienced some challenges to their workflows when using these devices.

The important info comes next, and explains how things will work once this update appears:

A Windows 11 update will ship later this year that will add a setting option to let you remap the Copilot key to act as the Context menu key or Right Ctrl key. When available, you can find this setting in: Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard

What Does Copilot Key Remap Mean?

It’s an implicit ACK from MS that some (or many) people don’t use the key. Better, however, it’s a means for those who need the key that used to sit where the Copilot key now rests will get an official way to restore it (or rather, its functions as the Right CTRL or Context menu key) on their keyboards. Good enough for me!

When will this appear? MS isn’t saying yet. But they wouldn’t dangle it out there if they weren’t already working on it. My best guess is months, not longer. I’ll keep an eye on things and let you know when more news is available.

And here’s a concluding irony: I’m current working on a Logitech  Wave Keys keyboard on the Flo6 desktop. No Copilot key here, and I don’t miss it at all, not even one little bit.

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Intel DSA Remains Driver Install Clickmeister

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I just realized that DSA was MIA on my ThinkPad X12 Gen 1 Detachable Tablet. So I installed it, then ran it. It found 3 drivers in need of updates on that device: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and (Xe) Graphics. In updating them, I observed that the  Intel Driver and Support Assistant (Intel DSA) remains driver install clickmeister supreme. Let me explain…

Why say: Intel DSA Remains Driver Install Clickmeister?

It’s long been my observation that using DSA requires lots of mouse clicks. This time around, installing the three drivers shown in the lead-in screencap required at least 24 mouse clicks. For the record, those drivers were (numbers at right count clicks for each one):

  • Wireless Bluetooth Drivers (9)
  • 11th-14th Gen Processor Graphics (10)
  • Wi-Fi Drivers (5)

This time around it actually took me 4 additional mouse clicks to get from item 2 to item 3, because I was installing the GPU driver for the first time. Thus, I had to reboot my system, because DSA got “stuck” on “installing” for item 2, and wouldn’t advance to item 3. Sigh. I didn’t count those “extra” clicks in my reported total.

Achieving Intel Driver Update Silence

Believe it or not, that’s the title of a blog I posted on April 27, 2023. That was another time when the sheer number of clicks involved in running DSA hit me hard. It remains noticeable. Today, it struck me as excessive. So I’m formulating this plea to the Intel DSA developers:

Please add a silent mode switch to DSA. Let users tell the tool to run the installs without requiring minutes of babysitting to get through routine maintenance.

I wonder if anybody is listening. Then, I wonder if they’ll respond. Here in Windows-World the silence can sometimes be deafening. Let’s see what happens, shall we?

 

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Revo Roots Out Relics

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I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. But this morning, I found the fabled “round tuit” for an app clean-up on Flo6 using Revo Uninstaller. Using that tool, I reduced my count of installed apps from 95 to 83, eliminating an even dozen items. When I claim that “Revo roots out relics,” I’m claiming that the program helps stamp out no-longer-needed (or relevant) apps quickly and easily. Let me offer some details, and an explanation…

How Revo Roots Out Relics…

The intro screencap shows a partial list of all apps installed on Flo6. When I started this clean-up adventure, I was mostly beset with two sets of relics:

  • Leftovers from the ASRock B550 Extreme4 motherboard, which I replaced with an MSI MAG Tomahawk B500 MAX in January (3/12)
  • Leftovers from the Creative Sound Blaster AE-7 I installed earlier this month, but couldn’t get to working (5/12)

The other items were a hodge-podge of odds’n’ends including:

  • AIDA64, yet another system information tool that I don’t even remember installing, and never use
  • Angry IP Scanner: an alternative to Advanced IP Scanner that I tried a few times, before switching back to Advanced…
  • CPU-ID: I don’t need the plain-vanilla one any more, because MSI provides a customized version for the MSI MAG Tomahawk
  • CrystalDiskMark 8.4.0 still installed on Flo6, even though I’m running version 9.0.2. Removed it.

That’s it. Subsequent disk cleanup on Flo6 recovered 6 GB of disk space, too.

App Cleanups Should Happen Periodically

I consider this sort of review and removal part of a good Windows PC hygiene regime. Today was my day to clean up old apps. I’m glad I did. I’ll probably do it again at summer’s end, as I tend to pick up detritus like this over time. Here in Windows-World, if you don’t need it, or can’t use it, why keep it? Out it goes!

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Timing WinGet’s Update Pipeline

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OK then, I just read at WinAero that a new PowerToys v0.99.0 is out. Checking via WinGet upgrade in PowerShell it’s not yet in the pipeline. Nevertheless, the app itself is happy to grab said update from its GitHub repository, as you can see in the lead-in graphic. I’m now conducting an experiment. I’ll be checking hourly as I work at my desk, to see when that new PowerToys version comes into WinGet’s ken. Should be interesting…

What’s Involved in Timing WinGet’s Update Pipeline?

Behind the scenes, lots of things must happen before WinGet catches up, and offers the PowerToys update:
1. MS publishes the new release on GitHub (that’s done)
2. A Pull Request (PR) is sent to winget-pkgs with info about the new version, URLs, hash values, and so forth (usually automated)
3. Pull Request validation runs: automated checks verify installer hashes, check URL resolution, and validate manifest schema
4. Pull request merges into the WinGet source: a maintainer approves the package and merges it into the public database
5. WinGet CDN propagates: the updated database index appears via the winget source in related commands (show, install, uninstall, etc.)

How Long Does It Take?

Because PowerToys comes from Microsoft, its timeline is about as short as such things get. Turnaround normally takes no less than 12 hours, nor more than 48 depending on timing. If a weekend gets in the way the delay can stretch out. Ditto if issues with the manifest show themselves, or if the software being packaged shows a bug. Thus, for example, PowerToys v.0.99 has a Command Palette crash bug, and may be slowed to accommodate suitable hotfix.

We’ll see how this one goes. There’s already a new V0.99.1 version on GitHub (which includes that very hotfix). It’s in the WinGet pipeline now: let’s see how long it takes to get through, shall we?

Note Added 1:05 Later…It’s HERE!

The original post went up at 1:05PM local time. It’s now 2:10PM and a check on the P16 Gen 1 Mobile Workstation produces the following WinGet output: It’s here…

Notice that version 0.99.1 is on offer. That means the PowerToys team got its hotfixes into the package before sending it off to WinGet. Good job, @ClintRutkas and team. I am impressed.

And, now that I’m running it on the suitably-configured X380 Yoga, I see that the PowerToys upgrade also flashes an icon. Impressed again:

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