In the past two-plus years that I’ve used WinGet nearly every day, I’ve seen one error show up occasionally. It reads “Failed in attempting to update the source: winget.” This means that the winget command is looking to its own repository of known packages to obtain the latest list but unable to complete that access request. You can see what this looks like at the top of the lead-in graphic. The error follows right after the initial WinGet upgrade… command. The bottom part of that same screencap (it’s two pieces stitched together, actually) shows what’s involved in fixing WinGet Source update fail.

Fixing Winget Source Update Fail Has Its Own Command

It should come as no surprise that there’s a WinGet Source command that takes various subcommands to add, list, update, remove, reset and export WinGet sources. You can read all about these items in this MS Learn item The winget source command.

As you can see at the bottom of the lead-in graphic I used WinGet Source Update -n WinGet for my fix. Basically, that tells Winget to “try again” with updating the default WinGet source named WinGet. It does so automatically when you run WinGet Upgrade… But it does occasionally fail. And when it does, most of the time the Source Update at the head of this paragraph fixes things.

When Might WinGet Source Update Itself Fail?

A variety of problems could provoke error messages from the WinGet Source Update -n WinGet command I used for my fix. It might be that the WinGet source is offline. It might be some kind of networking communication problem is preventing access. I’ve never had this happen, but it would no doubt produce a different error message to help point you in the right direction. WinGet is well engineered that way.

Indeed, WinGet is now an essential part of my admin toolbox. I simply can’t live without it anymore. Cheers!

I’m closing setting up and tweaking my Lenovo loaner SFF PC , just the way I like it. Indeed, I plan to switch my production desktop over from the 2016 vintage Skylake i7 I now use.Instead I’ll go with an uber-powerful ThinkStation P3 Ultra. It’s equipped with a 13th-Gen i9-13900, 64 GB RAM, Nvidia RTX A2000 12 GB, and a Hynix 2TB Gen 4 SSD. As a near-final step, I am fumbling through WinTerm customization remembered & repeated. You can see what I mean in the lead-in graphic…

Digging Thru WinTerm Customization Remembered & Repeated

It took four steps to get all the pieces lined up to customize my Windows Terminal as you see it in the graphic:

1. Install Jan DeDobbeleer’s OhMyPosh for a custom prompt. That also required creating a $Profile file for startup. There are plenty of good how-tos around on this. I’m sad to report, however, that TekkiGurus.com is off the air. And thus, my series on this subject, too — find it instead on the WayBack Machine.
2. Download and install the CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font (which I grabbed from NerdFonts.com) so that OhMyPosh can do its fancy thing with Windows Terminal prompt characters and environment variables. Handy now that drag-n-drop font install works inside Settings > Personalization > Fonts.
3. Grabbed one of my favorite MS SpotLight images and then dimmed it up (30% opacity or thereabouts) to use as the Windows Terminal background. Dare I say I find it fetching?
4. Ran the command Install-script WinFetch inside WinTerm to visit the script archive and install the eye candy that this displays about target systems when run.

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? I’ve learned to expect and appreciate a bit of Windows Terminal pizazz to keep my eyeballs entertained while working at the command line.

And there you have it. Just another day in the paradise known to some as Windows-World. Good stuff!

Thanks to a recent story in Windows Latest, I just learned that a new version of the Chinese-built MS store app named PC Manager is out. For those who don’t already know, this tool offers performance boost, health check, storage  and startup cleanup tools, and more. Though I’ve heard from plenty of used inclined to be skeptical, if not distrustful, of this tool, I’ve never had it cause me a problem in the 16 months I’ve been writing about it (here’s my first intro post from July 2023). With the latest 3.14.10.0 release, PC Manager gains advanced browser cleanup tools.

Showing PC Manager Gains Advanced Browser Cleanup

You can see the results of such a cleanup in the lead-in graphic: especially for Chrome, they’re substantial (5.0 GB). Of the 9.7 GB in disk space that the Deep Cleanup tool freed up, 6.84 GB (~70%) comes from this newly-minted browser cleanup facility. IMO, that’s pretty major — especially because web browsers account for plenty of the CPU and memory cycles, and disk and memory space on Windows PCs.

Indeed, Copilot says that on a typical Windows PC, web browsers generally consume around 10-20% of the total runtime resources (CPU, memory, network and storage). I think that’s on the low side, but then I nearly always have 20 or more Chrome, Edge and Firefox processes visible in Task Manager (each), and at least a half-dozen tabs open in all 3 browsers. Seems like double (or more) in my case as compared to Copilot’s estimate.

Whatever your typical usage patterns might be, this newly-added cleanup tool will probably be worth running once in a while. I’m going to try it daily and see if it makes any difference.

Give It a Try?

If you’re not using PC Manager already, this new facility makes it even more compelling. If you don’t have it installed, you can find in the MS Store, or grab it via this MS Store link. Go ahead, check it out. You may enjoy it!