Category Archives: Insider stuff

Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, USB devices, WED Blog, Windows 11

Safely Eject Gets Weird When Swapping Drives

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Go figure: I had to grab some or all of 7 different SATA drives to complete file transfers from the old production PC to the new. Mostly, this meant waiting for Teracopy (a bulk transfer utility I highly recommend). It aced the job of moving files from my old drives to the new 12TB Ironwolf. Along the way I learned something interesting — namely, that Safely Eject gets weird when swapping drives. At least it gets weird when using dual-drive caddies. Let me explain…

How Safely Eject Gets Weird When Swapping Drives

Safely Eject appears in the System Tray (aka Notification Area) of the taskbar as a teeny-tiny USB Flash Drive icon, as you can see in the lead-in graphic. Turns out it’s a quirk of the chipsets used to bridge multiple SATA drives through a single USB connection that coming back after an eject doesn’t always work.

Here’s what happened on my 5800X Flo6 production rig and the ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 Mobile Workstation. No drives in the caddy showed up after ejection, then disconnect/reconnect of the USB cable. As Copilot says “After eject, the bridge may not reinitialize that port properly.” A reboot typically fixes such problems, but that got vexing given that I had to work my way through 7 drives in all.

Suggested Mitigations

Courtesy of Copilot, I worked my way through a couple of possible mitigations. Turns out the ASMedia driver wasn’t in use, so it wasn’t a possible culprit, either.

The right technique involved a multi-step combination of commands and physical actions:

Step 1: Unmount the drive to be removed from the caddy using the mountvol <drive-letter> /p command (e.g. mountvol e: /p)

Step 2: Turn off the power on the caddy. For one caddy that meant using the power switch, for the other it meant unplugging the power input from its brick.

Step 3: Wait 5-10 seconds for the device to reset completely.

Step 4: Power the caddy back on, possibly with one or two new drives inserted, after removing one or two old ones. Wait for those drives to get initialized, then show up in File Explorer. Proceed.

This worked properly on both the P16 and the Flo6 PCs. Safely eject is fine for single-drive devices (of which I have more than a dozen). But I now know that using the mountvol command, plus cycling the power around drive swaps, is the right way to keep my dual-drive devices working as they should.

Here in Windows-World, the path to proper device function has its occasional twists and turns. For my dual-drive caddies, this particular turn is worth making…

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Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

SFF Copilot+ PCs Remain Scarce

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Last year, I really got my hopes up when ARM announced a developer’s kit version of a small form-factor (SFF) PC with Snapdragon X. Alas, it never materialized. I’ve also read about plans from numerous vendors to offer mini but mighty PCs of this type, including Geekom and ASUS. But right now, SFF Copilot+ PCs remain scarce. In fact, I can find only two for sale presently: the Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Gen 5 (AMD) and the MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 2MG (Intel).

Why Do SFF Copilot+ PCs Remain Scarce?

I speculated about this when ARM announced, delayed and then canceled its own SFF SnapdragonX based model. Looking at the enclosures for the 2 aforementioned models, I’m still leaning that way. Mostly, in fact, it has to do with support for only 1 or 2 USB-C ports (typically 40Gbps/Thunderbolt 4/USB4).

Thus, there’s a nearly inescapable add-on expense when buying such a unit — namely, a TB4 or TB5 dock, most of which cost from US$350 to over $500. That’s a big bump in cost, cubic volume, and complexity for PCs designed to be affordable and, above all, compact.

I’m Interested, But Is the Market?

Because of the need for more ports, power, connections and displays, I have to believe the general marketplace finds current Copilot+ SFF PCs unappealing. It’s one thing to get useful capability in a compact and reasonably powerful package. It’s another thing entirely to have to turn around and spend from 44 to 63 percent of the purchase cost on a TB4/5 dock to get all the ports and connectivity modern office workers need.

If these OEMs build such SFFs, will buyers come? Initial excitement and plans said “Yes.” Subsequent actual product offerings, options, and limited choices say “Maybe” at best. Too bad: I like the category and what it brings to the desktop. I may be in a (small) minority, though…

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Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, USB devices, WED Blog

Jabra 75 Headset Driver Disappearance

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One of my favorite things about Windows made the scene in 1995, with the debut of Windows 95. It’s called Plug and Play (PnP) and it lets the OS detect and configure hardware devices automatically. It has made using Windows peripherals much, much easier than it was in the old days before PnP came along. This strongly contributed to a sense of shock and abandonment the other day, when a Jabra 75 headset driver disappearance delayed an attorney phone call for troubleshooting. Sigh: let me explain…

What Caused Jabra 75 Headset Driver Disappearance?

USB devices, particularly audio ones, involve a whole series of nested drivers. This runs the gamut from the audio device itself, to the USB hierarchy, to the Intel Smart Sound driver (which works between the device and the USB port to manage specific audio formats and functions). Some recent update to Windows 11 on my Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Mobile Workstation broke this complex chain somewhere in the middle.

How did I know? PnP quit working. Normally, I just plug the USB cable into a USB-A port on the P16, and audio switches over from its built-in speakers and microphone to the Jabra 75. I use it most especially for video calls, where clients need to see me as well as hear me (e.g. speaking engagements, webinars, depositions, and so on). When plugging-in resulted in “no play,” I knew I had a problem. Fortunately, it was easy to fix.

Plug and No Play Means Reinstall Driver

I visited the Jabra website, where I had to figure out what I needed was a new copy of the Jabra Direct software. With that downloaded and installed, and a fresh reboot to make sure everything registered properly, play immediately followed plug-in when I inserted the USB connector from the headset base to the P16. Problem solved!

But it took me a few precious moments to figure this all out, and then to fix it. In the meantime, I switched over to my production desktop where the driver was already installed and working properly (it’s the new build, so it got a new driver after the offening update, apparently). The client couldn’t see me (no camera on that rig) but we did complete the call. They hired me for an expert engagement, too, so I guess it didn’t go too badly.

Here in Windows-World, one must always be ready to adapt and overcome. So that’s what I did.

 

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Closing Thoughts ON Tecra A60-M2

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Well, it’s been an interesting and pleasantly surprising ride. On August 18 — just about a month ago — Dynabook sent me a snazzy new Tecra A60M2, one of its Intel-based Copilot+ PCs. Initially, I was a bit put off by the unit’s mid-range CPU (Core Ultra 5 225U) and its modest RAM endowment (16 GB). If buying for myself, I usually go for i7 or i9 class CPUs, and 32 or 64 GB of RAM. But as my 30-dal eval period is ending, I find myself unexpectedly and favoraby impressed with this PC. Thus, here are my closing thoughs on Tecra A60-M2, as I get ready to box it up and ship it back.

Weighing Closing Thoughts on Tecra A60M2: Pros & Cons

All in all, the A60-M2 handling everything I threw at it, and was more than able to cope with my daily regimen of email, web surf and search, heavy Copilot use, and intense workouts for Word, PowerPooint and Excel. I was expecting some occasion fits and delays, but encountered nothing but smooth, reliable performance. This is an excellent business machine for productivity/office workers, if underpowered for developers, data scientists or AI model makers or testers.

PROs

The display is clear and legible, if a bit washed out in direct sun. The IR camera and fingerprint scanner are the best I’ve ever used: incredibly fast, and only occasionally required repositioning of face or finger. Aside from a handful of Dynabook utilities, mostly useful not nugatory, there’s zero bloatware on this laptop.

Despite its modest RAM config (a single 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM, in fact, with room for one more) it is user-ugradeable to 64 GB. That’s a big plus against many other Copilot+ PCs I’ve seen lately, all with soldered RAM. It’s Wi-Fi 7 wireless and TB4 USB-C ports (x2) do their jobs nicely. That said, USB-C attached NVMe is middle-of-the-road, too (somewhat above UASP, but not 2x or better).

CONs

Three of the four case surfaces excluding the top deck (made of magesium alloy) are plastic composites. The unit is strong and relatively rigid — it meets MIL-STD-810H durability requirements– but the top deck flexes quite a bit, and the upper surface is a fingerprint magnet. The 4-cell Li-ion polymer battery is rated at 60W, but the unit is power-hungry enough to give it a typical 6-8 hour life for normal workday tasks. I’m spoiled by double-digit SnapDragon X values of 11 or more hours, I admit. It also charges back up to 40-50% in 30-40 minutes using the co-supplied 65W USB-C charger. That goes a bit faster from a TB4/TB5 dock.

I have some others cons to report, but they’re more nitpicky than serious:

  • Touchpad is positioned left-of-center on the lower deck, and takes some getting used to. Works fine (and accurately), tho…
  • The display is Full HD (1920×1080 only) with no 2K or 4K upgrade options available.
  • Keyboard layout is idiosyncratic enough that a long-time Lenovo ThinkPad user like myself had to adjust touch typing techniques to get fully up to speed.
  • Device weighs in at 4.1 lbs (1.86kg) which makes it noticeably bigger and heavier than other Copilot+ models I’ve used, especially those of the SnapDragon X persuasion.

One more thing, this Dynabook model’s MSRP is $1,249 as configured (the 512GB PCIe Gen4 NVMe is the only major item I didn’t mention earlier). This runs from $250-639 more expensive than Lenovo’s ThinkBook and IdeaPad Snapdragon X models. Buyers must want the bigger screen and higher durability to make that extra cost worthwhile. But it’s a durable, hard-working, surprisingly capable beast, and sure to provide its users with years of computing satisfaction.

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Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10

So Long i7 Skylake

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It’s been a long, long ride. It must’ve been right around 8 years ago that I first brought up my Asrock Z170-based, i7 Skylake PC. Today, I made the decision to lay it to its final rest. I’ll decommission it in hours. Indeed, as I bid “So long, i7 Skylake,” I’m saving the drives and ordering a 12GB SATA drive to which I’ll back everything up before wiping and sending them onto Goodwill (or elsewhere). It’s safe to say this has retirement been a long time coming.

In yesterday’s blog post, I had planned to bring out the heavy guns next. That is, I unplugged all the drives from the i7 Skylake, and inserted a new, blank NVMe from which to boot. At first, it looked  like it wasn’t going to work. I even got past providing a license key. But then, the newer NVMe wouldn’t run even when I provided the right Intel RST driver version. When I switched back to the old drive, the PC would no longer boot, not even to the UEFI screen. Something serious quit working along the way, and I no longer want to spend any more time on this. It’s over…

What Does So Long i7 Skylake Mean?

Because I’m moving the unit out of my office entirely, it means I can set up a couple of other machines.  I’d set them aside during the “parallel runnings” phase as I was using the Ryzen 7 5800X build as my primary production desktop, but running the i7 Skylake just in case I needed something from that PC. Now, I’m going to content myself with snapshots of its drives for a while, and put the old beast to rest.

As I was looking inside the case today, I see it was reasonably equipped for a machine of its day:

  • 4 physical cores/8 threads (vintage 2015)
  • 32 GB DDR4 RAM
  • NVIDIA 3070 Ti GPU (originally a 1080)
  • TONS of storage (11 drives totaling 16TB)

But it’s been getting flakier and flakier over the past 3-4 months. So yesterday, when I couldn’t get the machine to handle a clean install of Windows 10 Pro, I decided “enough is enough.” I have plenty more PCs to work with, so I don’t need to nurse this one along anymore. If somebody in central Texas wants to come by and pick it up, they can have it, gratis. (I’ll be taking the 3070 Ti, but the rest of the build, including 6 drives with about 8 TB of total capacity — wiped, of course — will come along for the ride. Contact me if you’re interested.) Otherwise, it too is headed for a Goodwill drop-off.

I’m sad to see it go, but I’m definitely glad the X5800 build is working out quite well. Hopefully, it will see me into the next decade. But here in Windows-World, the strangest things can (and often do) happen. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted.

 

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Backup/Restore, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10

Win10 Boot Follies Galore

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Here’s my situation. I’m still running the old i7Skylake with its 2015 vintage Asrock Z170 motherboard. That machine is running Windows 10 Enterprise. Thus, it’s not eligible for the ESU (Extended Security Updates) offer from MS to keep that machine alive for another year. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just clean install Windows 10 Pro, and take up the offer that way…” Instead, I’m dealing with Win10 boot follies galore, unable to boot to USB media to replace the current Windows image. It’s been heartbreaking…

Describing Win10 Boot Follies Galore

Copilot agrees that something is hinky with the UEFI on the Z170, and it’s preventing the PC from booting off a USB flash drive. So far, I’ve:

  • Turned off Fast Boot in UEFI, and discovered that toggling CSM (the compatibility support module that supports both MBR and GPT partitioning schemes) kills UEFI completely for UEFI version P7.60. Turns out that’s a known gotcha.
  • Built rescue and install disks on 8GB media to avoid FAT32 issues (using the usually reliable Media Creation Tool, and the still more dependable Macrium Rescue Media Builder)
  • Run those UFDs from USB 2.0 ports, on the off-chance that USB 3.x isn’t working for boot

So far, nothing has worked to install a different Windows 10 version on this PC. But I have a plan…

Bring Out the Heavy Guns

When all else fails while installing Windows, I’ve observed that disconnecting all non-boot drives, and replacing the boot media with a completely blank drive will sometimes work. I’ve got a 1TB Crucial T705 NVMe that I’ll prep in that way, and give it a try. IMO, it has a good chance of getting me over this hump.

I won’t have time to do this until the weekend. Stay tuned: I’ll follow up on Monday with a report on that experience. I’ve been bit on the hindquarters many times in Windows-World, but this bite kind of stings…

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Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Windows 11 Does Multi-Monitors Right

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I’ve been living the life of a native Windows 11 user on my production desktop — the newer, Ryzen 7 X5800 based PC — for a couple of months now. One thing I’ve noticed is that Windows 11 handles multiple monitors with great alacrity and aplomb. IMO, Windows 11 does multi-monitors right, in several important ways. Let me elaborate…

Why Say: Windows 11 Does Multi-Monitors Right

To begin with, I didn’t need to engage in Display settings shenanigans on my dual-monitor desktop setup. At all. Indeed, Windows 11 correctly detected and arranged both of my displays during its initial bootup. I didn’t have to do anything to get them working in extended mode (to use left- and right-hand devices as a single logical desktop with proper mouse tracking all the way across). In Windows 10, this requires manual intervention and setup.

It gets better. Updating NVIDIA graphics drivers is likewise much better behaved. On Windows 10, post-install, all windows moved onto the primary display. Remote desktop sessions appeared in full-screen windows that needed to be maximized to show a top-center control bar. On Windows 11, windows reappear where they resided prior to the update, and RDP sessions remain as previously set.

GPU driver stability also seems to be improved. On Windows 10, I often had to deal with “display blink” — a phenomenon that caused either my left- or right-hand display to blink on and off every few seconds. So far, I’ve been through three NVIDIA update cycles on Windows 11 with nary a sign of such misbehavior.

All’s Well…

It may still be too early to proclaim success or improvement, but I’m doing those things anyway. So far, display handling in Windows 11 is better behaved and more predictable than it was on Windows 10. Should things change, I’ll be sure to report on issues I encounter. But so far, it’s been a refreshing breeze to work with multiple monitors on Windows 11. Fingers crossed that things keep going in the same way for the foreseeable future!

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Careful With App Defaults

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I’ve always got PCs coming and going here at Chez Tittel. That means laptops, mostly, with an occasional All-in-One or SFF desktop to keep things interesting. Further, that means setting up Windows to work the way I want. Too bad, then, that Edge isn’t inclined to make way for other Web-focused defaults (e.g. Chrome). Even when I pick Chrome as the default browser, Edge keeps popping up for other stuff. The lead-in graphic shows why I’ve learned to be careful with App defaults. Indeed, it shows Edge remains the default for .mhtml files (MIME encapsulation of aggregate HTML documents) even after Chrome gets the default pick.

Why Be Careful With App Defaults?

Elsewise, items opened in other MS apps will open in Edge rather than Chrome.  In this case, Outlook handles a lot of .mhtml files for links and Web items embedded in email messages. Those still go to Edge. The right way to do this is to click Settings > Apps > Default Apps > Google Chrome.  On that page, make sure Chrome gets associated to all file types you want it to handle.

In my case, I just made sure everything on the foregoing Settings page that used to show Edge as the default now shows Chrome. A hopefully obvious corollary to this exercise is that setting Chrome as the default browser in Windows 11, is not sufficient to make it take over for all Web-related items. Hopefully, that’s now fixed!

Just another happy day in Windows-World, living on the edge (horrible pun not just intended, but enjoyed).

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Interminable Adobe Acrobat Updates

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I’m feeling a little less happy about switching from Nitro Pro to Adobe Acrobat on my new 5800X production build PC. The former costs about US$110 for each new version, the latter about US$20 a month. Right now, it feels like I’m paying more and getting less. But I confess: it’s the interminable Adobe Acrobat updates that bother me most. Let me explain…

Why Say: Interminable Adobe Acrobat Updates?

I just went through my second update cycle on this program. I noticed it took a while for the last update. Today, I was actually working on something else, and not really watching closely. But I found myself thinking “Hasn’t it been about an hour now?” when the UAC prompt to run the Acrobat Installer finally hit the 5800X screen this afternoon.

I’m guessing, but it took as long as 90 minutes for the whole update cycle to complete on this PC. To make matters worse, Acrobat is subject to a “known issue” in the winget packages repo because its update process doesn’t signal completion as it should. Indeed, Copilot says:

Winget starts the next package update before Acrobat finishes, triggering a 1618 error (“another installation is already in progress”). This isn’t just a timing hiccup—it’s a flaw in how Acrobat’s installer communicates with Windows Installer, and it breaks the expected transactional flow of winget upgrade --all.

Is It Really “Less for More?”

Copilot also mentions that “[t]he in-app update is notoriously sluggish,” which IMO is understating things a bit. Painfully slow, is more how I’d put it. It explains that it’s old fashioned installer Enhanced Security settings (Sandboxing, AppContainer and Protected View) slow things down, but that its “monolithic update model” and “telemetry and plugin checks” also contribute to seemingly glacial update processing (my exaggeration, not Copilot’s).

That said, Acrobat has handled my PDFs with aplomb, and lets me edit, mark up and sign such documents with ease. Had I know it was such a crawl to update, I might have rethought my switchover. But I’m in for a year’s worth now, having signed up and paid the annual fee. I’ll be sure to keep this in mind when the next cycle comes around.

Here in Windows-World, as I’m fond of reciting: “It’s always something!” Today, it’s painfully slow Acrobat updates. What will it be tomorrow?

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

25H2 Enablement Blazes on Lenovo AIO9i

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I’m working with a Lenovo Copilot+ PC review unit these days: it’s a snazzy Yoga All-in-One AIO9i. It comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (8 cores: 4 each P-cores and E-cores/8 threads), integrated Intel Arc 140V GPU, 32 GB LPDDRx-8533, Hynix OEM PCIe x4 NVMe SSD, and more. It also has Windows 11 Pro for Workstations installed. I’m not sure what makes this PC so fast, but 25H2 enablement blazes on Lenovo AIO9i.

Details: 25H2 Enablement Blazes on Lenovo AIO9i

How fast? The whole process, after opting into the Release Preview channel on the Insider program, took under three minutes to complete. That means:

  • Downloading the enablement package (under 30 seconds)
  • Running the GUI-based portion of the update (under 30 seconds)
  • Reboot and post-GUI update handling (under 40 seconds)
  • Resume desktop through lock screen and login (under 10 seconds)

There are lots of reasons why this is so fast. For one. the enablement package itself is svelte (under 1MB in size). That’s because MS has already included most of the code in earlier updates, and the enablement package — as the name indicates — simply turns such stuff on. As Copilot puts it, earlier “monthly cumulative updates (LCUs) have quietly staged the new features in a dormant state.” It continues: “The enablement package simply flips the feature flags — no need to download or install new core components.”

Other contributing factors to speed:

  • No drive revalidation, no app compatibility scans, no migration of user profiles
  • As the preceding bulleted list observes, this process requires only one update to complete
  • No rollback staging or recovery partition updates are included, to reduce disk I/O and system prep times

Indeed, inspection of $WinDrive (C:) shows no Windows.old partition, as one might usually find after a version uplift. Likewise, Disk Cleanup finds only 1.53 GB of files to clean up in the upgrade’s wake. That’s much less than the more typical 25-30GB on production Windows 11 systems here at Chez Tittel when transitioning from 23H2 to 24H2, for example.

Wow: Just Wow!

I’m not sure that Windows for Workstations made any difference here, either. Despite this version in place, it doesn’t use advanced features — e.g. ECC RAM and ReFS — that might speed things up. I think this is just one very lean, mean and fast enablement package. It’s worth enrolling a test PC in the Insider Program, Release Preview Channel just to check it out for yourself. Speedy!

 

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