Category Archives: Troubleshooting

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows Update

KB5058379 Forces 8GadgetPack Manuevers

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On Patch Tuesday (May 13) I installed the latest updates on my PC mini-fleet (12 units right now). I didn’t reboot the Windows 10 production PC until yesterday. As soon as it came up, so did 8GadgetPack. Alas, the latter promptly crashed — and kept crashing — as I tried to bring it up. Next I realized that KB5058379 forces 8GadgetPack maneuvers, as  I tried uninstalling, then reinstalling that application.

That approach worked nicely to bring 8GadgetPack back up. Next, I performed a couple of follow-up gadget shenanigans along the same lines. That is, I had to remove individual gadgets that didn’t render on screen properly, then replace them from the Add Gadget repository. (Screen 1 from that tool serves as the lead-in graphic.) The whole exercise took about 10 minutes. And now, it’s all good.

Apparently, that update caused more havoc on other PCs. Keep reading for some of those ugly details…

KB5058379 Forces 8GadgetPack Manuevers … and More

This morning, I’m reading online that KB5058379 apparently causes other, more serious problems, too. The title of this WindowsLatest item (dated May 15) captures much of what’s amiss: Windows 10 KB5058379 locks PCs, BitLocker Recovery triggered on boot, BSODs. I guess you can say that while I got irked by having to mess about with 8GadgetPack, I’m now relieved that I didn’t have to go into full-blown troubleshooting and recovery mode yesterday instead.

In one way or another, all of these issues appear tied in some way to BitLocker issues. In the afore-linked Windows Latest story, Mayank Pamar explains a demonstrated repair strategy on some PCs. See that story for the details. The TLDR; version is “Turn off Intel TXT  in the PC’s BIOS/UEFI (may show up as “Trusted Execution” or “OS Kernel DMA Support”). This turns off BitLocker, but lets the update finish. Then you can turn it back on again.

Uninstall/reinstall or turn off/turn on seems to be the underlying theme for today’s blog post. That’s why undoing and redoing stuff remains a tried-and-true troubleshooting technique here in Windows-World, I guess!

Note added 5/16: After the next Release Preview CU, the same thing happened again with 8GadgetPack. And once again, uninstall-reinstall returned it to working order. Sigh, and sigh again. It’s looking like this may become part of my post CU recovery process. I can’t say I find that a delightful prospect, but it is a tolerable one.

 

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Seeing HEIC File Explorer Thumbnails

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Here’s an interesting little puzzle I stumbled across yesterday. I used a USB to Lightning cable to access my iPhone on the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Mobile Workstation. But in looking at my photos on that device, I saw icons rather than thumbnails. And when both File Explorer Options > View > Always show icons, never thumbnails and …> Display file icon on thumbnails were unchecked, I knew I needed something else. It turns out that seeing HEIC File Explorer thumbnails requires multiple Windows extensions. Let me explain…

MS Store Visit Enables Seeing HEIC File Explorer Thumbnails

Copilot gave me an initial clue as to what was up. Turns out that HEIC is “an image container format” that adheres to the “High Efficiency Image File (HEIF)” standard. Apple adopted it for images in iOS11 and macOS High Sierra, where it’s been the default since. My first clue as to what was up came in Copilot’s statement about HEIC and Windows: ” Windows 10 (and later) supports HEIC files—though you might need to install a codec from the Microsoft Store for full compatibility…”

I checked the Store, and it turns out I already had the HEIF Image Extension installed. But in its fine print I found the following statements:

A video extension package must also be installed in order to view images that are stored in the HEIF file.

The HEVC Video Extensions package must be installed in order to view images stored in HEIF files that use the .heic, .hif or .heif file extensions.

This $0.99 item from Microsoft (!) ultimately provided the missing ingredient to let File Explorer show thumbnails (not icons) for HEIC files. This “small dig” at Apple is both irritating and amusing in that users must pay a tiny toll to more fully integrate iOS and Windows. Go figure!

One More Thing…

Before I got to the point where Explorer showed thumbnails for those HEIC files from my iPhone, I also ended up rebooting the P16. I tried opening and closing File Explorer (but didn’t restart it in Task Manager, which would have probably worked, now that I think about it) but that didn’t do the trick. That’s an indication that a more thorough restart is needed to get the HEVC extensions to kick in.

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Chasing Intel esrv_svc.exe

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Looking over my various Windows PCs and Reliability Monitor reports after a week away, I stumbled across an interesting — but not unexpected — APPCRASH. It’s got me chasing Intel esrv_svc.exe, to learn what it does, and see whether or not it’s serious. TLDR version: runs various Intel update facilities; no, it’s not.

Where Chasing Intel esrv_svc.exe Takes Me

According to MS Answers,  esrv_svc.exe is related to a bunch of different Intel update checks, including:

  • Intel Driver Update Utility
  • Intel System Usage Report
  • Intel Energy Checker
  • Some of the Intel PROSet Wireless Software
  • Sony VaioCare

The error itself is tied to item number 2 (but that shows up only on the initial ReliMon report page as “Intel(R) System Usage Report”). That said, I also use the drive update utility (as part of Intel Driver and Support Assistant, aka Intel DSA) and the PROSet Wireless software (on most of my Lenovo laptops, in fact). I couldn’t have run  DSA on or around the error date of 5/2/2025, because we were out of town. So it was some kind of scheduled task, running on its own.

FWIW, Reddit also ties this kind of error to the Intel telemetry program (aka Intel Computing Improvement Program, which scrapes and sends Intel-related event info back to the company for capture and analysis).

Is There Cause for Concern?

AFAIK, despite this APPCRASH error, there’s no cause for concern around this executable. It’s involved in managing communications with Intel. Such to-and-fro appears to be either update- or event-related and not critical to proper PC operation. I’m going to follow Elsa’s lead from Frozen  and just “let it go” into the great bit bucket beyond the confines of the cozy little world here at Chez Tittel.

Here in Windows-World, it’s good to let go when you can. I’ll concentrate on stuff that poses real problems or indicates actual trouble of some kind. This one looks like just another hiccup to me. Plenty of those around here, for sure!

 

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RDP Strangeness Requires Dogged Pursuit

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There have been plenty of reports about weird Remote Desktop access issues and Windows 11 of late. Search Google for “RDP issues with Windows 11 updates” to see what I mean. Until this morning, I remained blissfully beyond that fracas. Then I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to RDP into my Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra. Indeed, overcoming this RDP strangeness requires dogged pursuit, as I will now explain. By which I mean: I’m again able to use the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC, aka mstsc.exe) to get into that machine.

Overcoming RDP Strangeness Requires Dogged Pursuit

I considered this as a kind of real-time troubleshooting exercise. Here’s that I did to get my connection working:

1. Opened RDC using the plain vanilla machine name: TSP3Ultra. RDC couldn’t find it.
2. Used Advanced IP Scanner (AIS) to scan my LAN and show me the currently active machine names in use. Tried TSP3Ultra.lan instead, then also tried TSP3Ultra-4314.lan. RDC couldn’t find either one.
3. Used AIS with a right-click to run RDC directly against its IPv4 address (192.168.1.249). RDC still couldn’t find it — this almost always works, so I knew I had a real problem, not just a naming issue.
4. Rebooted the TSP3Ultra, and tried again. It came up with a different IPv4 address this time (192.168.1.99) and RDC worked via a new machine name AIS showed: TSP3Ultra-5815.lan.

I’m now successfully remoted into the previously inaccessible PC, and glad of it. My next move would have been to start uninstalling recent WU updates, one at a time, until things started working again. I’m glad I didn’t have to take things that far.

What’s Causing Remote Desktop Strangenesses?

I wish I could say definitively. All I can do is to point at the changing names for the target device that AIS shows me over time. That makes me thing something interesting is up with machine name resolution on my LAN. Copilot says machine names of the form <name>-nnnn.lan occur when NetBIOS name resolution seeks to resolve conflicts arising from duplicate names.

We can see the IP address changed upon reboot, so I’m thinking it relates to IP address leases that change over time. The machine name, of course, stays the same, but when the IP address changes the DHCP server has to give the same device a new auto-generated name to avoid conflicts from the still-present (but expired) address in the name table.

I’ve witnessed that such things age out after 24 hours or so. Then the plain machine name will work with the new IP address unadorned. It’s just another thing to love about Windows networking, and the occasionally strange behavior of network names and addresses. Thus, it’s wise to prepare for your own dogged pursuits when that happens!

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

Repair Install Unsticks WU

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For the past 5 weeks or so, I’ve been working with the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen5 laptop. For the last two weeks, updates have been stuck, with an error code that indicates file download issues. The usual repair techniques haven’t helped, either — namely run the troubleshooter or the reset & re-register Windows Update components. So this morning, with a new cumulative update out, I installed the latest Windows 11 24H2 repair version. That built-in repair install unsticks WU and catches me up with pending stuff, as you can see in the lead-in graphic.

Repair Install Unsticks WU Trades Time vs. Convenience

The problems with the afore-mentioned techiques (troubleshooter, reset&re-register) is that they take multiple steps and a bit of effort. Double that when, as often happens, remediation is also needed. It took a while to click Start > System > Recovery > Reinstall now and then work through that process. But the details took care of themselves and I didn’t have to do anything except fire it off to make it work.

In the end, this turned out to be easier and less vexing than the other techniques. Its results were also immediately apparent, and entirely positive, once completed — as you can see in the lead-in graphic. That said, Update History does become a little opaque when you conduct this repair. Here’s what it says now:

It doesn’t show the problem CU installed and running. It simply shows that “Windows 11, 24H2 (repair version)” got installed today. Of course, that means the installer used the latest version of the Windows image — including those problem CUs — as the install base. So really, it’s all fixed now. You just have to know what this reference means.

And ain’t that just the way things go here in Windows-World? The problem may be solved, but a hint of mystery — or is it confusion? — remains. Cheers!

Note Added 4 Hrs Later: Get-Hotfix Tells the Story

Reading through ElevenForum.com threads just now, I learned that running Get-Hotfix in PowerShell will shows installed KBs from a repair install image, to wit: This shows that various updates and security updates are indeed present in the newly repaired image. The current build number for that PC — 26100.3775 — also shows that KB5055523 has been applied. Good stuff…

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Dell Updates Replaces Power Plan

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Yesterday afternoon, upon returning from a lovely drive into the Texas Hill country “the Boss” remarked that she now had to power on her Dell Optiplex D7080 to wake it from sleep. “Hmmm” I thought to myself “I bet something changed with sleep/wake/hibernate.” It sure did: a recent item via Dell Command Update installed and selected a “Dell” power plan. Alas, when Dell updates replaces power plan, their chosen alternative forced use of the power button to initiate wake. Easily, easily fixed: read on for those details, please…

When Dell Updates Replaces Power Plan, Switch Back

As you can see in the lead-in graphic, there’s a new power plan in the mix. It’s named Dell and it had been selected by default after some recent item ingested through the Dell Command Update utililty. To inspect the contents of a power plan in PowerShell, two commands are needed: the first provides a list of all plans, the second inquires about the contents of a specific plan through its GUID. Those commands are:

powercfg -list
powercfg -query <GUID>

Fortunately, the list output includes both human readable names and GUIDs so I was quickly able to get the deets for the Dell power plan. And sure enough, as I suspected, it had a setting for hibernate after 1 hour of idle time. That was the key!

Wake from Hibernate Requires a Poke

A poke of the power button, in fact, which was just what the boss didn’t like. So, as you can see from the lead-in graphic, I switched her back over the the High Performance plan she’d been using before Dell Command Update made that switch. It doesn’t include hibernate, and it wakes on keypress or mouse click from sleep. That’s what she wanted. And now, that’s what she’s got.

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Mapping Windows Memory Usage

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I like to keep an eye on how Windows is using system resources. To that end, I still use Helmut Buhler’s excellent 8GadgetPack utilities. They don’t really tell you anything that Task Manager can’t but you can keep them in view all the time, and they don’t exact much system overhead, either. For a rough and ready picture of what’s up with Windows memory (RAM), those tools (e.g. Task Manager and the CPU Monitor gadget) can tell you how much RAM is on your PC, how much is in use, and how much is free. The gadget also reports page file info: total, free, used as well. But when it comes to digging deeper into how Windows uses memory, the Sysinternals tool for mapping Windows memory usage –namely, RamMap – is what you need. Let me explain…

For Mapping Windows Memory Usage, Try RamMap

If you look at the lead-in graphic, I’ve superimposed the CPU Usage gadget (aka CPU Monitor) at center far right, with the Sysinternals RamMap tool beneath it. This pretty much shows things as they work and contrasts the minimal level of detail available from Task Manager and the Corresponding CPU gadget to the more detailed and nuanced RamMap.

TLDR version: Use Task Manager or the CPU Gadget to get a gross overview of memory and paging file stuff; use RamMap to get more details about what’s consuming memory and what state that memory is in.

In large part differences are a matter of details. Task Manager and the CPU Gadget tell you how much RAM is used (blue numbers under the Used, Free, Total column heads in white: 23.6GB) and free (~8GB). It also tells you that the page file is not in use (yellow numbers right underneath RAM entries). That’s pretty much it.

RamMap, OTOH, provides a lot more memory status categories: Active, Standby, Modified, Modified No Wire, Transition, Zeroed, Free, and Bad (you want to see THAT one in a memory map). You get a much more informed and detailed view here (and under other tabs besides “Use Counts” in the leftmost position, shows by default).

How “Used” and “Free” Fit RamMap Categories

Here’s something worth knowing: Used Memory in Task Manager/CPU Gadget combines the RamMap totals under Active, Standby and Modified. Free memory in Task Manager/CPU Gagdet combines the RamMap totals under the Zero and Free headings.

But when RamMap runs you can also see how those numbers change as processes execute, tasks get handled, services do their thing and so forth. It’s much more detailed and useful if you want that level of detail, especially if you’re hunting a memory leak of some kind.

Good stuff! Grab yourself a copy today (or you can simply run the web-based executable, to make sure you’re always using the latest and greatest version).

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Build 26120.3653 Gains QMR

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In the latest 24H2 Beta Build for Windows 11, the OS gains a facility called Quick Machine Recovery. That’s right: Build 26120.3653 gains QMR, ready for test and use after install. Indeed, the lead-in graphic shows commands to set up a QMR test, as documented at MS Learn. (That entire article is worth a quick read for an overview and explanation of QMR’s cloud- and OS-based remediation capabilities).

Testing How Build 26120.3653 Gains QMR

On a suitably-equipped Windows 11 PC, QMR testing must first be enabled. The first of the two commands shown above handles that:

reagentc.exe /SetRecoveryTestMode

Next, you must instruct QMR to take over the PC after the next reboot. That forces QMR into action (otherwise, it kicks in only after some kind of error or boot failure):

reagentc.exe /BootToRe

This instructs the boot loader to hand the next boot over to the Window Recovery Environment. That’s WinRE, the “Re” in the command string at far right. Overall, reagentc.exe handles WinRE configuration and auto-recovery handling. It also lets admins direct recovery operations and customize WinRE images.

QMR Remediation

QMR’s magic comes from its automated ability that — in the words of the afore-linked MS Learn article — “enables the recovery of Windows devices when they encounter critical errors that prevent them from booting.” In fast, QMR can “…automatically search for remediations in the cloud and recover from widespread boot failures…”

FWIW, I see this new facility as a well-crafted Microsoft response to 2 major issues in 2024. First, there was a Microsoft security update (KB5034441) in January of that year, that rendered PCs with smaller UEFI partitions unable to boot. Second, a Crowdstrike update in July left PCs in a “boot loop” unable to start up at all. Both incidents reportedly affected 8M+ Windows PCs, but the latter caused business service interruptions lasting up to 4 days. Many of those PCs ran remotely, inaccessible without some “interesting” boot-strapping maneuvers involving KVM tools (and lots of cursewords, apparently).

Hopefully, QMR will make such debacles obsolete, and provide cloud-based mechanisms to inject remediation automatically as soon as fixes can be concocted. This could be a very good thing. It’s going to take a while before QMR goes mainstream (probably in 25H2) but it should make life easier for Windows admins everywhere.

One more thing: Sergey Tkachenko at WinAero reports “A test patch is expected to be released in the coming days, which will allow you to test the Fast System Restore feature in practice.” That will let admins try out the auto-remediation feature for real.

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Thunderbolt Share Gets Interesting

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OK, then. I asked Lenovo to send me another Thunderbolt 4 capable laptop so I could try out the new Intel Thunderbolt Share app. Looks like I’m at least temporarily stymied, and have learned some things I don’t especially like, either. Indeed, Thunderbolt Share gets interesting from the get-go possibly because of licensing issues. Right now, I’m stymied because when I run a TB4 cable between my 2 TB-equipped laptops right now, I can never get past the “Waiting for connection” screen shown above. Sigh.

Thunderbolt Share Gets Interesting Because…?

Notice the disclaimers beneath “Connect both Computers” in the foregoing screencap. I may be stuck on the clause that reads:

At least one PC or Thunderbolt accessory must be Thunderbolt Share licensed by the manufacturer

From what I can tell, the newest of my pair of PCs — the only one that could possibly qualify here — had its Windows image burned on November 20, 2024. Given that Thunderbolt Share made its debut in May of the same year, it’s entirely possible that Lenovo didn’t license this program for the ThinkPad T14s Gen5. At any rate it’s not working between my only TB4-capable laptops right now. I’ve asked Lenovo for help, and we’ll see what happens. But there’s more…

Thunderbolt Share Won’t Open in RDP Session

My usual way of working on test and eval PCs is to RDP using  Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc.exe) on my primary desktop. That’s what I tried first to get into Thunderbolt Share on the two target machines. Guess what? Thunderbolt Share won’t launch from inside an RDP session. I have to physically use the target PCs to get the app to run. I have to laugh…

Once launched,  it keeps running if I then remote into either the P16 or the T14s. But of course, it’s stuck at “Waiting for connection” right now. So I’m getting nowhere, fast. That means my plans to compare TB4 cable transfer speeds against GbE and Wi-Fi transfers are on hold for now. Stay tuned. I hope to get this straightened out soon.

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KB5053643 Kills Mouse, Keyboard

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Last Thursday, I downloaded and installed a new Preview CU for Windows 10 — namely KB55053634. After lunch Friday, I finally got around to rebooting to complete that process. Eventually, it succeeded. But first, just to make things incredibly exciting KB5053634 kills mouse, keyboard — my vital USB peripherals — dead. Here’s the story of what I had to do to bring those devices back to life, and actually log in to Windows 10.

KB5053643 Kills Mouse, Keyboard: Now What?

Because I couldn’t get past the lock screen without a valid input device, that turned out to be a little more vexing than one might guess. So first, of course, I rebooted again. Still no joy: the keyboard didn’t respond to keypresses (a good test on my Comfort Curve 4000 is to toggle the Function Lock or Scroll Lock keys because those also toggle handy little green indicator LEDs). Nor did a mouse click open the PIN input box as usual.

So I tried again. Still no dice. Then I thought: “maybe the device needs a cold, hard boot?” That means powering off the PSU, waiting 1-2 minutes, powering back up, and pressing the power button. And indeed, that did the trick. Once I went through that maneuver, the hardware got completely reset, reinitialized and enumerated. It was enough to restore my key USB peripherals to working order.

What (Would Have Been) Next?

If the cold boot or hard boot didn’t work, I’d have had to jump into UEFI, turn off Secure Boot, and then target bootable repair media to get something running on that PC. I’ve done it many times before and will no doubt do it again. But hey: I was glad not to have to do it this time. Cold, hard boot did the trick.

Makes me feel like I dodged a bullet. Remember to give that a try if you find yourself bereft of mouse and/or keyboard after installing a Windows update or upgrade. If you’re lucky like I was, that will bring the USB drivers back into play, and let your PC get back to work. Cheers!

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