Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Thoughts & concerns, USB devices, WED Blog

Looks Like USB4 = PC Bandwidth Backbone

Leave a comment

With all the new PC architectures proliferating, I’m thinking about the future role of the USB-C port. I see interesting stuff in NVIDIA RTX Spark, GoogleBook, post-Copilot+ PCs (especially Snapdragon X2) and top-of-the-line X64 AMD and Intel boxes. Especially, it looks like USB4 = PC bandwidth backbone for externals going forward. Let me explain…

Why Assert USB4 = PC Bandwidth Backbone?

USB is the central nervous system for personal computing. Most keyboards, drives, displays, and docks eventually trace back to this standard. USB4 Version 2.0 raises its bidirectional bandwidth ceiling to 80 Gbps. A single USB-C cable now handles data, video, and up to 240 W of power. That combination isn’t incremental, it’s more. The whole PC peripheral ecosystem is being rebuilt around USB4, and IT professionals need to understand what that means today.

The Big 5 External Device Categories

USB now dominates five distinct external device categories. Each one benefits directly from the 80 Gbps headroom that USB4 v2 provides. Here are the five categories driving that shift:

  • External storage: NVMe SSDs, traditional HDDs, and USB flash drives all benefit from faster sustained throughput and lower latency over USB4 v2 links.
  • Displays and docking stations: DisplayPort 2.1 tunneling over USB4 v2 enables multi-monitor 8K setups and single-cable desk configurations.
  • Networking adapters: USB4 v2 makes 2.5 GbE and 10 GbE Ethernet adapters practical for home labs, creative workstations, and remote offices.
  • Peripherals: Keyboards, mice, webcams, audio interfaces, and MIDI controllers all connect reliably with lower latency and higher headroom than before.
  • External GPUs and compute accelerators: The newest category, enabled by PCIe Gen4 tunneling over USB4 v2, opens the door to external graphics and AI inference workloads.

USB4 External Storage: Real-World Speed

USB4 v2 enables external NVMe SSDs to reach up to 3,800 MB per second in sequential read speeds. That figure rivals many internal M.2 drives installed directly on the motherboard. PCIe Gen4 tunneling over the 80 Gbps link makes this possible. The tunnel carries four lanes of Gen4 PCIe traffic inside the USB4 protocol stack. Earlier USB4 v1 devices topped out around 2,000 MB per second under real-world conditions. Version 2 represents a meaningful and measurable leap. For video editors ingesting 4K or 8K footage, the difference is felt immediately. A 1 TB file transfer that once took ten minutes now completes in roughly five.

Displays and Docking Stations

DisplayPort 2.1 tunneling over USB4 v2 supports dual 8K displays at 60 Hz. A single 12K display is also within reach for demanding visualization workflows. The asymmetric bandwidth mode pushes 120 Gbps in the display direction. That frees up the remaining 40 Gbps for simultaneous data and peripheral traffic. A single cable dock can now replace a tangled collection of adapters and separate power bricks. USB Power Delivery 3.1 adds up to 240 W of charging capacity through the same cable. A 16-inch laptop with a discrete GPU charges fully through the dock connection. For IT departments standardizing workstation setups, the cable reduction alone justifies the upgrade.

External Networking and Peripherals

USB4 v2 makes 10 GbE Ethernet adapters a practical upgrade for home labs and creative workstations. The bandwidth headroom is sufficient to sustain full 10 Gbps network throughput alongside active display and storage connections. Webcams, audio interfaces, and MIDI controllers all benefit from lower latency and higher sustainable throughput. A USB audio interface running at 192 kHz with low buffer sizes is far more stable over USB4 v2 than over older USB 3.2 connections. USB4 v2 also maintains backward compatibility with USB 3.x and USB 2.0 devices. Existing peripheral investments are protected. Nothing on your current desk becomes obsolete when you move to a USB4 v2 host.

Why Thunderbolt 5/USB5 Faces an Uphill Road

Thunderbolt 5 sits atop the USB4 v2 physical layer. It delivers the same 80 Gbps bidirectional bandwidth with stricter mandatory certification requirements. That certification is Intel-controlled, and it adds cost to both host silicon and peripheral hardware. Most Windows OEMs are shipping USB4 v2 ports labeled simply as “USB 80 Gbps,” without full Thunderbolt 5 certification.

Indeed, AMD platforms have broadly adopted USB4 v2 across their Ryzen and EPYC product lines. The installed base of USB-compatible devices vastly outnumbers the catalog of TB5-certified accessories. For most enterprise and prosumer buyers, USB4 v2 is the practical mainstream choice today. Thunderbolt 5 remains the right answer when maximum certified performance and guaranteed interoperability are required. Both standards deserve consideration. They are not adversaries; they share the same physical foundation.

Looking Ahead: USB5/Getting Past 80 Gbps

USB5 is not yet finalized as of late 2026. The USB Implementers Forum is actively working on specifications that could reach 120 Gbps or higher. Realistic consumer hardware availability is unlikely before 2028 or 2029. Silicon development cycles, platform integration, and ecosystem buildout all take time. Plus, Gen 5 tunneling remains an open issue.

Thus, Thunderbolt 5 is likely to remain the top certified performance ceiling through at least 2027. That makes USB4 v2 the right infrastructure investment right now. Cables, docks, enclosures, and adapters purchased today will carry forward into USB5-era systems. Building on USB4 v2 now means you are not starting over when the next generation arrives.

That’s Why USB4 Is THE Bandwidth Backbone

USB4 v2 at 80 Gbps now handles storage, displays, networking, peripherals, and power from a single port and a single cable. All five of the Big 5 external device categories are well-served at this bandwidth tier. This is not a niche technology for early adopters. It is the connective tissue of the modern PC, shipping in mainstream laptops, desktops, and docking stations from every major OEM. The gap between USB4 v2 capability and USB 3.2 era infrastructure is real and growing.

Here is a call to action: audit your current ports and cables this week. Identify every system still running USB 3.2 Gen 2 or older Thunderbolt 3 connections. Prioritize USB4 v2 or Thunderbolt 5 ports at your next system refresh. The bandwidth backbone is already here. Make sure your infrastructure is built on it. Cost and availability appear to put USB4 as “king of the hill” for the next 3-5 years. Let’s see how it turns out, shall we?

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

WinGet Mistakenly Reports Discord as Pinned

Leave a comment

Here’s a scenario many Windows users will recognize. You open a terminal and run winget upgrade to freshen up your apps. Everything looks normal — until you spot Discord sitting there labeled “pinned.” You never pinned it. You have no idea why it shows up that way. Sound familiar? Turns out that WinGet mistakenly reports Discord as Pinned for its own, somewhat murky reasons.

This WinGet Discord pinned situation surprises a lot of people. It looks wrong, or like WinGet won’t update a much-used app. Neither is true.

Take a breath. Discord is fine. WinGet is fine. There’s a perfectly logical explanation — and once you see it, the whole thing makes complete sense. Let me fill  you in…

Why WinGet Mistakenly Reports Discord as Pinned

WinGet uses the “pinned” label for two very different situations, and it doesn’t distinguish between them visually. The first situation is one you control: you run winget pin on a package, and WinGet holds that app at its current version. That’s an intentional, user-driven pin.

The second situation involves the app’s own manifest. Package maintainers can set a field called RequireExplicitUpgrade to true inside their installer’s YAML file. When WinGet sees that flag, it skips the package during bulk upgrade runs. Then, it labels it as “pinned” in the output.

Discord’s manifest resides in the winget-pkgs repository. ICYDK, that’s the Microsoft community Windows Package Manager manifest repository on GitHub. There, its manifest carries RequireExplicitUpgrade: true across many versions, including 1.0.9005, 1.0.9166, and 1.0.9188. WinGet groups both user-set pins and manifest-driven flags under the same display label. That shared label is the root of all this kerfluffle.

Why Discord Sets RequireExplicitUpgrade

Discord ships with its own built-in auto-updater. Most of the time, Discord updates itself quietly in the background without you lifting a finger. It doesn’t need WinGet’s help to stay current. It runs by default each time you open the app (or restart your PC).

Setting RequireExplicitUpgrade: true in the manifest tells WinGet to stand down during bulk winget upgrade runs. This prevents WinGet from downloading and launching a full installer that could interfere with Discord’s own update mechanism. Two updaters competing for the same app can be a recipe for trouble.

This is actually a smart, deliberate design choice. Thus, it’s not a bug, nor an oversight. The Discord team and the winget-pkgs maintainers made a deliberate call to keep things tidy. WinGet and Discord each do their own job, without stepping on each other.

How to Check the Discord Manifest

Want to see Discord’s package details for yourself? Start with this command:

winget show --id Discord.Discord

This output gives you useful metadata — the current version, publisher, installer URL, SHA256 hash, and release date. What it does not show is the RequireExplicitUpgrade field. winget show surfaces display metadata, not every field in its YAML manifest.

The file Discord.Discord.installer.yaml does not exist on your local PC. It lives only on GitHub. To find it, go directly to this URL in your browser. (Swap in whatever the current version number is for 1.0.9258 if needed.) Once there, look for RequireExplicitUpgrade: true in the YAML. That single line is what tells WinGet to treat Discord as a skip-by-default package during bulk upgrades. You can see it highlighted in the lead-in graphic at line 16 of that YAML file, in fact.

Upgrading Discord Through WinGet Anyway

Maybe you want WinGet to handle the Discord update on your terms. No problem. You can override the RequireExplicitUpgrade flag with a single targeted command:

winget upgrade --id Discord.Discord --force

This tells WinGet to update Discord explicitly, bypassing the manifest flag just for this one run. It’s a clean, safe way to push a WinGet-managed update when you want one.

That said, most of the time you won’t need to bother. Discord’s own updater does its job reliably and quietly. The WinGet Discord pinned label looks alarming, but your Discord client is almost certainly already up to date. Check the app’s version in its settings if you want confirmation.

WinGet Category Conflation Explains All

The “pinned” label WinGet shows for Discord is not a real user-set pin. Again, you did nothing wrong, and nothing is broken. It reflects the RequireExplicitUpgrade: true field baked into Discord’s own manifest That tells WinGet to step aside and let Discord’s built-in updater do its thing. Once you understand the distinction, WinGet’s behavior makes perfect sense. This behavior is simply misreported as “pinned” not “RequireExplicitUpgrade.”

Now that you know what’s going on, you can look at that “pinned” label and nod knowingly instead of scratching your head. That’s what understanding tools is all about. That makes you a sharper and better-informed inhabitant, here in Windows-World.

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Insider stuff, Networking, Recent Activity, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog, Windows 11

OOB KB5129195 Impacts LAN

Leave a comment

Imagine my surprise this morning when I sat down at Flo6, my trusty B550-based homebrew desktop. Instead of taking me to the desktop, I faced a login prompt. “Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “Looks like an update came through.” Sure enough, when I checked I found MS pushed one yesterday to fix issues following last week’s Patch Tuesday. And indeed, OOB KB5129195 impacts LAN access via RDP to at least one of my machines. Let me explain, and provide more details.

How OOB KB5129195 Impacts LAN

When I tried to RDP into the ThinkStation P3 Ultra Gen 2 (aka TSP3Ultra2), the machine name wouldn’t resolve. Using Advanced IP Scanner, however, I was able to get in through its IP address. I quickly determined that the update had toggled the Network type from “Private” to “Public” (in that latter situation, Machine Names don’t work). Resetting the toggle to “Private” put things back in the pink.

TLDR: OOB KB5129195 in Brief Bullets

  • OOB KB5129195 shipped September 14, 2026, outside the normal Patch Tuesday schedule, to hit my PCs last night.
  • It fixes RDP instability, Hyper-V folder sharing, USB audio failures, and a partially unpatched privilege escalation flaw.
  • Five of my eight home PCs received and installed the update.
  • Two machines required manual restarts; only one flipped its LAN profile from Private to Public afterward.
  • Fixing the profile flip takes about two minutes in Settings;be sure to check for it.

The OOB Release Trigger

September’s Patch Tuesday update, KB5122880, introduced several nasty regressions. Remote Desktop Services became unstable, causing RDP failures and server hangs. That alone would justify an emergency fix. Hyper-V Plan9 folder sharing also broke for Linux VMs, a real headache for developers. USB Audio Class 1.0 multichannel playback went sideways on some affected systems too.

On top of all that, a privilege escalation flaw, CVE-2026-62721, was only partially patched in the original release. That flaw lives in the Windows User-Mode Power Service. KB5129195 addresses all  these regressions. After installation, Windows 11 24H2 machines move to build 26100.9457. Windows 11 25H2 machines land on build 26200.9457. Eventually.

The Upgrade Hit 5 of 8 PCs Here at Chez Tittel

I run eight PCs in my home lab here in Round Rock. Five of them flagged KB5129195 as applicable and pulled it down. The other three were unaffected, likely due to differing configurations. The five affected machines automatically downloaded the update. Microsoft’s documentation puts installation time at roughly ten minutes. That tracked closely with what I observed across my fleet.

Auto-restart systems finished cleanly: Three of my five affected PCs are set to auto-download, install, and reboot via Windows Update. All three finished the update with zero drama. No errors, no failed installs, no post-reboot surprises. That is the experience Windows Update is supposed to deliver. I wish every update went so smoothly.

Manual Restarts on P16 and TSP3Ultra2: Two machines required manual restarts: my Lenovo ThinkPad P16, which I call the P16, and the TSP3Ultra2. Both showed KB5129195 as pending restart in Windows Update. I manually triggered the restart on each machine and waited. Both came back up fine after the reboot.

Then I noticed something off. On the TSP3Ultra2, the LAN network profile had flipped from Private to Public. This is a known side effect that occasionally follows cumulative updates. It matters more than you might think. I fixed it by going to Settings, then Network and Internet, then Ethernet properties, and switching the profile back from Public to Private.

Why the LAN Profile Flip Matters

Windows treats Public and Private network profiles differently. The Public profile blocks most incoming connections and disables network discovery. That can silently break file sharing, remote access, and other local network features. The Private profile enables discovery and sharing, which is what you want on a trusted home or office network. After any significant Windows update, I now make a habit of checking the network profile. Go to Settings, then Network and Internet, then click on Properties. Confirm the profile reads Private. If it says Public, flip it. It takes about thirty seconds.

KB5129195 is a necessary update, and I am glad Microsoft moved quickly to ship it. Most machines handled the install without any fuss. The LAN profile flip on the TSP3Ultra2 was an annoyance, but nothing a quick settings change couldn’t handle. If you apply OOB KB5129195, do yourself a favor: check your network profile afterward. A few seconds of verification can save head-scratching later. That’s a good thing, here in Windows-World where reasons for such behavior pop up all the time!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Strange DirectX Pin on Flo6

Leave a comment

I was doing a routine check of my WinGet pin list on Flo6 just now (ICYMI, Flo6 is my production desktop). After running winget pin list I spotted three pinned packages. Two of them I recognized immediately. Adobe Acrobat Reader (64-bit) and GNU Backgammon  I pinned myself, on purpose. But the third one stopped me cold. It showed Microsoft.DirectX at version 9.29.1974.0. I had never pinned that. Why did I see this strange DirectX pin?

How I Got a Strange DirectX Pin on Flo6…

First, let me share some background. Modern DirectX, meaning DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, is baked directly into Windows. Windows Update manages it entirely. Winget does not install, update, or remove it. How, then, did it make its appearance?

The Microsoft.DirectX package from the WinGet community catalog is something else entirely. It refers to the DirectX End-User Runtime redistributable, specifically its June 2010 release. That’s the last one MS ever shipped.

Indeed, Version 9.29.1974.0 is the final, frozen-forever build. It’s unchanged since 2010. Back in the day, games and apps from that era bundled this runtime to pull in legacy components. Think D3DX9, XAudio2, and XInput. On most modern Windows systems, this redistributable is obsolete and irrelevant.

The Source of This Strange Pin May Be…

Here’s where things get weird. The Microsoft.DirectX manifest in the WinGet community catalog had a long-running typo. For a while, it listed the package version as 9.29.1974.1 instead of the correct 9.29.1974.0. A community contributor eventually caught the error and submitted a pull request to fix it.

Once that fix merged into the catalog, WinGet suddenly saw a mismatch on affected machines. The catalog now declared 9.29.1974.0 as current. The installed runtime also reported 9.29.1974.0. So far so good. But the metadata around the install technology did not reconcile cleanly. Windows owns and controls the DirectX runtime. WinGet does not.

Winget could neither upgrade the package nor cleanly resolve the discrepancy. So it did the next best thing. It quietly added a Pinning-type pin to suppress its spurious upgrade prompt. That kept its noise out of winget upgrade --all output. In short, winget added the pin to stop nagging itself about a package it cannot actually manage. I have to laugh about that, give me a moment…

Removing the DirectX Winget Pin Is Safe

The good news here is straightforward. This pin is purely administrative. WinGet created it as a workaround for its own catalog inconsistency. It was never protecting anything vital.

Removing the pin leaves the DirectX runtime alone. The actual runtime stays right where it is. Windows Update continues to manage it, same as always. Better yet, the phantom upgrade version, 9.29.1974.1, is already gone from the WinGet catalog. Removing the pin won’t spur any bogus upgrade attempts. Nothing bad is waiting to happen.

The command to remove it is simple:

winget pin remove --id Microsoft.DirectX --source winget

As you can see in the screenshot above, the operation returns “Pin removed successfully” in under two seconds. A quick follow-up winget pin list confirms the DirectX entry is gone. No drama, no side effects.

Separating Signal from Noise

This episode is a good illustration that WinGet isn’t infallible. Sometimes its catalog or tooling leaves artifacts behind that look alarming but turn out to be harmless. The DirectX pin on Flo6 was exactly that: a breadcrumb left by WinGet’s own error-handling logic, not by anything I did. A single one-liner clears it up in seconds. Now, winget pin list shows only packages I actually chose to pin. That is exactly how it should be, and I am glad to have one less mystery on my machine. That counts as a win, here in Windows-World. Cheers!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

In-app Update Beats Remove/Replace

Leave a comment

Running WinGet just now on my Flo6 desktop, I got reminded that installer changes sometimes stymie its update facilities. If you look at the lead-in graphic, you’ll see that one upgrade gets blocked because of “different install technology.” Winget goes onto recommend “Uninstall each package, then install the newer version.” Not so fast: IMO, an in-app update beats remove/replace when that’s an option. I’ll explain, and use the Edge browser as an illustration.

You can jump to Edge, click the ellipsis, and get to Help and feedback in 3 clicks. Uninstall/reinstall takes 20+ keystrokes, and might fail.

Why Say: In-app Update Beats Remove/Replace?

My explanation boils down to: less time and effort, fewer keystrokes involved. Jumping to Edge, clicking the ellipsis for Settings, then visiting Help and Feedback to prompt the update process takes 3 mouse clicks (add one more click to restart, and the update is done). Uninstalling, then re-installing edge takes at least 20 keystrokes (“winget uninstall edge”). Worse, it then falls victim to exit code 93. TLDR version: Edge is considered a Windows built-in feature, so it blocks its own uninstall by default.

Sure, you can work around this. And it works for other browsers as directed for Chrome, Firefox, and so forth. But my preferred approach for browsers in particular is: try the built-in update mechanism first, if WinGet steers around an update. It usually does so for a good reason, as is the case here with Edge.

Here in Windows-World, it pays to recognize such cul-de-sacs when they pop up. It saves you the time involved in driving to the end, turning around, and doing something else. Not an unfamiliar experience for Windows warriors, but one best avoided when possible!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Secure Boot, WED Blog, Windows 11

Post Patch Tuesday Secure Boot Cleanup

Leave a comment

September’s Patch Tuesday landed on 9/8. And it brought more than the usual security fixes. KB5124008 and KB5124012 quietly expanded device targeting for Microsoft’s ongoing Secure Boot trust chain. If you haven’t verified your machines yet, now is the time. Secure Boot cleanup is not optional — it is essential maintenance for every managed Windows environment. Indeed, I’d argue that a routine post Patch Tuesday Secure Boot checkup is part of a “new normal” for Windows, with a cleanup to follow if needed.

Why Do a Post Patch Tuesday Secure Boot Check?

Here is the backstory. The old Microsoft UEFI CA certificates that were issued back in 2011, expired in June 2026. Microsoft has been rolling out replacement 2023 certificates through Windows Update for months. September’s updates expanded that rollout further.

KB5124008 and KB5124012 added more “high confidence” device targeting data. That means more PCs are now eligible to receive the new certs automatically. However, some devices still fall through the cracks.

Don’t panic. Devices that haven’t received the new certificates will still boot. Standard Windows updates will still install. But the clock is ticking. A second major deadline arrives in October 2026. You don’t want to be scrambling then.

Why It Matters

Devices that miss the Secure Boot cleanup lose future boot-level security protections. Over time, they become progressively more exposed to boot-level threats. These are the kind that load before Windows even starts. Also, BitLocker and device encryption may break on out-of-synch systems. That means recovery key prompts, startup hangs, and frustrated users calling the help desk.

Running the Garlin Remediation

Garlin is a long-time, high-status (and value) member of the online community for ElevenForum.com. He’s been stewarding a long-running thread (now at 188 pages) entitled “garlin’s PowerShell scripts for updating Secure Boot CA 2023” since January 2025. He’s got scripts to handle certificate synch-ups, with all the related DB and DBX fixes to boot (pun intended). Just remember to visit his GitHub site regularly to download the latest ZIP file with scripts to match (his latest update on 9/8 handles the newest Patch Tuesday updates).

As you can see in the lead-in screenshot, after the update Windows incremented SkuSiPolicy.p7b from version 3.0.0.17 to 3.0.0.18. It also updates the Secure Version Variable (SVN) stored in NVM in firmware as part of Secure Boot’s DBX values. After the OS update, certain operations are need to catch the UEFI up with the OS.

Actual Remediation : SkuSiPolicy.p7b

The SkuSiPolicy.p7b value governs which Windows editions (aka “SKUs” such as Home, Pro, Education, etc.) that Secure Boot regards as trusted and bootable. If the policy in the OS and the policy in a boot structure (whether in EFI, on disk, or on bootable media) don’t match, you get “Secure Boot Violation” when you try to boot and nothing more. Not good!

No worries. Garlin’s got a fix for that. If you run his latest Update UEFI script with the right argument it will fix it for you (reboot required). Here’s the syntax:

Update_UEFI-CA2023.ps1 -SkuSiPolicy

If you’re running this in an admin PowerShell session, prepend “.\” (period-backslash) to get it to run. Tip: if you unblock the ZIP file after downloading it from GitHub, the archive’s content will also be unblocked. Otherwise, you’ll end up unblocking them piecemeal. I speak from direct experience on this…

Actual Remediation: SVN

The Secure Version Number (acronym: SVN) is a monotonically increasing integer value also stored in the UEFI DBX value. It provides anti-rollback enforcement. When a bootloader or boot manager tries to loan, UEFI checks its built-in SVN against the minimum SVN stored in firmware. If the boot agent SVN is lower than what’s in UEFI, UEFI won’t load it. Here again, it’s necessary for what’s in the OS and what in the bootloader to agree. After an update (like Patch Tuesday) remediation may be needed.

Here’s what that looks like in PowerShell (admin):

manage-bde -Protectors -Disable C: -RebootCount 1


reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Secureboot /v AvailableUpdates /t REG_DWORD /d 0x200 /f


powershell Start-ScheduledTask -TaskName "\Microsoft\Windows\PI\Secure-Boot-Update"

The first line turns off BitLocker for the next boot to avoid key lookup and entry. It’s only needed for PCs whose C: drive is BitLocker protected. The next line adds a registry key to define and schedule a Secure Boot update task to update the SVN. The third line calls powershell to run that scheduled task immediately. All this stuff shows up in the output of the Garlin check script if you run it properly, so you can copy it from there, right inside PowerShell.

Here’s that syntax:
check_uEFI-CA2023.ps1 -verbose -audit

Don’t forget to prepend the “.\” (period backslash) to run it in PS.

Also: Boot Media Needs Catchup, Too

Here is a step that many admins overlook. Your Windows installation USB drives and WinPE recovery media also need attention. For sure, any media created before January 2025 won’t include the new 2023 Secure Boot certificates. I’ve gotten in the habit of rebuilding boot media each time that SkuSiPolicy.p7b or the SVN increments myself.

What happens if you don’t build new boot media? They may fail to launch on a fully updated machine. Rebuild everything from the latest Windows ADK, MCT (Media Creation Tool), or a current Windows ISO. Then test the rebuilt media on at least one device before you rely on it to get something done.

Run through this quick checklist before you close this task out:

  • ☑ Rebuild WinPE USB from the latest ADK
  • ☑ Rebuild Windows installation USB from a current ISO
  • ☑ Update MDT and WDS boot images if applicable
  • ☑ Test rebuilt media on a pilot device before wide deployment
  • ☑ Document any devices that cannot update (unsupported hardware) as formal exceptions

This is a new and interesting wrinkle on dealing with Windows Updates, especially around the Patch Tuesday milestone. Here in Windows-World such wrinkles accumulate. Don’t let them put your PCs and boot media in peril. Do the necessary, please!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, Device drivers, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Fixing False Vantage Update

Leave a comment

If you’ve ever dealt with a Lenovo Vantage false update, you know how maddening it gets. That goes double, when every install attempt fails silently and the same ghost package reappears on every subsequent scan. Sigh.

But that’s precisely what happened to me on a Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra Gen 2 (Arrow Lake-S desktop). There, Lenovo Vantage’s System Update panel stubbornly flagged Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology (DTT) Driver version 9.1.10001.173 as a required update, even after reporting a successful install on the previous try. Sigh again.

Why I’m Fixing False Vantage Update

Here’s the wrinkle: DTT is a laptop-exclusive power-management feature. It’s tightly coupled to Intel’s thermal sensor bus. Specifically, it applies to SWC\VID8086_DTT_* ACPI devices. Alas desktop platforms don’t sport them. My ThinkStation doesn’t have one. It never will. Yet Vantage keeps insisting otherwise.

Furthermore, every install attempt failed without so much as an error dialog. Vantage just re-offered the driver on the very next scan, politely pretending nothing had gone wrong. Time to dig in, and get this thing outtah heah!

Ruling Out the Obvious

First, I tried some obvious remedies. Logging into Vantage directly as Administrator changed nothing. There’s no ellipsis menu, no right-click context option. That means no “suppress this update” checkbox anywhere in the System Update panel. Lenovo simply hasn’t built that in.

Next, I turned to the standalone Lenovo System Update app. After installing the optional Lenovo SoftwareComponent Driver 26.9.0.20 from Windows Update, System Update scanned the machine and correctly reported “No packages applicable.” Clean bill of health. Meanwhile, Vantage still flagged the DTT driver for update. Sigh one more time.

However, that discrepancy was actually useful. It proved the issue lived entirely inside Vantage itself. It’s an artifact of its System Update addin, not  Lenovo’s underlying package catalog. The two tools evaluate the same catalog through completely different pipelines. Importantly, only one of them is wrong.

Tracing That False Positive…

With the obvious paths ruled out, I dug into Vantage’s session data folder:
C:\ProgramData\Lenovo\Vantage\AddinData\
LenovoSystemUpdateAddin\session\.

Inside, I found two SQLite databases: update_history.db (Vantage’s live working store, rewritten on every scan) and editable_update_history.db (which appears designed to accept external edits). I tried setting the DTT entry status to NotApplicable in the editable_update_history.db. Alas, nothing changed on screen. Vantage reads update_history.db for all rendering decisions and overwrites it with Applicable again after each rescan. The “editable” database, it turns out, is a red herring.

I also found available_updates.json.It’s a 5 KB file that’s rewritten upon each update scan. It gave me a fully parsed package definition, including a Dependencies block that pointed me toward the real culprit.

A (Bogus) WildCard in the XML

Vantage caches each package’s raw XML in its own repository subfolder. For this machine, the DTT package XML lives at:

session\Repository\m1dpf015d_p3ultrag2_25h2\m1dpf015d_p3ultrag2_25h2_2_.xml

Inside that XML, the Dependencies/_Bios/Level section contained two machine-type entries: “*” and “S0NKT*”. The S0NKT* pattern correctly targets specific Lenovo laptop lines that carry DTT-capable thermal silicon. That entry belongs there. The “*” wildcard, however, matches every machine type on the planet — including the ThinkStation’s 30J5 machine type. That entry almost certainly doesn’t belong there, and it looks like a straightforward Lenovo catalog error.

Consequently, without the wildcard, Vantage evaluates the ThinkStation’s machine type against S0NKT*, finds no match, and writes NotApplicable to update_history.db automatically on every future scan. No database patching, no registry hacks — just the correct answer from a corrected applicability list.

PowerShell to the Rescue!

I wrapped the repair into a short PowerShell script called fix_dt.ps1. The logic is straightforward: clear the file’s read-only attribute, load the XML into an XmlDocument object, locate the offending node using an XPath query, remove it, save the file, restore read-only protection, then restart the LenovoVantageService so Vantage picks up the change cleanly.

The lines that do the heavy lifting are (edit to remove line breaks):

$node = $v.SelectSingleNode("//_Bios/Level[. = '*']")
if ($node)
{ $node.ParentNode.RemoveChild($node) | Out-Null }

Setting the file back to read-only afterward is an important step. It prevents Vantage from silently re-downloading a fresh copy of the XML on its next catalog sync and re-introducing the wildcard. Sadly, that would undo the fix entirely.

To run the script, open an elevated PowerShell prompt and execute:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File
"C:\Temp\fix_dt.ps1"

Note: Run this from an elevated (Run as Administrator) PowerShell session. The script must stop and restart the LenovoVantageService, which requires administrator rights. Edit so it runs on one line.

Lessons Learned

This exercise surfaced a few things worth minfing for anyone who’s doing deep Vantage troubleshooting:

  • Vantage and the standalone System Update utility maintain completely separate state databases and catalog evaluation pipelines. Agreement between them is not guaranteed. Disagreement is a useful diagnostic clue, not a dead end.
  • The “editable” SQLite database is a red herring for display suppression. Vantage ignores it when rendering the System Update panel. Don’t waste time on this.
  • A single bogus wildcard in a machine-type applicability list causes a laptop-only driver to haunt a desktop indefinitely. The fix is in the XML, not in the database.
  • When the official UI offers no suppress or hide option for a persistently wrong update, the XML repository is the right lever to pull. Appearances aside, it’s not the SQLite layer above it at fault.

Ultimately, this is a reminder that catalog quality control matters. One stray “*” in a dependency block can send thousands of ThinkStation owners chasing a ghost driver that will never install. If you’ve hit the same Lenovo Vantage false update on a different ThinkStation model, or if you’ve spotted a similar wildcard problem in another Vantage package XML, please drop a comment here. I’d love to know how broadly this catalog bug extends beyond the P3 Ultra Gen 2.

Here in Windows-World, updates sometimes get weird. This time, for once in a blue moon, it’s not WU that’s the culprit. It’s Lenovo. That makes me oddly glad. Go figure!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

WinGet.Config Drives Developer Config

Leave a comment

As I was reading a Windows Latest article about a “…special Windows 11 for power users…” this morning, I found myself wondering. “Could this be a big, fancy WinGet config file at work?” Indeed, reading further into the story absolutely confirmed my hunch. The file in question, in fact, is named winget.config, in keeping with current naming conventions around desired configuration states. Thus, it’s simple truth that Winget.Config drives “Developer Config” as described in the story (and at MS Learn as well).

WinGet.Config Drives Developer Config from End to End

The MS Learn article‘s intro paragraph is worth quoting in full to put this capability into clear context:

Windows Developer Configurations are a curated, open-source collection of configuration files that take a fresh Windows machine to a ready-to-code state with a single command. Each config is a declarative file that is safe to re-run. It describes the packages, OS settings, and post-install steps for a specific scenario (a full developer workstation, a comfortable WSL shell, or a single language toolchain), so you can rebuild your environment on any machine without clicking through installers or maintaining custom scripts.

Windows Developer Config is built from the ground up on winget configure and a single .winget desired state configuration (DSC) file named dev-config.winget. It is not a new Windows SKU, a custom ISO, nor a registry script. The whole thing is one winget configure call pointing at that file.

The commands necessary to instill this configuration are (mostly) shown in the lead-in graphic. I repeat them here for completeness’ sake (and for easy cut’n’paste, by copying non-comment lines completely):


# Enable WinGet Configuration first
winget configure --enable

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/WindowsDeveloperConfig.git
cd WindowsDeveloperConfig

# Apply the config
winget configure -f .\windows-dev-config\dev-config.winget –accept-configuration-agreements –disable-interactivity

More About WinGet.Config

That .winget file is a YAML-based DSC manifest that handles everything in one shot: installing PowerShell 7, Git, GitHub CLI, VS Code, .NET SDK, Python, Node.js, PowerToys, setting up WSL with Ubuntu, tweaking Windows Terminal defaults, enabling Developer Mode and long-path support, and applying a long list of Explorer/Start/Search/Widgets settings to declutter the UI.

Indeed, Project Zenith hardware ships with those same changes baked-in by the OEM. But the underlying mechanism Microsoft used to define and apply that configuration is exactly the same winget configure + .winget file approach. In fact, the .winget config file format is doing real work here. That is, it’s not just installing apps; it’s functioning as full-blown Windows DSC, a notable expansion beyond what most people think winget does.

Here in Windows-World, it’s great to see real innovation put to useful work. Demitrius Nelon, the head of the WinGet team, has told me several times over the past few months that .winget configuration files represent a way to customize Windows seriously in one go. Now, I think I understand what he was getting at. Great work, guys!

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

Long DISM Pause at 63% Range

Leave a comment

I’ve been reading online at ElevenForum about people having issues with DISM ... /restorehealth on Build 26100.8972 and 26200.8972. Naturally, I had to check to see if I fell into that same boat. On the plus side, none of my machines at that build level threw an error for the command. On the minus, I observed a long DISM pause at 63% range in completing the sequence that stretched to 70% and a bit more. Copilot tells me this is the stage during which DISM downloads files needed to repair questionable items found in the component store.

Varying Times for Long DISM Pause at 63% Range

The lead-in graphic shows a completion time of 22m 55.301s for the command on my Flo6 desktop (MSI B550 mobo, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, 64 GB RAM, RTX 3070 Ti). Other intervals I recorded include:

  • 13m 33.008s on AsusSnap (Zenbook A14, SnapDragon X Plus X1P-42-100, 16 GB RAM, Adreno graphics)
  • 8m 36.148s on Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra (Core Ultra 9 285, 64 GB RAM, RTX 4000 SFF)

In this admittedly small sample, I see a strong relationship between CPU speed and completion time. That tells me there’s a lot of thinking going on while the /restorehealth operation is underway. Download volumes were all consistently in the 3-4GB range, as measured by download values from the Network Meter gadget from GadgetPack.

Skip WU, Try ISO

Copilot suggests further that pointing the /restorehealth command at a local ISO could speed things up. But it also says that “the ISO build must match 26200.x [the reference/focus build] closely.” The only way to do that right now is to build an ISO using UUPdump.net to match the 26200.9278 build all 3 PCs are running. That can easily take an hour or longer. My total time for all 3 was under 46 minutes.

Here in Windows-World, if you don’t pay (or spend time) one way, you’ll almost always spend it another. I took the WU route, and was glad all those DISM ... /restorehealth commands completed successfully. That’s good enough for me!

 

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin
Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Examining Nerd Font Glyphs

Leave a comment

Nerd Fonts patch popular programming fonts with thousands of extra icons. These icons live in the Private Use Area (PUA) and other reserved Unicode blocks. Terminals that load Nerd Fonts gain instant access to logos, arrows, file-type icons, weather symbols, and power glyphs. Have you ever wondered exactly which glyphs your installed font contains? The Show-NerdFontGlyphs PowerShell function answers that question fast. It is the key to examining nerd font glyphs, in fact, up close and personal (see lead-in graphic).

Script for Examining Nerd Font Glyphs

The script defines one function: Show-NerdFontGlyphs. It loops through 13 named glyph ranges and renders each glyph alongside its hex code point. It also arranges the output in a configurable column grid. The default is eight columns wide. That width fits comfortably in most terminal windows. Run it, and in seconds you have a full visual catalog of every icon your font supports.

Each section prints a cyan header, making it easy to scan. Each row shows the rendered glyph followed by its four-digit hex address. That pairing is the key feature. Specifically, if you spot an icon you want, note its hex value. Then, reference it in PowerShell with [char]0xXXXX. For code points above U+FFFF, use [System.Char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0xXXXX) instead.

Unicode Ranges Covered

The script covers 13 glyph families. Here’s a quick guide to each one.

  • Pomicons (U+E000 to U+E00A): This set holds 11 miscellaneous icons from legacy Powerline themes.
  • Powerline (U+E0A0 to U+E0B3): These glyphs power the core Powerline separators and branch symbols used in prompt themes worldwide.
  • Powerline Extra (U+E0A3 to U+E0D4, scattered): This range adds rounded, flame, and diagonal separator variants to extend the Powerline set.
  • Symbols (U+E5FA to U+E6B2): These general-purpose glyphs include file-type icons and folder symbols.
  • Devicons (U+E700 to U+E7C5): This section covers programming language and framework logos including Python, JavaScript, Git, and Docker.
  • Font Awesome (U+F000 to U+F2E0): This classic set delivers social, UI, and media icons from Font Awesome 4.
  • Font Awesome Extension (U+E200 to U+E2A9): These icons extend Font Awesome with additional symbols.
  • Octicons (U+F400 to U+F4A8): GitHub Octicons cover pull requests, issues, branches, and repository actions.
  • Font Logos (U+F300 to U+F372): This range holds OS and distribution logos including Linux distros, BSD variants, and Apple.
  • Power Symbols (U+23FB to U+2B58): These glyphs represent standby, power-on, sleep, and toggle functions from the Miscellaneous Technical block.
  • Weather Icons (U+E300 to U+E3EB): This section delivers sun, cloud, rain, snow, wind, and forecast glyphs.
  • Material Design (U+F0000 to U+F0200, first 512 only): These icons come from Supplementary Private Use Area-A and represent a subset of the Material Design set.
  • Codicons (U+EA60 to U+EBEB): Visual Studio Code uses these icons for debugging, source control, and editor UI elements.

Spotlight on U+E62A: Win11 Logo

One glyph deserves special attention: U+E62A. It sits inside the Symbols range (U+E5FA to U+E6B2) and renders as the four-pane Windows 11 logo. Furthermore, it behaves as a double-width glyph. In other words, it occupies two terminal columns rather than one. That property makes it ideal for building large logo art in FastFetch or other terminal info tools.

You reference it in PowerShell with [char]0xE62A. In a Nerd Font terminal, that expression produces the Windows logo glyph directly. Yesterday’s post on this site shows how to build a custom 8×8 FastFetch logo grid in Windows blue using this glyph.

Running the Script

Save the function to showglyphs.ps1. Next, dot-source it in your PowerShell 7 session and call it:

.\showglyphs.ps1
Show-NerdFontGlyphs

You can also adjust -Columns to fit your terminal width. Narrower windows work better with -Columns 4 or -Columns 6. The function handles code points above U+FFFF using [System.Char]::ConvertFromUtf32. As a result, it does not throw errors on supplementary characters.

Download the Script

Download the complete showglyphs.ps1 script directly from this post. Save it to your PowerShell scripts folder and dot-source it in your profile or on demand. Finally, pair it with a Nerd Font in Windows Terminal for the best results. CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font and JetBrainsMono Nerd Font are both excellent choices.

I wouldn’t have found the Win11 logo without this nifty little tool. Try it yourself, and be amazed at all the icon-like images that nerd fonts can offer. They’re amazing!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Author, Editor, Expert Witness