Category Archives: Cool Tools

Windows 10 Keeps PowerToys ComPal Error

On April 10, I blogged about how a new release of PowerToys (v0.90.1) apparently fixed a “Class not registered” error for the Command Palette from the previous version (v0.90.0). Alas, while ComPal (as I like to abbreviate this tool) is now rock-solid on my Windows 11 PCs, it’s still throwing errors after restart on my sole remaining Windows 10 desktop. That’s why my title here reads “Windows 10 Keeps PowerToys ComPal Error” — you can see the aftermath in Reiability Monitor as the lead-in screencap above.

Why Windows 10 Keeps PowerToys ComPal Error

Look at the screencap. Notice the Problem Event Name is “MoAppCrash.” This means a Modern App (aka UWP app, usually an MS Store App of some kind) has crashed. In this case it’s the PowerToys Command Palette user interface (MicrosoftCmdPal.UI.exe). Copilot says common causes include faulty, outdated app versions, corrupt system files or missing dependencies, conflicts with Windows updates, and issues with DLL files. My bets are on conflicts with Windows updates and/or issues with some DLL needed for ComPal to run.

I just tried to access ComPal on the affected Windows 10 machine. At first, it refused to respond to its shortcut (WinKey+Alt+Space) for related settings, But when I disabled, then re-enabled ComPal itself, that capability woke up and started working. So did the utility itself, without any easily discovered limitations.

What about Windows 11?

I have — and see — no such issues in Windows 11. So I’m forced to speculate that this is just a Windows 10 hiccup of some kind. Fortunately, once I disable, then re-enable ComPal, everything seems to work fine. There’s obviously some kind of minor gotcha at work, but it’s easy to get around.

Isn’t that just the way things work sometimes, here in Windows-World? Fortunately, even when the path to success isn’t automatic, or even a straight line, a small dogleg often does the trick. And so it was this morning…

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Copilot PowerShell Scripting Improves

Hopefully, the observation that Copilot PowerShell scripting improves — and keeps improving over time — is noteworthy. And I mean outside a small circle of Windows nerds. From September through November of 2023, I wrote a series of stories about customizing Windows Terminal and PowerShell for TekkiGurus. As part of my research I used Copilot to help me build a raft of PS scripts. They served to read and write files, including JSON for profiles and configurations, counting text items, and more. That provides my basis for comparison between then and now. That experience grounds my assertion that Copilot has indeed gotten better at this. Let me explain…

What Copilot PowerShell Scripting Improves Means

In 2023, most of Copilot’s scripts of more than 2 or 3 lines of Powershell failed out of the box. All  suffered from minor syntax errors. Some included outright mistakes or errors. That said, they were close enough to the marks I was trying to hit to be helpful. I could debug and get them running properly, doing what I wanted them to, in an hour or two. That’s good, but by no means as magical as I might like.

Things are different now. Yesterday, for example, I learned that UniGetUI can save a complete list of all installed packages on a PC in file format. Upon examination, that format proves to be plain-text JSON, designed to be both compact and easy for humans and PCs to parse and ingest. “Great,” I thought, “If I can count the number of packages in that file, it will also tell me how many packages I have installed on the PC whence it’s generated.”

Indeed, I asked Copilot to generate a PS script to count the number of instances of “Name” in that file (each package has one such field). I took the resulting PowerShell and ran it, and it worked on the first try. You can see those results in the lead-in graphic for this blog post, at the top of the output (a whopping 454 of them, in fact). I’m tickled to death that I got the info I wanted without having to debug anything.

Where (and How) Copilot Still Falls Short

Ideally, an AI amanuensis could take this effort a step further. I should be able to ask Copilot: “How many packages are installed on my PC?” and get the same answer. Right now, it tells me how to get that answer via various PowerShell sources that include WinGet, the MS Store, and Win32 applications. We’re not quite where I want AI to be just yet.

One more thing: I asked Copilot to tell me when I wrote the TekkiGurus series of stories about Windows Terminal and it couldn’t tell me. For AI to work the way I want it to — and I think most readers could agree that it would be immensely helpful for that to happen — it would look up the initial Wayback Machine link, read the pub date, then follow the links in that story to other four elements in that 5-part series. It could then compile the full list of dates and titles and tell me what  I needed to know. Alas, not yet.

IMO, humans should drive AI to set tasks for it to handle and complete. AI should use its smarts to figure out how to get this done, and then to do it. Right now, it seems ready to tell me how to do it, and then do it for myself. But that’s not really the way it should work. Hopefully, we’ll be able to take that next step sooner, rather than later, in turning AI into a real assistant and amanuensis, and less of an advisor or source of guidance. In the months and years ahead, we will surely find that out!

 

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Interesting UniGetUI Update Shenanigans

I have to laugh. I read yesterday on NeoWin that UniGetUI — Marti Climent’s excellent UI skin for WinGet, Scoop, Chocolatey and other package managers — had gotten a big update. So naturally, I wanted to try it out. Instead, I got tangled up in some  interesting UniGetUI update shenanigans. They were almost entirely of my own making, but worth explaining. Here goes…

Revealing Interesting UniGetUI Update Shenanigans

I’ve actually had UniGetUI installed on my PC since the days when it was named WinGetUI. And indeed, I’d gone through several beta versions of UniGetUI. Amusingly, some launched from the old name (WinGetUI) but showed up with the new one (UniGetUI).

Somewhere in that skein of releases, the package names or IDs got tangled up. When I ran the new version of UniGetUI, it showed me an older beta version needed updating. Thus, I used the newest UniGetUI to uninstall that same older beta. Imagine my surprise when the PC came back with no version(s) of either WinGetUI or UniGetUI installed. Somehow, the beta uninstaller ended up doing away with everything WinGet or UniGet UI related on that PC and I was left with nothing.

Sometimes, Nothing Is Good

Neither Settings > Apps > Installed apps, nor Revo Uninstaller showed me anything related to WinGetUI or UniGetUI on my PC. So at least, I had a clean slate left behind. That made my job easy: I went to the Latest Release (v3.2.0) on the UniGetUI GitHub page, downloaded UniGetUIInstaller.exe and had at it.

Everything is now working, and the newest version — as you can see from the About info in the lead-in graphic — is working. It even managed to update TeamViewer for me, despite the older WinGetUI failing at that task before I started this adventure.

Sure enough, it’s always something, here in Windows-World. I’m just glad when a fix or workaround presents itself to me with little effort. This was one of those rare and happy times … I’m grateful.

 

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OhMyPosh Upgrade Needs WinGet DB Reset

Something interesting just popped up in Windows Terminal. Literally. Upon starting Windows Terminal, I got a notification from OhMyPosh that it was updating to the latest version: 25.21.0. So I closed WinTerm and re-opened it to run WinGet upgrade –all — include-unknown. As you can see in the intro screenshot, WinGet went ahead and updated OMP again anyway. When I asked Copilot why this happened, it explained that an OhMyPosh upgrade needs WinGet DB reset so it is forced to rescan all currently installed packages. A restart makes that happen automatically, BTW.

Why OhMyPosh Upgrade Needs WinGet DB Reset

When Windows Terminal has been up and running already, WinGet doesn’t refresh its current package data through a simple open/close operation. Instead, users must run the following WinGet command to force that to occur (again, a restart has the same effect):

winget source reset --name winget --force

This tells WinGet to rebuild its list of local (that is, currently installed) packages. After that running an update check won’t show OhMyPosh in need of updating anymore. I checked this out on another test PC and indeed this approach works. Good to know!

ICMYI: A Quick Intro to OhMyPosh

Many readers will recognize OhMyPosh (OMP) as “the way” to snazz up the command line in Windows Terminal/PowerShell. For an inkling of what this looks like using developer Jan De Dobbeleer’s own unique theme, look at the top and bottom of the intro graphic. It shows glyphs for (from left to right):

  • the current login account (ed) and folder icon
  • execution time for most recent command (0 ms)
  • battery status (power connector against green means “good”)
  • current environment = PowerShell (pwsh)
  • current time = 10:33:08 (time of screen capture)

The last two items in the preceding list show up at right, the first three at left, on the command line. For all items shown, and a whole bunch more OMP offers users a plethora of themes. It also provides good documentation and “source code” (JSON markup, actually) for all of them. Users can even create their own custom themes. I’ve written an intro and how-to story about OMP for TekkiGurus, but that site is now defunct. Find it via this WayBack Machine link. Enjoy!

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Dev Home Leaving Soon

I’ve been away on a family trip to Boston. Upon returning to my desk this morning, WinGet brought a Dev Home update to the Lenovo P16 Mobile Workstation (see lead-in graphic). “Hmmmm,” I thought, “Isn’t Dev Home leaving soon?” Indeed it is, as per MS Learn as you can see in the next screencap.

With Dev Home Leaving Soon, What’s Next?

Good question! In the afore-linked MS Learn item, MS announced last January that Dev Home would be discontinued in May, 2025. I’ve been “staying tuned” for more info since then, but so far such info has not been forthcoming.

Well: May is here and I still can’t find anything new about Dev Home’s impending retirement. Ditto for which features will be preserved and where within Windows they’ll show up. Of the tools that Dev Home brings to the Windows party, these are the ones about which I’m most curious:

1. Support for ReFS volume creation in Windows 10 and 11.
2. GitHub connection with repos for access to tools and packages.
3. The Hosts File Editor and Registry File Editor utilities.
4. Consolidated view of development projects via its dashboard.

In January, MS dropped the first shoe to warn developers (and other interested parties) that Dev Home would be yanked in May 2025. Now that it’s May, the silence while waiting for that next shoe is nearly deafening. All I can say is: “Please give us a clue or two, Microsoft: where are the best bits of Dev Home going to wind up?”

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RDP Strangeness Requires Dogged Pursuit

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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Can Restart Application Mean Reboot?

I found myself asking the query posed in this blog post title after updating WinGet (aka Microsoft.AppInstaller) inside Windows Terminal this morning. Why? Because a routine WinGet Upgrade fielded an update to its own self (see lead-in graphic). Then it advised in yellow to “Restart the application to complete the upgrade” as shown. I did so, but it didn’t help. Indeed the upgraded version (see next screencap) didn’t appear in Windows Terminal until I rebooted the test PC. That’s why I pose the query: “Can restart application mean reboot the PC?” Mebbe so…

Can Restart Application Mean Reboot?
Can Restart Application Mean Reboot?

Why Say: Can Restart Application Mean Reboot?

I raise the question because restarting Windows Terminal did not advance the version for Microsoft.AppInstaller from 1.25.340.0 to 1.25.390.0. But a reboot of the test PC, and a subsequent check of that app’s version number did produce the desired result (see above). What else should I wonder after such a turn of events?

Just to make sure I checked the App info for Windows Terminal after running WinGet to see if it somehow stays active after it’s been run. Nope: here’s what I see:

No evidence of lingering WinGet/MSAppInstaller here.

For the moment it looks like the WinGet team has fixed the issue with strange self-update behavior. It now sends a message to restart the application instead as shown at the head of this blog post. The only way I could switch from the old to the new version was through a reboot, though. I’ll have to ask Demitrius Nelon if that’s the way it’s really supposed to work. Stay tuned!

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Climbing Slack’s Login Learning Curve

Hurry is the enemy of proper problem solving. I had that thought only later yesterday, after initially struggling to get logged into Slack to chat and huddle with a client. Now, I understand I’m learning a new way of collaborating. At the time, I was frantic because I couldn’t initially get myself logged in for a meeting NOW. Alas, I  should’ve started climbing Slack’s login learning curve sooner than a minute prior to meeting kickoff. Lesson learned…

Climbing Slack’s Login Learning Curve to Success

Both my problem and its solution were staring me in the face on the lead graphic. It’s the Slack login page. I didn’t take the time to read the entire screen, and simply tried clicking continue when Norton Password Manager failed to load the login info. Of course, that meant I couldn’t get anywhere fast … and I was in a hurry. So I jumped into the URL entry bar in Chrome, typed Slack, and used a prior successful login screen to get to the project pages I was seeking.

Soon the crunch passed, and the meeting ended likewise (with a happy enough outcome, thankfully). Looking again at the Slack login screen, I realized I should have read down to the bottom. There, an Open button would have taken me right to the project I was seeking. Nothing to it, in fact.

Festina Lente…

That’s Latin for “Hurry slowly.” Sure, it’s OK to rush to get things done. But you don’t want to go so fast you leave common sense and simple observational skills behind. I’m chastened, and a little embarrassed. Hopefully, I won’t rush headlong into OMG the next time something like this happens. I’d rather take a little more time and use it to get where I’m going rather than flailing about.

And for sure, for sure, that is the way things go in Windows-World sometimes. I hope they don’t go that way again for at least a few more days. Cheers!

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Incase Relaunches DBM Line

We knew it was coming. 15 months ago (January 2024) I blogged about how Incase was taking over the old Microsoft desktop products for ongoing resale. That line is named “Designed by Microsoft” (DBM, get it?) and is now for sale in the marketplace. Featured on the incase.com home page, you can get a good taste of that stuff from the lead-in graphic. And it explains why I aver that “Incase relaunches DBM line.”

Why Say: Incase Relaunches DBM Line?

DBM means Incase has a line of mice and keyboards, plus other accessories (e.g. headphones) that MS used to build until late 2023 and then abandoned for Surface-branded items. Lots of people took exception, including yours truly. Indeed, I was delighted that Incase wisely chose to license those designs and re-issue them . Prices are a bit higher than I remember them in 2023. That’s when I purchased these last Microsoft-branded items:

  • 2  Comfort Curve 4000 keyboards
  • 2 Basic Optical Wired Mouse v2.0
  • 2 Mobile Mouse 4000

I still have one of each left in its original box, ready to use when the current avatar starts to fade or fail.

A New Day for MS-Branded Peripherals

But now, there’s no need to hoard — nor pay outrageous eBay prices — to obtain these old familiar and (IMO at least) beloved desktop appurtenances. You can just visit the Incase site and buy them direct. I assume they’ll partner up with other typical sales channels (e.g. Best Buy, Walmart, Target and so forth) to get them out there in large numbers at competitive prices.

I’m glad to see them back. And here’s a shout-out to Paul Thurrott himself, whose blog post yesterday brought Incase DBM device availability to my attention. Thanks, Paul! I’ll also cheerfully admit that I’m completely hooked on my Comfort Curve 4000 keyboard and haven’t found another that comes close to matching its fit for my flying, or sometimes fumbling, fingers. Long may it wave!!!

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Snipping Tool Text Extractor Rollout

Windows certainly has its weird and wonderful ways. I was forcibly reminded just now, when looking on a Canary test PC to see if the next Text Extractor tool was on my Snipping Tool toolbar. While you can see it in the lead-in graphic for this story, I couldn’t see it on my PC right away. At first, understanding that MS is conducting a new Snipping Tool Text Extractor rollout, I thought I might be on the outside, looking in. Not so: let me explain…

Working Thru Snipping Tool Text Extractor Rollout

When I first checked the app and saw the toolbar unchanged, I jumped to the assumption that my PC wasn’t in the first rollout cohort. Then I remembered: Snipping Tool is a Windows Store app. So I went to the store and clicked on the Downloads button. Nothing had been updated since 4/14 (two days ago), so I clicked the “Check for updates” button.

Guess what? There was indeed a new version of Snipping Tool ready for download. Once that step was complete, and a quick install later I saw what MS announced in its April 15 blurb. Yes, Virginia: there is now a text item in the Snipping Tool toolbar. Again you can see it in the second from right position in the intro image. MS even provides an intro blurb to tell you what this toolbar element does.

I checked it, and it works as advertised. Makes the steps involved in grabbing text from an image and dropping it into a file ever so much easier and faster. Thanks, MS for giving us something many of us can use and enjoy (your humble author included). Visit the MS Store on Canary and Dev Windows 11 PCs and you, too, can partake of this neat new feature. Cheers!

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