Category Archives: Cool Tools

Command Palette Brings WinGet Wrinkles

OK, then. I’m having an absolute ball running the new v0.90 PowerToys Command Palette for all my everyday Windows tasks and upkeep. This morning, it’s a quick hop into CmdPal (as it’s commonly abbreviated in Windows Terminal or PowerShell discussions or documentation) to see how WinGet behaves. It works just fine, but Command Palette brings WinGet wrinkles that I had to experience to understand. Let me explain…

What Command Palette Brings WinGet Wrinkles Means

I’m used to running WinGet inside PowerShell. That means I get a lot of support from its inbuilt facilities, as well as those from the surrounding Windows Terminal environment. As far as I can tell right now, running WinGet from CmdPal lacks that support.

Thus, for example, when I type winget up, the command shell is smart enough to know that I’m probably going to want to run my all-time favorite winget upgrade command — namely:

winget upgrade –all –include-unknown

Indeed you can see that from the auto-complete function in PowerShell in lighter text if you examine the following screencap carefully. Note the cursor sits just to the right of “up” in that string. If I strike the right-arrow key it will enter the rest of the line for me.

When I enter strings into CmdPal, I don’t get the auto-complete function automatically. It may remember over time, but I’m just starting to use it so it has nothing to remember right now.

Also, when I hit the Enter key after typing out the full string shown above manually, it runs inside of the Command Prompt shell, not PowerShell. That means I have to approve installers via UAC (User Account Control) so they can run with a mouse click. Inside PowerShell, those installers run without requiring UAC approvals.

Right Now, I Prefer WinTerm/PS to CmdPal

I’m not yet aware if I can customize CmdPal to run commands in PowerShell rather than Command Prompt by default. Part of my confusion stems from CmdPal as a Windows Terminal facility that precedes the introduction of the utility of the same name via PowerToys. But hey, anything new comes with little wrinkles and niggling details in need of working out and understanding more fully.

But again, it’s a gas to use CmdPal. And I am having great fun working my way into what promises to be a terrific and capable tool. I just need to learn how to use it properly, and well.

 

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PowerToys v0.90 Adds Command Palette

Here it is! The March 31 release of PowerToys v0.90 adds Command Palette to the mix. As you can see in the lead-in graphic — from the MS Learn cover article — “The Command Palette is intended to be the successor of PowerToys Run.” And it’s dead easy to use with the default keyboard shortcut WinKey+Alt+Space. (Note: on US keyboards these three keys appear in sequence at bottom, left.)

PowerToys v0.90 Adds Command Palette:
Use It!

All you need to do to open the Command Palette is to type the shortcut. All you need to do to launch something, is to start typing its name. It’s able to search for applications, files and folders. It can run commands, provide simple calculations, add bookmarks, switch among open windows on the desktop (formerly known as “Windows Walker), and more.

I’m still figuring out how to use it effectively, but it provides ready access to anything you might access via the Start menu, Windows Terminal (and various command shells), and the Windows desktop itself. When you update to PowerToys version v0.90, it’s ready to go: just type Winkey+Alt+Space and you’ll see your starting point (aka the Command Palette home page):

Lots of customizations are apparently possible, but I haven’t gone there yet. I’m still having too much fun playing with Command Palette’s default capabilities. Check it out: you’ll have fun, too!

 

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Build 26120.3653 Gains QMR

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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Unintended OneDrive Consequences

I have  to chuckle. Working on a Windows 11 revision to a data recovery  story yesterday, I ran into “the law of unintended consequences.” In this case, I switched OneDrive backup on to test the Windows Backup app. In so doing, I picked up some unintended OneDrive consequences. You can see them in the lead-in screenshot.

Overcoming Unintended OneDrive Consequences

Blithely, I started using files for my primary MSA from OneDrive on that test PC. (I chose the snappy and powerful ThinkStation P360 Ultra.) Immediately, it picked up Windows Terminal environment settings from the cloud, not the local PC.

Check the lead-in graphic. The error results from running the cloud-based PowerShell profile. It references supporting infrastructure for the WinGet.CommandNotFound capability. This allows WinGet to suggest a source to install a command that

(a) PowerShell sees as undefined
(b) WinGet recognizes
(c) knows where to find
(d) can install on the user’s behalf

Read the error message beneath the failed import command at Line 8 in that output stream. You’ll see the module named Microsoft.WinGet.Client is not loaded. Translation: that module IS squared away on PC from which  OneDrive supplies shared files.If it gets loaded on this machine, the error won’t recur.

Putting the (Right) Pieces in Place

The next screencap shows what I did to fix this. I looked up the instructions to get Microsoft.Winget.Client loaded. It requires two back-to-back PowerShell commands. The first handles install, the the second import:

Install-Module -Name Microsoft.WinGet.Client
Import-Module -Name Microsoft.WinGet.Client

I ran those commands  on the P350 Ultra. Where requested, I provided permission to access the module gallery for the client module. Next, PowerShell said”Restart Windows Terminal.” After I did that everything worked OK. Here’s visual proof:

What you see is that PowerShell opens normally, with no error messages. Next, you see NeoFetch which shows system and OS info for some nice eye candy. But that last part is proof that unknown command handling is working as it should. I typed ‘vim‘ in at the command line (it’s a well-known text editor popular in UNIX and Linux circles, not installed by default in PowerShell). And you see the results of the Microsoft.CommandNotFound module suggesting WinGet syntax for how to install this tool if wanted.

Problem solved!

 

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4TB SSDs Deliver 5-cent Storage GBs

On Tuesday, Tom’s Hardware dropped an eye-catching story. It’s entitled (in part) “4TB SSDs now 5 cents per GB…” It got me to thinking about the price trajectory of digital storage, over my three-plus decades working in computing. Today, 4TB SSDs deliver 5-cent storage GBs (e.g. Silicon Power UD90 for US$204: do the math).

I bought my first SCSI external hard disk for a Macintosh SE in the mid-1980s. It was an IOmega 300 MB model, and it cost me almost exactly US$1,000.00, or US$3.33 per megabyte. If you translate that into cost-per-GB that becomes US$3,409.92. If I’ve got the conversion factors right that means 1 GB of middling-fast NVMe SSD storage today costs just over 68,000 times LESS than it did in 1987 or thereabouts. Wow!

If 4TB SSDs Deliver 5-cent Storage GBs,
Why Not Buy Some?

At least, that’s what I’m thinking. Except for those users who’ve purchased Thunderbolt 5 capable systems that can support TB5 storage peripherals, SSDs like those in the afore-linked Tom’s story are perfectly adequate for USB-attached storage devices. I can remember paying as much, or more, for 256 and 512 GB devices, and ditto for 1 TB and 2 TB devices, back when each size represented the top of the max space distribution then available.

Indeed, I’m thinking about acquiring a NAS like the QNAP TBS-464 NASbook just to take such drives for a spin. Sometimes, it’s hard to appreciate how the price of technology has declined so dramatically, while speed and capacity have gone the other way. But this morning, I feel like it punched me in the nose — but in a good way. Cheers!

 

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Thunderbolt Share Gets Interesting

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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Extirpating WinGetUI Requires Registry Cleanup

Here’s an odd one. A few months back, I tried out a pre-release version of UniGetUI that still fell under the WinGetUI umbrella. The package info involved — as you can see in the lead-in graphic — was ID=MartiCliment.UniGetUI.Pre-Release Version=1.5.2. I thought I’d deleted same, and it showed up in none of Programs and Features, Settings > Apps, or Revo Uninstaller. Yet it kept showing up in WinGet‘s upgrade and list commands anyway. TLDR; extirpating WinGetUI requires registry cleanup to “make it go away.” Sigh.

Why Extirpating WinGetUI Requires Registry Cleanup

Apparently, adding packages to Windows leaves all kinds of traces in the file structure, as well as settings and pointers that get instantiated in the registry. Furthermore, it looks like WinGet relies what it finds in the registry to create its view of what’s installed on a Windows PC. Thus, I had to remove all registry entries that included the string “WinGetUI” and/or “UniGetUI” (except for stuff not related to the application or its package info, such as pointers to Word files I’d written about those tools).

And indeed, that did the trick. Neither WinGet Upgrade nor WinGet List Marti.Climent.UniGetUI,Pre-Release posits pointers to something I know isn’t there. The next screengrab provides visual proof. Good-oh!

After removing all WinGetUI references in the registry, WinGet no longer sees the older package.

It just goes to show that some uninstall facilities work better than others. For all its good features, it appears that WinGetUI/UniGetUI does not clean the registry upon uninstall deeply enough to tell WinGet that it’s gone, gone, gone. You’d think that wouldn’t happen with a WinGet-related and -focused follow-on tool. But here’s a counter-example that says otherwise.

That’s the way things go here in Windows-World, where not all is as it seems, not always works exactly the way it should. Sigh. When that happens, we clean up manually and keep on truckin’…

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Packing Portable Water-Cooled PC

When I first started working in networking back in 1988, I carried a Compaq Portable III PC to customer consultations. The rig was unique at the time, because it could accommodate the full-length PC board needed to host the Excelan TCP/IP Ethernet adapter. (It ran the protocol stack on an 80186 processor to offload the 80286 CPU.) When I looked up that unit online I was amazed to see it weighed 9.8 Kg (~20 lbs)! What provoked my recollection? Reading about a new Kickstarter initiative at Tom’s Hardware, I wondered if packing portable water-cooled PC would be as vexing as that old Compaq model was back in the day.

What Would Packing Portable Water-Cooled PC Be Like?

Models discussed on the Kickstarter project page weigh in at 4.8 to 5.2 Kg — that’s around half the old Compaq model. Ditto for the dimensions, too. The Compaq measures about 41 x 19.2 x 24.8 cm. The new ultra high performance integration liquid cooled laptop (UHPILCL) measures out at 34x42x3 cm. It’s much more like a big, fat laptop than the portable sewing machine the Compaq resembled.

Indeed, I remember coming home from a trip after it had snowed and lugging the unit around while I tried to recognize my car under its white blanket. Hopefully, the UHLILCL won’t be quite as big a burden.

Who Would Want One, and Why?

The target audience for this mini-ITX based DIY luggable is gamers or other high-end users who need a high-performance CPU/GPU to take on the road. I can see it in the cards that it might host AI models or other high-end runtime environments for demos and such, as well as pushing frames fast for 3D games, CAD, and simulations that require speedy, complex rendering.

I like the idea that buyers might be able to choose their components, and populate such PCs with lower-end Xeon CPUs and up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM. Because the rig is water cooled and requires ionized water (the home page says nothing about how much water, exactly, it uses) I’m curious about how hard it is to fill and drain. Water and integrated circuits seldom mix well.

Details are still pretty scarce, including pricing and availability/timeframe. But hey, it’s an interesting proposition. And it gave me a nice jaunt down memory lane. And Kickstarter is nothing if it’s not a gauge of public willingness to back a proposition via funding. It should be even more interesting to see if this proposed project gets off the ground.

One More Thing…

As I think about this unit and what “laptop” typically means, I must observe that it will HAVE to plug into A/C to work. When people hear the l-word (laptop, that is) they usually think of something that can run — for a short time, at least — on battery. I don’t think that’s happening on a unit with a mini-ITX mobo and a high-end GPU. Notice in the specs, there’s nothing about battery capacity or life. I’m sure that’s deliberate…

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Skype Attains Oblivion in May 2025

First it was a swelling rumor, based on some  eagle-eyed code scanning (reported at XDA.com on Feb 27). Today, it’s established fact, as Zac Bowden at WindowsCentral updates his story with “Microsoft has confirmed that Skype is shutting down in May, with warnings now appearing within Skype apps.” MS wants everybody to move to Teams instead, and offers tools to move chats as needed. If all goes according to plan, that means Skype attains oblivion in May 2025.

Note: I’ve morphed the screencap from the afore-cited XDA story that shows the warning “Starting in May, Skype will no longer be available. Continue your calls and chats in Teams.” in text form. Reading the code can occasionally provide insights (and reveal future plans, as in this case).

After Skype Attains Oblivion in May 2025, Teams Takes Over

With a much broader range of capabilities, and options to scale audiences into the thousands, Teams can do everything Skype can, and quite a lot more. The transition is already over for some — including your humble author. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult for those hold-outs still using Skype to switch over to Teams, too.

A Skype Timeline and Some Recollections

Skype started out on the Internet back in 2003 as a standalone service. Mostly it required establishing credit to offset upcoming charges, with occasional replenishment to keep a positive balance after that. For a while, my wife used it to interact with members of her family (who live in Germany) via voice and video on her PC. Microsoft acquired the company in 2011, and made a half-hearted attempt to build it into Windows 10 in 2015.

If memory serves, we all quit using it around that time. FaceTime on the iPhone was free and easier to use. Plus phones are better suited as communications devices than bigger laptops or deskbound desktops. I’d argue that Skype’s demise has been foreshadowed for a long, long time, and that it’s planned end-of-life-and-service date is no big surprise to anyone.

So long Skype. For my purposes, Teams already works better, and does more, than you ever did.

Note Added 2 Hrs Later

See Tom Warren’s Verge story Microsoft is shutting down Skype in favor of Teams for more useful details. The drop-dead date is reported as May 5, and further info on options open to current Skype users is provided. Apparently, he got an MS spokesperson to provide additional tidbits to help prepare the userbase for this change.

 

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PatchMyPC Updates 9 Apps Today

Gosh: I don’t see this very often. On the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra just now, PatchMyPC Updates 9 apps today. You can see them in the lead-in graphic. The whole thing took less than 4 minutes to complete. My appreciation for this handy update tool knows no bounds!

OK PatchMyPC Updates 9 Apps Today: Next?

The full name of the tool is Patch My PC Home Updater. (I’ll call it PMPC for brevity here). With 516 apps in its library, PMPC is not as comprehensive in coverage as is WinGet or the MS Store (2,600+ packages in the former, and over 60,000 in the latter). But it’s completely automated, incredibly easy (and fun) to use, and — for some odd reason — almost always faster than running the same installers in PowerShell or the Command Prompt.

Indeed, PMPC is also less careful or respectful of running apps than WinGet. It cheerfully stops web browsers (and other apps) to update them, then restores their previous runtime context. In WinGet, you will often either be unable to update a running browser (e.g. Chrome) or you’ll have to relaunch it manually (e.g. Edge or Firefox).

It’s a handy tool, and comes in a variety of commercial forms that work with Autopilot and InTune, among other patch and update management systems. As with WinGet, you can also use it to install and uninstall the items in its library as well. Highly recommended, and a treat to use.

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