Category Archives: Cool Tools

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Time Server Selection Gradual Rollout

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Here we go again. I get back to the office after a week away, to learn that time server selection is moving from Control Panel to Settings in Dev and Beta Channel releases. But, there’s a pretty typical time server selection gradual rollout underway. And guess what: my Beta Channel test PC, as usual, is not in the vanguard of those being offered that update. That’s a distressingly familiar phenom, for yours truly.

What Happens During Time Server Selection Gradual Rollout?

According to Sergey  Tkachenko (via an X post from @PhantomofEarth) at WinAero, those Beta or Dev Channel images with this facility will see it show up in the ability to expand the Sync Now entry in Settings > Time & language > Data & Time under the Additional settings heading there. As you can see in the lead-in graphic, the X380 Yoga (my Beta Channel test PC) shows no caret to expand that Sync now entry. That means I haven’t caught any such update just yet.

When it shows up at some point in the future that PC will be able to select a time server for syncing under the Settings umbrella. For the time being, however, that PC must still use the Date and Time widget from control panel, Internet Time Settings tab, Configure Internet time settings subwindow, like so:

Until I get some new cumulative update (CU) or a new Beta version with the right facility, I’ll be using this tool to choose my default time server for synching up. It’s nice to know that MS is moving yet another capability from the old Control Panel environment into settings. It’s less nice to understand my test PC hasn’t yet made that grade. But shoot! That’s definitely the way things go in Windows-World from time to time, especially for your humble correspondent. Sigh.

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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Microsoft 365, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog

Outlook .DOCX Files Won’t Open

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Here’s a pretty pickle. My most-used professional writing tool is MS Word, and I’m an Outlook user, too. A couple of days ago, I noticed that sent as attachments to Outlook .DOCX files won’t open. The first time it happened: I thought: “Corruption.” The second time, I thought: “Hmmmm. Something is up.” The third time, I KNEW “Time for Office repairs.”

Over the years I’ve written about fixing MS Office when it breaks or gets weird. You can find both 2021 and 2024 versions of such a story at ComputerWorld: 5 Steps to Repair Microsoft Office. [Note: the link is to the current version, natch.]

When Outlook .DOCX Files Won’t Open, Then What?

MS Office is a big, complex program. Occasionally it can have problems, sometimes small ones, sometimes big. To deal with such stuff MS has thoughtfully — and thankfully — built repair tools into the application installer environment.

Visit Settings > Apps > Installed Apps and look for your version of Office (in my case it’s named “Microsoft apps for enterprise – en-us”). Click on that entry, then click the Modify button. That produces the repair options presented in the lead-in graphic, with “Quick Repair” selected by default. QR uses local files to re-install and reset MS Office. Most of the time it fixes things.

This time, it did not, so I went back to that repair window and selected “Online Repair” instead. This downloads a fresh copy of all necessary files from MS servers, and does a clean re-install and reset instead. Perforce, it takes longer to do its thing (about 5-6 minutes for quick, and double that for online, on  my 2014 vintage i7 Skylake desktop).

But hey! The Online Repair worked. As soon as it completed, I opened Outlook, and grabbed the most recent message with a .DOCX attachment. This time, instead of throwing an error message saying it couldn’t read the file, it opened it up and let me get to work. Just what I was hoping would happen.

Sometimes, things in Windows-World come to a happy ending. This was such a time, and I’m glad. Huzzah!

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

X380 Yoga Is Not Quite QMR-able

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It’s been a long time coming, and it’s on its way out. QMR is, of course, Quick Machine Recovery. It’s a facility to let an unbootable Windows image grab a repair and fix itself, from WU or other sources. MS announced it at Ignite 2024, and it started rolling out to the Beta Channel for Windows 11 24H2 in March 2025. It showed up on my Beta test PC — a Lenovo ThinkPad X380 Yoga –earlier this week. But alas, that X380 Yoga is not quite QMR-able just yet. Let me show and tell what that means…

Why Say: X380 Yoga Is Not Quite QMR-able

Take a look at the into screen cap. Up top you see the pane from the X380 for Settings > System > Recovery > Quick machine recovery. Note above that I’ve got QRM turned on and likewise the “continue searching” option. Below, I opened WinTerm to check the status of the Windows recovery agent console (aka reagentc) to show status.

According to Copilot if QMR is available and ready to work on a Windows 11 24H2 Beta PC, one should see four entries in the reagentc /info output (all bulleted items are quoted or paraphrased):

  • Recovery Test Mode: Enabled (if test mode is active)
  • Windows RE Status: Enabled (QMR relies on WinRE)
  • Remote Remediation: Active (if QMR is configured for automatic fixes)
  • Remediation Package: Installed (if a recovery update has been applied)

If you look at the output in the screecap, it shows only item 2. That simply means WinRE itself is turned on, and able to work on the X380. None of the other QMR specific items appear, though, do they?

Turns Out There’s a Gradual Rollout, Too…

There’s a Quality Update that WU should automatically download on some Windows 11 24H2 Beta Channel PCs for testing QMR. If it’s present the PC can be induced to reboot and use the QMR facility. That package is named “Quick machine recovery update for Windows 11.” BUT it’s on a gradual rollout, as I just learned yesterday.

Alas, this update is NOT in the Update History on my X380 PC. So I still can’t take QMR for a spin. I’ll get there — soon, I hope — but not today. If you’ve got a Windows 11 24H2 Beta image at your disposal, and it’s up to date, you can check things out, too. If you find the afore-mentioned item in your update history, you can take if for a spin with these two commands in Windows Terminal:

reagentc /SetRecoveryTestmode
reagentc /BoottoRE

Then, reboot your PC and you will see QMR do its thing. That’s what I plan to try as soon as I make into the “included group” during this gradual rollout.

And ain’t that just the way things go for Windows Insiders sometimes here in Windows-World? This isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, that I’m behind the leading edge on a gradual rollout.

 

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

Unsticking Lenovo System Update

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From May 6 through 12, I had a Lenovo System update stick in WU. That is, it would attempt to install, fail, and then push a retry button at me. Alas, that meant WU wouldn’t show me any newer updates, either. At the end of this cycle KB5058496 came along. It didn’t show up in WU, either. That’s when I found myself unsticking Lenovo system update on the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga X380 where it happened. How did I do that? I ran the:

Reset_Reregister_Windows_Update_Components_for_Windows11.bat

batch file from the Eleven Forums tutorial Reset Windows Update in Windows 11. As it so often does, the Lenovo System update worked the next time I tried after said reset operation had completed and I’d rebooted that PC (as per the batch file’s own instructions). The new CU installed, and went to Build 26120.3964.

More on Unsticking Lenovo System Update

I’m not sure why the WU version got stuck, nor why it stayed that way for some time. When I looked in the Windows-Update.log file I produced via the PowerShell Get-WindowsUpdateLog cmdlet, no supporting detail told me why it happened, either.

All that Copilot could tell me was that it must be a Lenovo servicing driver update of some kind. Google was willing to speculate it might be the driver for the Lenovo Intelligent Thermal Solution. Lenovo Vantage kind of confirms this in a back-handed way, in that its history shows the latest version dated March 2024 with version number 2.1.14.0, which certainly seems to follow in the general numbering track for the item that got stuck.

So I checked Device Manager > System devices > Lenovo Intelligent Thermal Solution properties. Sure enough, the currently installed version is 2.1.52.0. Interestingly the install date shows as 4/11/2025 (same as in WU update history). That leaves me glad this already-installed driver somehow got itself unstuck. I’m still wondering why WU offered it repeatedly from 5/6-12.

These meaningless mysteries never stop in Windows-World. I’m just glad this apparently unnecessary driver offer stopped when I reset WU. Now the machine is running Build 26120.3964 and the right Intelligent Thermal Solutions driver without further issues. I’m good for now, but sure something similar will pop up soon, on one or more of my mini-fleet of 12 PCs. Stay tuned!

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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Windows 10 Keeps PowerToys ComPal Error

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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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AI, Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Thoughts & concerns, WED Blog

Copilot PowerShell Scripting Improves

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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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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog

Interesting UniGetUI Update Shenanigans

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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

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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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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows 11

Dev Home Leaving Soon

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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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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Networking, Troubleshooting, WED Blog

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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