Category Archives: Cool Tools

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

Panasonic Utility Takes Roundabout Path

January 4, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Heh! I have to chuckle about this one… In learning the ins and outs of the new Panasonic Toughbook FZ-55 I have in hand right now. I’ve been following instructions from the manual and, via e-mail, from the PR team. It’s been interesting. All of these sources have asked or advised me to “run the PC Information Viewer.” Good enough, but more interesting than it needs to be from a find & launch perspective. Indeed, this Panasonic utility takes roundabout path to get to the desktop. Let me explain…

Why I Say: Panasonic Utility Takes Roundabout Path

To begin, the tool is named PC Information Viewer. First, off I looked in the Start menu under “PC” and “Panasonic” (just in case, given its origins). Nada. Nothing under “All apps” matches this value.

Then the very nice and helpful PR person asked me to send output from aforementioned PC Information Viewer so the tech folks could look it over. Still couldn’t find it. But it did finally turn up. Inside the Panasonic PC Settings Utility, there’s a Support tab up top. When you click that tab, lo and behold! As you can see in the next screencap, a “Launch PC Information Viewer” button appears at bottom center. Notice also it’s deliberately low-res with big print and extremely easy to read (good design move, developers!)

THERE’s the right launch button!

And sure enough, when you click the button the PC Information Viewer utility opens right up, to wit:

And finally, here’s the PC Information Viewer application: SetDiag.exe.

By right-clicking its taskbar entry while running I was able to pop up the Properties window, where I learned the name of this program is SetDiag.exe. If only I’d been able to find that somewhere in the docs, I’d have been able to get there eventually using the run box. As it turned out I had to use the voidtools Everything search tool to see its home folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Panasonic\pcinfo. That’s apparently not inserted into the PATH variable, either.

Sigh. Just sigh. But with a little perseverance I got it sorted… That’s the essence of thriving in Windows World: taking the directions as stated, and figuring out how to make them do something useful.

Cool Tools, Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, USB devices, WED Blog

HWiNFO Bestows USB4 Insight

January 3, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I just learned something very interesting. Most of it comes courtesy of the GitHub HWiNFO project. Use it to garner system information and diagnostics in Windows. The lead-in graphic shows a Thunder-bolt 4 NVMe enclosure plugged into a Panasonic Toughbook FZ-55. There (upper right) it appears as a Crucial NVMe SSD with PCIe x4 controller. For reasons I am about to reveal, I believe HWiNFO bestows USB4 insight into the USB-C connection in use.

What HWiNFO Bestows USB4 Insight Means

That insight comes from the full text of the Drive Controller info. It reads “NVMe (PCIe x4 8.0 GT/s @x4 8.0 GT/s). That means the PC sees the external drive, plugged in through a USB-C port on the FZ-55 as a PCIe x4 device capable of up to 8 giga-transfers per second (that latter part is what 8.0 GT/s means).

Basically, rating throughput in GT/s gives drive makers a way to account for encoding overhead in the PCIe protocol. Note: 8 GT/s translates into 7.877 Gbps with overhead backed out. Indeed, what this really means is the connection clocks half the maximum speed per PCIe x4 lane (16 GT/s). To me that indicates this connection tops out at a nominal 10 Gbps ( aka USB 3.2 Gen 2×1).

Where USB4 Comes Into Play

This is where I finally get to see a feature in Windows 11 I’ve read about but hasn’t manifested on PCs in my possession. The Toughbook FZ-553 delivered just before Christmas displays a USB option labeled “USB4 Hubs and Devices” (see below).

If I hadn’t seen the PCIe x4 stuff in HWiNFO, I’d never have looked for this!

Indeed, it was seeing the mention of a visible NVMe controller and its PCIe x4 details in HWiNFO that led me to start wondering about USB4 and related Thunderbolt support. On other (older) PCs, I’ve only been able to access info about USB4 and Thunderbolt devices through the Intel Thunderbolt Control Center app. That’s been present by default on those other PCs with high-speed USB-C ports. On the FZ-55, Thunderbolt Control Center is absent. It doesn’t even come up in the Store (though it shows up clearly as a search string).

OK, NOW I get it: the Intel USB4 Host Router does on newer PCs what the Intel Thunderbolt Control Center does on older ones. It makes USB4 storage devices visible and accessible. Good to know!

Thankfully, HWiNFO shows more about the device, including the NVMe maker, controller, and drive model (a 1TB PCIe x4 Crucial NVMe drive). Likewise good to know; more insight, too!

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog

Overcoming WingetUI Hiccups

January 2, 2024 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been switching between winget at the command line, and WingetUI (Martin Climent’s UI-based GitHub project). Just this morning, I observed that the CLI version didn’t see a couple of updates that WingetUI did — namely, PSGallery CredentialManager and a fresh update for the Python Interpreter (Python.Python.2). Interestingly, the source for Python does show up as “Winget.” But when I scan for updates in the CLI version it doesn’t “see” Python as out-of-date. But letting WingetUI run in the background, both updates kept failing. Thus, overcoming WingetUI hiccups took direct intervention and a bit of thought. Let me explain…

Get Busy: Overcoming WingetUI Hiccups

I’m not sure why both items failed in the background, but they did. Alas, I clobbered the error messages from WingetUI without recording them first. But when I ran WingetUI directly, the Credential-Manager upgrade went through immediately. But the Python update failed again.

Looking at the right-click options, I noticed that among its entries for individual updates, WingetUI includes a “Run as administrator” item. So I tried that next. This opened a Python update windows (which had not appeared during earlier attempts). And sure enough: it worked and the update went through.

Further Details Show Something Familiar

I couldn’t help but notice that WingetUI reported needing version 2.0.0 of CredentialManager while seeing version 2.0 already installed. I wrote about this version parsing peccadillo in my last post (Laughable Stardock Version Mixup) in connection with Start10. Here it is again, with a PowerShell Gallery element. Apparently, this happens more often than I’d noticed! This might also explain why it shows up in WingetUI and not in the CLI version: that latter runtime is incredibly careful about changing stuff when processes are running or when slight changes to the installer or runtime could occur. And indeed, Demitrius Nelon confirmed this behavior for me in an X/Twitter message last Friday, so I’m pretty sure it’s a real — if entirely trivial — thing.

As for Python, that’s a little more interesting. Looks like administrator privilege cracked some kind of access or permissions issue, and allowed the update to proceed. That’s a good “second try” technique for me to keep in my toolbox. Now that I’ve seen it work, I’m sure I’ll find occasion to use it again. Maybe you will, too!

Cheers, and welcome to a new year in Windows-World. It’s already off to an interesting start…

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 10

Laughable Stardock Version Mixup

December 29, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I have to chuckle. Winget just told me to upgrade Stardock Start10 on my lone remaining physical Windows 10 PC. Why? It sees a version numbered 1.9.7.0 but wants to take that package to 1.97. Of course, they are one and the same thing, and the update install fails with error code 9, as shown in the lead-in graphic. This laughable Stardock version mixup tells me there may be an issue with how version numbers get parsed and divided up inside winget’s package database.

Laughable Stardock Version Mixup:
1.9.7.0 v 1.97

When I run the about screen from the version that’s actually running what you see next is what I see too. Guess what? The in-app update check confirms that 1.97 is indeed already running and the most current release. So what’s the confusion?

Not only is 1.97 already running, in-app update says it’s current.

This is one of the little mishaps to which winget sometimes succumbs. It’s no big deal, and it’s actually kind of endearing. And it gives me something to report in to the team. Not that they’ll be short of things to do next week when the world gets back to work!

I’m guessing it will take one or two database corrections to fix this, and probably less than 5 minutes’ work. Perhaps I’ll be finding out. If I do, I’ll share here so stay tuned!

Cool Tools, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Unboxing Toughbook Then Updating Same

December 26, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I just got the kind of Christmas present that delights me. Even though I won’t get to keep it, I’m having a total gas unboxing, updating and setting up the Toughbook 55 PC that Panasonic sent Friday week. It’s a “ruggedized PC” designed for field use in hazardous duty situations (military, first responders, hostile environments, and so forth). In some surprising ways, tho, unboxing Toughbook then updating same has posed some interesting challenges and roadblocks. But it’s been fun!

And I totally lucked into this situation. At the end of November, my TechTarget story “The 6 best rugged computers for business use cases” went live. Shortly after, Panasonic contacted me to share more information about their latest Toughbook model. My response: if you can, please send me one to review. It took a while, but now I’ve got one in my hot little hands. Read on for more info, in what I plan as a series of descriptions and discussions. This one covers unboxing and initial setup and impressions. Others will go into more detail.

FZ55-3 Toughbook Specs

Here’s what came with the particular model FZ55-3 I received:

i7-1370P (14 Cores, 20 logical processors)
32 GB DDR4-3200 Samsung M471A2G43CB2-CWE
Integrated Iris Xe Graphics Raptor Lake-P/U GT2
512 GB NVMe SSD Kioxia KBGBAZNV512G
(PCIe 4.0, 1.4x OPAL)
14″ InfoVision Display 1920×1080 (Full HD)
1 or 2 GbE Ethernet adapters (I219-LM)
Wi-Fi 802.11ax (Intel AX211)
USB 3.2 (USB-C) & 3.1 (USB Type A) ports
Multiple Serial ports (Com 1, 3, 4 & 6)
LG-BU40N Blu ray player/burner
Plug-ins for (1) fingerprint reader, (2) smart card reader, (3) 2 serial ports (D-9 & D-15) + PS/2 Keyboard port

As you’d expect from a MIL-STD-810H compliant device, it’s tough, all buttoned up and ready for some harsh, demanding action.

Gotchas While Unboxing Toughbook, Then Updating Same

I did run into a series of little gotchas while bringing up the Toughbook (TB), then applying WU updates, and adding some some software to put it through its paces. Here’s the current list:

1. The TB wouldn’t connect to my Asus WAP right next store to my desk on a butcher’s rack. It would, however, happily connect to the Spectrum Arris box in the master closet (25′ away).

2. As an experiment, I elected to synch my local apps, settings and so forth with those on another PC (P16 Mobile workstation) during OOBE. This quit at some point with a generic and unhelpful “Something went wrong” error message. That said, this functionality returned on a later reboot and completed successfully. Go figure!

3. Updating and downloading took longer than I’m used to (possibly because of the more distant Arris Wi-Fi connection). I eventually switched over to wired Ethernet (GbE). It still took longer to download and update stuff than I expected it to: stiffer security built-in perhaps? That would make sense for certain kinds of “digital hostility” that this unit is built to withstand. A subsequent check (LAN file transfer for an iso Win11 image) showed it could well be the NVMe SSD that’s the bottleneck. More testing will resolve this.

4. Among my various usual post-install/acquisition software items, I installed Piriform Speccy. It immediately crashed the TB as soon as it ran. Sigh. BSOD with an out-of-bounds memory error. I’ve seen this on other PCs before, it’s from unauthorized access to the PCI bus. I’m using HWinfo instead (it works fine).

Seems pretty normal for bringing up a new PC in general, especially one that’s been deliberately hardened.

First Impressions

NVMe access speeds aside, this is a fast, capable laptop. I like the display (it’s bright and easy to read). The keyboard is immediately usable with tangible key travel and good key placement. It switches between Wi-Fi and GbE with ease and aplomb. Switching from a 14″ built-in display to a remote 27″ monitor means I have to pay attention to where I leave apps I close (or leave open) — otherwise, they show up off-screen on the smaller built-in display.

A unit configured like mine costs somewhere between US$3,600 and $4,000, as far as I can tell (from online shopping comparisons). This is the kind of system that costs more, but is designed to withstand grueling and rigorous situations and uses well outside the range of usual home or office environments. So far, color me impressed…

Stay tuned! I’ll be writing more about this unit over the next month. I’m especially impressed with the TB’s swappable modules and keen attention to protecting itself from schmutz and dust. I’ll explain more later — I promise!

Cool Tools, Device drivers, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Working SDIO Driver Updates

December 22, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then. I ‘ve been living and working with Snappy Driver Installer Origin (aka SDIO) for 4 or 5 months now. It’s an Open Source project from a person named Glenn Delahoy. Snappy has a comprehensive database of drivers (I’ve run only into 4 related elements — all part of a single device, really, for which it didn’t have drivers present). In working SDIO driver updates I’ve learned how to use the program in a way that should stay inside organizational policies for acceptable use (AUPs). Let me explain

Best Ways for Working SDIO Driver Updates

Snappy describes itself as a “portable tool.” What that means is you don’t need to keep it around. In fact, because it will get you the most current software and driver database indexes (and such content as you may need), it’s best to grab a fresh ZIP file each time you want to use it.

When you run the exe file (full name for 64-bit version: SDIO_x64_R759.exe), you must accept its license terms. Then you’ll see the screen that shows up in the lead-in graphic above. Note that it provides buttons labeled as follows:

Download All Driver Packs
Download Network Drivers Only
Download Indexes Only

Working Through The Buttons

These require some explanation. The first button (All …) speaks to SDIO’s architecture as a BitTorrent distributed environment. All Driver Packs come in at around 60GB, and by downloading them, you open the door for the host PC to act as a Torrent server for other users who wish to access the Snappy Driver databases. Because this violates every AUP I know of, don’t do this at work.

The second button (Network…) downloads driver packs for networking stuff so that PCs that lack drivers for wired or wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth, and so forth, can be “fixed” to access their local and other networks. You probably won’t need this, but it might come in handy sometime. Keep it in your hat…

The third button (Indexes…) involves an 18 MB download with the info that Snappy needs to (a) identify all the drivers it recognizes on PCs on which its run and (b) find a match in its driver packs or report a driver it lacks. As I said before, I’ve seen missing drivers come up only one machine of the dozens I’ve used it on since last August (2023). That’s ultimately why it’s my go-to button in SDIO.

How I Use Snappy Could Tell You Something…

I use Snappy on my PC fleet once a month. I visit the maker’s page, where you will always find a link to the current version and database. I remove older versions from my Snappy folder, unZIP its ZIP file, and run the 64-bit version. After accepting the license terms, and selecting the “Indexes” button it tells me if I need any driver updates on the target PC where it’s run. Mostly I get a screen that looks like this:

With four months of regular use, I mostly see “Drivers are up to date” on Windows PCs.

It doesn’t bother me to get mostly “up to date” reports from Snappy. Indeed, that’s what I hope it will tell me. If the tool finds any drivers in need of update they will show up as a list in the upper-right quadrant. Simply by clicking Install(x) — where x is the number of out-of-date drivers Snappy finds — you can get it to catch that PC up with where Snappy thinks it should be.

So far, my results from using Snappy have been uniformly positive. I’ve not encountered any driver related issues since I started using it regularly a while back. That’s the basis for my coverage and (still-tentative) recommendation. Try it out — you may learn to like it, as have I.

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, WED Blog

Winget Show URLs Are Live

December 21, 2023 Ed Tittel 1 Comment

Wow! I got a great, unsolicited tip from Demitrius Nelon yesterday (he’s the winget team lead at MS, and a great communicator). It explains a way to grab the download for any package that winget can find. It came up in the context of updating the package named Microsoft.PowerShell, but it will work for any package by name. He informed me that if you run winget show, it will include an installer URL. I knew that. What I didn’t know and am jazzed to learn, is that you can CTRL-click the link and it will fire up your default browser and download it. That’s what “Winget Show URLs are live” means.

Because Winget Show URLs Are Live, Use Them!

This comes up in the context of PowerShell reasonably often for me, because I run PowerShell as my default shell inside Windows Terminal. Alas, when some new PowerShell updates pop up, winget can’t install them because their “install technology” changes. That’s because winget is inherently conservative when updating, and won’t make big changes on its own. Thus, for example, when an install technology change hits PowerShell, one must then download the new version from GitHub and run the installer to make the update.

Look near the bottom of the lead-in screengrab, which shows the output for “Winget show MIcrosoft.PowerShell.” It’s the section that starts with “Installer:” at left. 2 lines down the label reads “Installer Url” with the actual github download link to its right. If you hold the CTRL key down and click on that URL, download will commence.

This is about as handy as updates get when winget won’t do them for you automatically. Shoot! It makes a pretty good alternative to winget install <package-name>, too. Thanks, Demetrius: this tip makes a snazzy stocking stuffer. Happy holidays!

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog

Hello Default Blocks Enhanced Mode Login

December 19, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s an interesting Catch-22 — for me, anyway. If you want to move data into or out of a VM easily, you must run that VM in an”Enhanced session.” OTOH, if you run a VM in that mode, you can’t login. First, you must tweak a setting with the Enhanced session turned off for the moment. Why? Because a Hello default blocks enhanced mode login unless it’s turned off. Let me explain…

Unless Turned Off Hello Default Blocks Enhanced Mode Login

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you’re also looking in on a VM window via an RDP session. You can see the pull down menu from the control bar shows its “Enhanced session” setting is enabled (blue checkmark against light blue background).

Unfortunately, because of Windows OS defaults upon installation, a VM will also have the Settings → Accounts → Sign-in options set with “Require Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts” turned on. Alas, that means the Enhanced session VM window will come up, but it won’t respond to the mouse or keyboard to show a login prompt with its PIN or password text entry box. You can’t login under these circumstances until you uncheck the “Enhanced session” item, log in to the VM, then visit Settings and turn off the afore-mentioned Hello sign-in requirement. Once that is done, you can turn the Enhanced session back on, and it will work just fine to let you login. Go Figure!

See the Setting Info…

Here’s a screencap of the “Require Windows Hello…” stuff from Windows 10. The one in Windows 11 is virtually the same.

If you are like me, you use both RDP and VMs together regularly. That means this little maneuver is a useful and necessary part of post-install set-up/clean-up.

Cool Tools, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11

Fixing Windows 11 Boot Loop

December 18, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Last Friday, we picked son Gregory up at the airport: he’s home for the holidays from college. That evening, he mentioned his laptop — a 2019 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga — was “stuck on updates.” Boy, was he ever right: i found myself fixing Windows 11 boot loop as the machine hung after the post-GUI reboot in attempting to get through the 23H2 feature upgrade. Stuck, stuck, stuck indeed.

Fixing Windows 11 Boot Loop Takes Thought & Recall

As soon as I turned the PC on, I could tell it was cycling on processing updates. It just couldn’t seem to get past the spinning circle stage after the initial reboot. Multiple tries later — 3 of them, to be exact — the Windows bootstrap facility presented me with the recovery menu. “Aha!” I though “now I’m getting somewhere…”

Of course, then I had to remember to turn off secure boot in the UEFI so I could actually transfer control to a bootable WinRE environment on a flash drive (UFD). Startup repairs didn’t do it. The Macrium Reflect Rescue Media’s “fix boot problems” didn’t do it, either. But when I stuck the DaRT (Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset) UFD into the machine it finally got through a boot-up to alternate media.

On the next reboot, Windows recognized it was stuck in the middle of a failed update. It then commenced rollback to the previous 11 version and reached the desktop. At that point, I was able to run another Reflect backup (I did), and then start rolling forward again.

All’s Well That Ends Well

The pending Cumulative Update completed successfully, and rebooted correctly. I then fired off the 23H2 upgrade and crossed my fingers. This time, it completed without a hitch. The X390 is now fully caught up, cleaned up and has been backed up one more time.

I’m not sure what caused the first 23H2 attempt to hang in a boot loop, but it didn’t fall prey to that again. I think it may have been the attempt to apply the CU, then the 23H2 upgrade, in a single go. This time around, I made sure to reboot after the CU, before attempting the 23H2 upgrade. By the time I worked through all the steps, the whole shebang took about 2 hours to fix. We were all glad when it was done — me, especially.

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

Windows 10 Copilot Remains Elusive

December 14, 2023 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

There’s a new KB in circulation that claims to extend the reach of Copilot in Windows 10. That would be KB5033372, released December 12. But alas: on the lone eligible physical PC and various Windows VMs here at Chez Tittel, Windows 10 Copilot remains elusive. It runs fine inside Edge, but will not show up as a Taskbar or Start menu item on any of their desktops. Sigh.

Why Windows 10 Copilot Remains Elusive

A quick visit to the KB announcement (link in preceding paragraph) gives me an excellent idea why my PC isn’t getting Copilot. Because some multi-monitor set-ups are subject to “mysterious icon migration” across or among desktops, MS has blocked it for such configs. Here’s what they say:

To prevent users from encountering this issue, Copilot in Windows (in preview) might not be available on devices that have been used or are currently being used in a multimonitor configuration.

And wouildn’t you know it: my Windows 10 PC runs with dual Dell UltraSharp 2717 monitors. That definitely accounts for my physical PC’s lack of Copilot. But I’m not so sure about the VMs. It may stem from my typical mode of access to them (using one of the two just-mentioned monitors) or it may be something else.

A Ray of Hope?

In the same KB announcement already cited MS also says that they’re “working on a solution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.” Here’s hoping that release is upcoming sooner rather than later!

And once again, I’m a Johnny-come-lately among all those already in the vanguard. But hey: that exactly the way that things go here in Windows-World. Once more with feeling, I guess!!