Category Archives: Windows 11

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Updates, WED Blog, Windows 11, Windows Update

Version Dev Gets No 25H2

October 21, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

On the last day of September, the Windows Experience blog announced “the availability of the Windows 11 2025 Update (aka Windows 11, version 25H2).” A little careful perusal of this info, and some checking from your humble author shows that availability not only includes production versions. It also includes Insider Preview versions in the Release Preview and Beta Channels as well. By extension that means Dev and Canary Channel fall outside this umbrella. That’s what I mean when I say “Version Dev Gets No 25H2,” as you can see in the lead in-graphic (shows an ambiguous “Version Dev” instead).

Version Dev Gets No 25H2 Means More Than It Says

On my Canary test PC (the stalwart, still kicking 2020 vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Hybrid Tablet) the version line from winver.exe gives things away. It reads “Version Dev” instead of 24H2 or 25H2. Both Dev and Canary Channels fall outside the Windows 11 versions that can upgrade to 25H2 at present. That’s because they belong to a different Windows 11 Build branch, with higher build numbers that bypass 25H2 entirely. That’s probably why MS forgoes 24H2/25H2 nomenclature in identifying the version as shown in the lead-in screencap.

OTOH, I was able to use the Installation Assistant yesterday to upgrade my Beta Channel test PC to 25H2. It shows the latest build status in Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program, as you can see here

But it also shows up as 25H2 in Winver, and up-to-date in WU, as you can see here:It’s all a matter of how close the bits come to matching the currrent production version of Windows 11. Because Canary and Dev Channels are further out, they’re not able to show a 25H2 base. That’s by design.

Interesting that Beta and Insider Preview Channels can move on up to 25H2 though, while Canary and Dev remain in the 24H2 zone. This will be interesting to watch in the months to come. I wonder if Canary will get its own version, or stay lumped in with Dev? We’ll see!

Device drivers, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Intel DSA Remote Follies

October 20, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, I found myself in a familiar pickle yesterday. I was working my way through the mini-fleet of PCs (10 units: 6 lappies, 4 desktops) here at Chez Tittel, doing updates and cleanup. I noticed the Lenovo Yoga AIO9i (Copilot+ PC with Intel Core Ultra 7 258, 32GB RAM, etc.) was hanging on the Intel Driver & Support Assistant (DSA). Half an hour in, I gave up and tried re-installing the app. Thereupon I got an interesting error “Cannot install a product when a newer version is installXXXX.” Only slowly did it dawn on me: I had a case of Intel DSA remote follies. Let me explain…

Going Local Fixes Intel DSA Remote Follies

As I figured out, my problem was not that DSA wouldn’t run, nor was it borked. My problem was that DSA didn’t want to run remotely. That is, it didn’t want to run to completion via Remote Desktop Connection from my primary desktop. I was updating the NPU and GPU drivers. So apparently DSA wants to do either or both of those things locally, not remotely.

Once I walked over to the AIO9i, rebooted, and re-ran DSA, everything worked just fine. I’ve noticed over the years that some driver updates work well remotely while others do not — or won’t work at all. On the plus side of this phenom, it always tickles me when DSA updates LAN or Wi-Fi drivers and the remote session dies briefly, then picks back up where it left off and the session resumes.

AFAIK, this issue with NPU or GPU is intermittent. Indeed I’ve never had a problem updating either built-in or Intel ARC GPU drivers remotely, now that I think back on Windows 11 era experiences. Thus, it must be something about NPU driver on a Copilot+ PC that occasionally makes DSA hang interminably.

But hey, it’s just another day’s work here in Windows-World. If you hang one way, you have to find a way to un-hang, and make the update some other way. And so it turned out, yesterday afternoon. Problem? What problem? Operator error, most likely…

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

DIMM and Dimmer: My Memory Misorder

October 17, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

It’s been bothering me for the past couple of weeks. I ordered a pair of memory modules to bump up RAM in the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra. I used the same part number for what’s installed, thinking that it would guarantee a perfect replacement/addition. So wrong! I just happened to glance at the package the modules arrived in and saw something serious. Doh! It’s a case of DIMM and Dimmer — my memory misorder completely explains everything. Take a look…

Why I’m DIMM and Dimmer: My Memory Misorder

The upper left corner of the package says it all: 96GB kit. I thought I was ordering a 64GB kit and got a 96 instead. No wonder the P3 Ultra wouldn’t POST with those modules in place! Its max RAM capacity is 128GB. With 64 GB already installed, adding 96 takes the total to 160GB, or 32 GB over the top.

I have to laugh. If I take both existing modules out, I can get a 32 GB bump anyway. Or if I replace the too-big modules with what I should’ve gotten in the first place, I can get up to 128 GB, just like I’ve got on my Flo6 desktop.

I’ll have to think about this for a while. In the meantime, I’m laughing at my own idiotic failure to doublecheck what I wanted against what I got delivered to me. Just because I used the same part numbers to place my order doesn’t mean that’s what I got back. Go figure!

Here in Windows-World, things aren’t always as they seem. And sometimes that’s because yours truly isn’t paying enough attention to what’s right there in front of him. Sigh. But at least I now know why the PC wouldn’t POST with all four modules in place. That had been driving me ever so slightly bonkers…

Insider stuff, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog, Windows 11

Latest Beta CU Keeps Remote MSA Login Glitch

October 15, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, then. I just logged into the ThinkPad X380 Yoga, where I run the Windows 11 Beta Channel Insider Previews. I’ve been forced to remote into that laptop using a local account for months. But just now, I got fooled by a successful MSA login to Office immediately after login on that PC. I thought the MSA issue was fixed, but I thought wrong. The Remote Desktop Connection used my LocalOnly account to set up that remote session, after which the MSA worked fine to login through MS to access Office. Despite my hopes to the contrary, the latest Beta CU keeps remote MSA login glitch. Sigh.

Showing Latest Beta CU Fixes Remote MSA Login Glitch

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you’ll see two important things. One, Office asking me if I want to stay signed in. Two, it’s showing the account that stays that way if I agree (“Yes”) is an MSA. For the record, that is an old, expired MSA whose mail server/domain got turned off in 2024, so I don’t mind sharing it publicly. But as I explained, that’s not the same account that Remote Desktop Connection used to make the RDP connection in the first place. I got fooled!

The interesting thing, of course, is that RDP (via the Remote Desktop Connection, aka mstsc.exe) is still cannot resolve MSA lookups to the MS authentication servers during login. I’m still getting an invalid credentials error. I’ve also seen “unable to contact LSA” (Local Security Authority) errors as well. Sigh again.

Even though I tried an MSA, the error message still shows the local account.

With the update to Build 26120.6780 in the wake of KB5067103, that problem seems to persist. But, I’ve been through this on-again, off-again ability to use MSA logins for RDP for some time now. So I’m wondering: when will MS fix this thing? That’s the way things go with Insider Previews, here in Windows-World. As long as I can work around it, that’s OK!

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

Copilot sez: Enough, or Too Much

October 14, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’ve been excessively busy for the past few days, working on a legal matter. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about Copilot’s limits. Turns out this tool is extraordinarily adept at running down references and finding sources that document specific quotes. But it’s also inclined to get stuck sometimes if my queries assume too much about what it already knows. That is, echoing William Blake’s Proverbs of Heaven and Hell Copilot sez: Enough, or Too Much? Thereupon it becomes unresponsive. Yesterday, I had to reboot a machine to bring Copilot back to life. Even ending the task and restarting the app didn’t help. Weird!

When Copilot sez: Enough, or Too Much,
Do This…

So I had to ask Copilot “Why do you choke or become nonresponsive sometimes?” It had 5 answers, at least 3 of which corresponded to yesterday’s circumstances:

1. Overloaded or ambiguous input: Messages (prompts, I would say) are too long, too vague or contain multiple conflicting instructions.

2, Tool or system glitches: Copilot avers it relies on a whole box of tools (it names “search, image generation, memory, etc.”). Should one fail to respond, Copilot has to wait, and may stall while waiting.

3. Safety or Policy Filters: By design, Copilot won’t respond to prompts that violate its safety and policy rules. Good thing, and I hope they’re sufficiently broad and devious enough to foil hackers.

4. Missing Context or References: It’s too easy to assume Copilot remembers and understands what you’ve been asking it recently. TLDR version: not always. Be specific.

5. Complex Reasoning Bottlenecks: Technical, multi-layered tasks require Copilot to find, assemble and structure lots of information. Takes time, enough so that it might seem like forever.

I’m pretty sure yesterday’s hangup was a mix of items 2, 4 and 5. I try very hard not to overload my prompts, and what I work on shouldn’t trigger failsafes — of any kind. But hey, here in Windows-World, hang-up and delays are all part of the daily routine. Yours too, I guess?

Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Thoughts & concerns, WED Blog, Windows 11

Pricing Rugged Copilot+ Tablets

October 10, 2025 Ed Tittel 2 Comments

Cruising X yesterday, I hit a thread touting Dell’s Pro Rugged 10″ and 12″ tablets. Out of curiosity, I started digging. Want a 12″ Copilot+ Rugged tablet? Think hard, and dig deep! Expect to spend between $4-5K for the privilege of owning one. I costed one out and it came to $3,745, not including the detachable keyboard. So I looked for other makers including MobileDemand, Getac, and Panasonic/Toughbook. Pricing rugged Copilot+ tablets tells me they’re painfully expensive. That means other makers are charging about the same for comparable offerings as Dell. Ouch!

For the record, spending that kind of money gets you a Copilot+ system with at least 40 TOPS of NPU, bright graphics (has to be visible in sunlight), 32 GB RAM, and at least 1 TB of storage. It also typically includes at least one form of long-haul wireless capability (e.g. 5G). If you’re going this route, you’ll want to spring for a second, hot-swappable battery as well. Don’t want to run out of juice in the middle of nowhere!

Pricing Rugged Copilot+ Tablets Means $$$$

I’ve long been fascinated with powerful tablet PCs that come with detachable keyboards. They make great readers, untethered, and they work reasonably well as laptops with keyboards plugged in. But gosh, this latest generation costs up to 4X as much as any model I’ve ever purchased. I’ve owned or reviewed other Toughbooks, Dell, Fujitsu, and Microsoft Surface models configured to work this way. Of those the Fujitsu Stylistic Q704 was the most costly at just under $3K; the Dell Latitude 5285 was my definite favorite. Neither was ruggedized, though…

The markets for rugged tablets and PCs are usually the military, first responders, field crews for utilities, field scientists and data collectors, FEMA and disaster relief teams of all kinds, and other folks who must work outdoors or in hostile environments (sometimes, literally). Adding expense to achieve reliability and dependability is something that comes with such roles– and related uses, for PCs or tablets.

There are lots of specialized niches in Windows-World. This is one I’m happy to visit when companies like Panasonic want to send me review units. But at those prices, I’m unlikely to buy one myself, unless I get a job that requires me to compute in the field where I might have to work in rainy, dusty, or otherwise hard-to-handle environments. At this stage of my career, that seems kinda unlikely — but you never know.

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Canary Build 27965 Gets New Start Menu, But…

October 9, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I have a strange and twisted history with access to new Windows features. If they’re on gradual rollout, I’m not in the first cohort. If they target specific hardware or configurations, that’s not what I’m using. Today brings another case in point. If you read the MS announcement for the latest Canary drop, you’ll see it starts with this bold headline: Introducing the new Start menu for Windows 11. Here’s the catch: Sure Canary Build 27965 gets new Start menu. But that big new layout requires “a larger screen device” on which users “can see more of your apps and files.”

Canary Build 27965 Gets New Start Menu…On Big Displays…On Gradual Rollout

Wouldn’t you know it? I’m running Canary on a Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Convertible Tablet. The 12 indicates a nominal 12″ display, so it doesn’t qualify for the bigger, broader layout. Sigh. It doesn’t even kick in when I remote into the system through a 27″ monitor. Go figure!

Given the size limitation, I could see why my Start menu didn’t get bigger on the X12. But then, I read the fine print at the end of the New Start menu section:

[We are beginning to roll this out to Windows Insiders in the Canary, so the experience isn’t available to all Insiders just yet as we plan to monitor feedback before pushing it out to everyone.]

It seems that because I can’t access the UI features discussed earlier in that section, I’m not in the initial release cohort to get this feature anyway. Is that adding insult to injury, or just more of the same old, same old? Here in Windows-World it can be hard to tell the difference!

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

Bringing OhMyPosh to Flo6

October 7, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Flo6 is what I call my new production desktop. Today, I finally got around to installing and turning on the OhMyPosh shell prompt tool on said desktop. I’ve done this before, and it’s always interesting to see how things work now, as opposed to the way they did the last time I did this. Indeed I hit some changes: nothing insuperable, but enough to make me stop and think about what I was doing, and how best to do it. In bringing OhMyPosh to Flo6, I had to overcome bogus Copilot guidance, re-read my own 2024 OhMyPosh article, and visit the OhMyPosh website to grab my preferred theme.

After Bringing OhMyPosh to Flo6, A Snazzy Look

If you examine the lead-in graphic you can see what adding OhMyPosh to the mix does for PowerShell inside Windows Terminal. It definitely adds to the visual appeal of the command prompt, and lets you see more info right away.

Here’s brief summary of the steps involved (all the deets are covered in the afore-linked OhMyPosh article, which I will henceforth abbreviate as OMP):

1. Install a nerd font (necessary for OMP to show its colorful symbols and glyphs)
2. Change the default profile in WinTerm to invoke that nerd font
3. Change PowerShell startup to call OMP and its theme on startup
4. Reload the startup info ($Profile variable) to invoke the new setup

In theory, this is dead easy. In practice, it requires a fair amount of command line jiggery pokery. The whole operation took half an hour or so, mostly because I had to remember (and read about) those steps and their details. OMP also no longer downloads its themes when it’s installed, so I had to visit the themes page and download the one I wanted (it’s named JanDeDobbeleer.omp.json) and put it in the OMP default folder (C:\users\<acct>\ohmyposh) to match the configuration in the associated profile info.

Eminently doable, if a bit more time consuming than I remembered. But shoot: that’s just another normal day here in Windows-World!

Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11, Windows Update

Gradual Rollout Strikes Notification Update

October 6, 2025 Ed Tittel 4 Comments

I guess it’s inevitable. Upon reading about how Windows 11 25H2 finally extends notification area pop-ups to non-primary displays on multi-monitor rigs, I checked my own production PC. This is, of course, the Asrock B550-based Ryzen 7 5800X with its dual Dell 2717 UHD displays. And wouldn’t you know it? Works on the primary, but not the secondary. As I check the KB5065789 announcement, I learn why. Once again, gradual rollout strikes notification update, and my PC is NOT in the forefront. Sigh.

Explaining Gradual Rollout Strikes Notification Update

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you can see the text from the afore-linked announcement. It reads:

[Notification Center] New! The Notification Center functionality is now available on secondary monitors. To open it, select the date and time in the system tray on the taskbar. With the August 2025 non-security update (KB5064081), you can also show a larger clock with seconds above the calendar.

What that doesn’t show, alas, is that this occurs under the “Gradual Rollout” heading in that announcement. In turn, that means this feature is trickling out to 25H2 PCs, not all of them at once. I’ll hook a second monitor up to one of my Copilot PCs and see if that machine gets the new functionality. Nope, doesn’t work when I used HDMI to connect up a second monitor to the Lenovo Copilot+ AIO9i model, either.

It Remains the Hardest Part: Waiting…

I’m just going to have to wait for MS to flip whatever switch it takes to get one or more of my 8 or so 25H2 PCs to attain this capability. I’m no stranger to this position in the Windows-World feature sweepstakes — that is, on the outside, looking in. Sigh again.

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

25H2 Notification Gets Time

October 3, 2025 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Earlier this week, Windows 11 25H2 started making its way onto desktops via Windows Update (and other means). By now, I’ve got about half my eligible PCs updated. So far, it’s been a positive experience. Though others have reported issues — knocks wood — so far, things at Chez Tittel have been hunky-dory. I read this morning at NeoWin that clock time is returning to the notification calendar in 25H2. If you look at the right-hand item in the lead-in screencap, you’ll see what I mean, as 25H2 notification gets time back.

What 25H2 Notification Gets Time Means

The left-hand side of the lead-in shows what the notification calendar looks like in 25H2 without a small settings change. This is the calendar that pops up when you click the date & time area to the far right of the notification area in Windows 11. Note that the left-hand side shows the weekday, month and date up top. The right-hand side shows time in hh:mm:ss AM/PM on one line, and then weekday, month and date below that. The difference is the presence or absence of the clock line.

How do you make this appear in 25H2? Good question! Here’s a step-by-step:

1. Click through Settings > Time & language > Date & time
2. Toggle Show time in Notification Center from Off (default) to On.

The next time you click on the date & time in notifications, you’ll see the time info above the typical weekday, month and date line. Easy-peasey, right?

Back from Windows 10, But I Never Missed It

If you read the Neowin story linked above (or other copious coverage on this tiny but often-requested UI change), you’ll get the sense that this little change is a big deal. And apparently it is, for some. But as a long-time and ongoing user of Helmut Buhler’s Gadgets from GadgetPack.net, I’ve been able to see a clock (and turn the second hand on) since Windows 8 came along just over 13 years ago. So it’s no big thing for me.

The clock gadget shows an analog clock to which I add the Windows machine name. Always on the desktop: handy!

But for others in Windows-World, it appears to satisfy a long-standing desire. Who am I to say them nay? Enjoy!