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Since most of the systems I work on are Windows Pro, I used Group Policy Editor to block the update to 24H2. When I decided to upgrade some systems, I downloaded the Media Creation Tool to use for the update. Never had a problem with that. I still had the block in place, but the upgrade did not care. I have since removed it. Another member of our local computer club did the upgrade to one system using the full download in Windows update. The upgrade got horked, but fortunately he was able to restore to v23H2. Later I tried the upgrade on the same system with the Media Creation Tool and had no issues.

About a week or so after I upgraded another system, it crashed while shutting down showing a message regarding the display driver. This computer also has the Intel ARC chip and a new Intel Core Ultra U7 processor. I was working with the manufacturer but they had no answer for the issue. One suggestion they had was to uninstall the current Intel driver, reboot, and see if it picks up a new driver. It did not. So far this has happened only once. If it happens again, I might try the Intel Graphics Command Center to see if that has an update.

JohnD

This is an interesting article. I was playing around with a very small awk program (maybe a dozen lines) that I had written to test some things and I was having a problem with it. So I thought why not try Copilot. I gave it the general particulars of the code and I could not believe what it gave me back. It returned almost line for line the code I had written including a comment I had inserted. Where did it get this? The good news is that it corrected the issue I had. A few days later I tried some Powershell code trying to find some methods of doing a procedure and it gave me my awk code back even though I had specified to use Powershell. It apparently somehow remembered that from before. Don’t know how. Copilot is still a work in progress.

JohnD

I have the same local account on all my computers so that I can transfer files between any of them. The only issue I run into is that sometimes one of the computers is not picked up on the network. In the Network section of Navigation pane sometimes the active computers don’t always show up even if I refresh the network line. This has been an issue with Windows for several years now. I end up having to use the \\ with the computer name to bring it up.

JohnD

2 users thanked author for this post.

windbg, Cybertooth

Well the resulting text file had a “Drive Identifier” line which listed two identifiers in this format: {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}

That is the actual format of a disk ID, but it does not match any systems I have. One thing to note, I ran this under a local account. Don’t know if that affected anything.

JohnD

I ended up having my hard drive encrypted when I upgraded a Win10 system to Win11 about a month ago. I did not realize that until I checked. I turned it off and am now back to normal.

I ran the little script but the hard drive IDs it came up with did not match anything I have on the system I was working on. I checked other systems, but the IDs did not match them either. There was one system I did not yet check, but I doubt it was that. No idea where the IDs came from. I was not logged into a MS account so maybe that messed things up.

JohnD

 

They are Synology DS218 NAS drives.

JohnD

I have several home network NAS drives which are not mapped. Do I need to be concerned about this SMB signing? Here is my Group Policy settings:

JohnD

 

You might want to add something on extending the life of the battery. Too many people run their laptop on battery for a while not putting much of a drain on it, then connect it to the charger and continually do this. This cuts the life of the battery as it goes through a charge cycle each time. The number of charge cycles are limited as the battery report will indicate over time. Most new laptops have an option to charge the battery up to a certain level (usually around 80%) and not recharge it until it hits around 50%. This does a log way to extend the batteries life.

JohnD

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rbailin, WSGeo

I had a couple of Windows 11 laptops that had Copilot installed with the icon on the far right of the Taskbar. After installing some sort of “Experience pack” update, the icon was shifted close to the Start Menu icon which was its original position when first released. Does Microsoft know what it is doing?

JohnD

Ok there us a distinction between Copilot for Windows and Microsoft 365 Copilot. I just updated a computer with 23H2 which apparently was released today. A Happy Halloween from Microsoft. Still no Copilot on my Microsoft account. Will continue to look.

JohnD

Some people are getting a “Preview” version of it. I also have seen that Edge seems to have a version of it now. Is this still a “beta” version in these cases?

JohnD

Well take a look at this. It appears that KB5028166 has done a number of nasty things.

https://www.neowin.net/news/kb5028166-is-causing-system-issues-break-secure-channel-forces-synology-to-release-a-patch/

JohnD

Right after I installed the July updates to my 10 year-old HP desktop my Bluetooth Logitech trackball no longer worked. In looking at Device Manager, Bluetooth was no longer there. When I selected “Show hidden devices” it then showed. It is a Ralink Bluetooth PCIe Adapter (RT3298). The message that displays is:

“Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file. The signing certificate for this file has been revoked.”

I assume this is the “Spoofing Drivers” issue mentioned in this weeks newsletter where Microsoft is disabling what it thinks are “untrusted” drivers. There is no way I can find a proper driver for this old device. The last update was made by the upgrade to Windows 10 that I did in June 2016. So I have been using that driver ever since then without any issues. The computer has been running fine ever since I got it. Fortunately the trackball has a WiFi option which I am now using. But I decided it was time to put the old desktop out to pasture and a new one will be arriving shortly. Hopefully that will not contain any “untrusted” drivers.

The newsletter is great.

Thanks,

JohnD

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The author quotes one of his fellow contributing editors saying that he has not seen the bulging battery issue on Lenovo and Dell laptops. The people he serviced must have been lucky.  I have a Dell XPS 15 9550 laptop which just after a year of  purchase I encountered the bulging battery issue. I used to keep the laptop plugged in all the time and when going on battery, even for a short period of time, it would recharge to full capacity after plugging it back in. I was not aware of the fact that this was a bad practice. I was not the only one this battery issue was happening to if you perused the Dell XPS Support Forum at that time. There was a rash of this issue for the 9550 and 9560 systems. Fortunately Dell replaced my battery and fixed the rising trackpad caused by the bulging battery free of charge. My understanding is that they will no longer do that. Now many manufacturers include a setting option to limit the charge level of the battery to a maximum charge level and a minimum recharge level which will help make the battery last longer. I strongly suggest anyone with a laptop to make use of that option.

JohnD

I have had no issues booting the Macrium Reflect USB Recovery Media on two computers. My HP Win8.1 desktop has UEFI and I use the Home version of Macrium with it. The HP requires F9 as the key to switch boot options and I use a Logitech USB wireless keyboard with it. The wireless keyboard works great. I have been able to start the Macrium Rescue bootable, one for my antivirus, and various Linux bootable USB or CD’s that way. The second computer is a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop recently upgraded to Win10. It is 5 years old and does not have UEFI. It uses F12 for switching the boot sequence. I use Macrium Free on that system and it will also boot on that. I guess it depends on what your BIOS will allow.

JohnD