Darkoshi

On both my work and personal laptops (Windows 10 and 11), I have noticed that the file context menu in Windows Explorer now includes an "Ask Copilot" option.

I have privacy and security concerns about that. If I accidentally select this option, will the file or its contents potentially be uploaded to the web somewhere? Will Microsoft use the contents of the file for other purposes? I didn't find clear answers on that. If I wanted Copilot to analyze a file, I would prefer to select the file thru other means. I don't need extra items in my context menu; mine is already lengthy due to other custom entries (which I actually use on a frequent basis) that I've added to it. So I will edit my registry to remove the entry from the menu.

Windows 11: Microsoft is adding Ask Copilot to right-click menu, how to remove it

Windows 11’s Copilot in Context Menus: Benefits, Concerns, and How to Remove It

Over the last few weeks, I've managed to get my new work laptop set up almost completely like the old one was. They are both running Windows 10. All my customizations, shortcuts, utilities, etc., are set up the way I like. I'm almost ready to mail the old one back.

I had worried the new laptop might have the same network connectivity problem as the old one and that all the effort setting it up might be for naught. The new screen doesn't adjust as bright as the old one, which makes a difference when using it outside, so I might be even worse off than before. But so far, other than one small hiccup which hopefully was a fluke, it has been running fine.

..

On the personal computer front, I'm still setting up my "new" (4-months old) Windows 11 laptop.
I now keep finding myself aggravated to discover that things I thought were already set up on it, aren't. It was the new work laptop I set them up on, not this one.

Today I discovered that I'm missing the "Pictures" folder. Then I discovered that most of the Shell Folders in the registry are pointing to a non-existent user path. Argh.

Let me backtrack a bit.

When I turned the laptop on the first time and started setting up Windows 11 Pro, I discovered there was no way to set it up without a Microsoft account. (There is a way that might work, but not an officially supported method. Most of the ways that are mentioned online were disabled in more recent versions of Windows 11 like mine.) I read that installing apps from the Microsoft app store would require a Microsoft account, and I *might* someday want to install such an app. So I set the laptop up with a Microsoft account, with the intention of setting up a local user account later, and using that one most of the time.

I found a way to create a new Microsoft account without providing or linking it to my real name and identity. Doing so was tricky and might not have been possible if I hadn't already had an anonymous hotmail account I'd created in the past. When setting up a new MS account now, you have to give it either a phone number or an existing email address. (It seems like all free email accounts are like that now?) I was able to use my old anonymous hotmail account as the backup email for the new account. As the old hotmail account was then also requiring me to enter a backup email for it (which it hadn't required in the past), I entered the new account as its backup. Hah.

Anyway, after that was all done, I created the local account. But I did it wrong. I should have added it via "Family & Other Users" as shown on this page:
https://nerdschalk.com/using-windows-11-without-microsoft-account-everything-you-need-to-know/

Instead, I selected the "Sign in with a local account instead" option. It asked me "Are you sure you want to switch to a local account?", and I confirmed it by clicking Next. Then I discovered that the Microsoft account I had so painfully set up on the laptop was GONE (from the laptop). Now only the local account was shown. That's what I had originally wanted, but......

That was two and a half months ago. Now I discover Windows didn't do the switch to the local account right. The shell folders are still pointing to the path of the old user account which is no longer there. Who knows what else might be borked up too. I'm tempted to see if I can reset everything and start over from scratch again.


Update, 2023/04/17:
Reading back through my laptop notes, I realize I did some additional things which may have contributed to that account's folder paths getting borked up:
Before switching to the local account, I unlinked OneDrive.
After switching to the local account, I updated my User Profile folder name.

Anyway, I've now created a new local user account (without OneDrive, and with a nice User Profile name to begin with) and will eventually delete the other one.

I think my new laptop is probably very nice, from the little bit I've used it so far. It certainly is light and large and lovely.

But there's a problem in that Windows 11 is between it and me, and Windows 11 keeps doing things that destroy my serenity. I continue to think that once I get over the initial difficult hurdles, I'll get the laptop set up in a way that pleases me. But in the meantime...

On my Win 8.1 computer, sometimes when I unplug my speakers, or plug them into the audio jack, the audio will stop working. When I test the playback device, Windows shows an error like "Failed to play test tone" (I don't remember the exact wording). Disabling and re-enabling the device doesn't make a difference. I usually have to reboot. Maybe sometimes it fixes itself after a while; not sure.

But today, I tried this, and it worked:
open a command window using "Run as Administrator"
then enter commands:
net stop audiosrv
net start audiosrv

Don't you love these Microsoft forums? Someone asks for help with a problem, and several people reply, each with a different possible fix - some of them rather questionable. Several other people reply with messages like "Thanks so much! This totally fixed it for me!" - but most of them don't mention which of the fixes listed in that thread was the one that worked for them.

.

Last week I noticed Windows Update using high CPU on my machine, and realized that I hadn't been notified of any available updates since January. Whenever I booted the computer, the CPU usage would go up to a fairly constant 50%. Searching for or trying to download updates manually didn't work - no errors, but the download/search kept clocking for hours with no progress shown.

I tried several things and finally got it to work.

But today it is having the same problem as before, and what fixed it last time isn't working this time.

And then I wonder is it even worth trying to fix it. If I could finally switch over to using the new laptop, I could reformat this one and install Linux on it.

Trying to figure out how to get the logic in a big Windows batch file to work right is about driving me crazy.

I keep running up against walls for the things that ought to be *simple*.
Like echoing a variable value.
Like comparing a variable to another value.

Sheeesh!

Consider the following.
-----------------------

for /f "tokens=1,2*" %%a in (tmp.txt) do (

SET var1=%%a
SET var2=%%b
SET var3=%%c

echo %%c xxx

setlocal enableDelayedExpansion

echo !var3!
echo "!var3!"
)
------------------------

Why does the 1st ECHO statement display an output with the 'xxx' *before* and partially *overlaying* the value that was read from the file, like this???
xxxIYUIYOIYI

The 2nd ECHO statement displays the correct value.

The 3rd ECHO statement displays the first double-quote character, then the correct variable value. But it doesn't display the 2nd double-quote character. WHY NOT??? How can I figure out if there are spaces on the end, if it doesn't let me display anything after it??

Heaven forbid what I really want to do is like this:
IF "!var3:~19!" == " " call :someOtherFunction
or like this:
IF "!var3:~-2!" == " " call :someOtherFunction


How can I figure out why the If statements aren't working, if I can't even get a simple ECHO to work right?

If I replace the double quote chars in the ECHO statement with some other chars, it still has the same problem.

It doesn't help that I was up til 2am working on this batch file last night, and was only able to get 5.5 hours sleep. Due to waking up early and not being able to fall back asleep.
On top of having woken up 1.5 hours early yesterday morning.

Today's Windows Updates aren't playing nicely with my computer.

The updates are getting stuck on the "Preparing to configure Windows" step. I had to force a reboot into safe mode, and had to go back to the restore point that was created prior to the updates.

I figured it must be a problem with only one of the 9 available updates. So I tried installing only the first one. But my computer still got stuck, and I had to go through the whole safe mode restore point reboot reboot reboot rigamarole again.

So then I thought it must be the first update that was causing the problem. So I left that one unselected, and tried installing 7 of the others. But it got stuck again.

It feels like I've rebooted twenty times in the last few hours.

My laptop computer is running Win7 Home Premium (64 bit).

On 02/22, the Windows Automatic Updates included 2 optional updates - updated drivers for "Microsoft Hardware USB Mouse" and "Microsoft Hardware USB Keyboard". I allowed them to install.

After installing those, each time I booted my computer, I got 2 popup messages from my antivirus program that "Device Driver Software Installation" (system32\newdev.exe) was trying to access the internet. The first several times this happened, I allowed the internet access. But I kept getting the messages. Then I started denying the access, but still kept getting them. I could have created a rule to permanently allow or deny the access, to avoid getting the messages, but I preferred to fix the root problem so that no unnecessary internet access would even be attempted.

The messages persisted even after having installed the Win7 Service Pack 1 update.

Today I determined that if I unplugged my wireless mouse and keyboard cable before rebooting, that prevented the messages. But when I plugged the cable back in, the messages popped up again. So then I knew they were definitely related to the keyboard/mouse drivers. Also, today I started getting new messages in addition to the others (regardless of whether I clicked to Deny or Allow the internet access)... "Driver installation complete. Downloading keyboard configuration software (Microsoft IntelliType Pro)" and another that the installation had completed successfully. However, I then still kept getting the "Device Driver Software Installation" messages.

I was able to correct the problem by rolling back to the previous drivers:

Control Panel - Device Manager - Human Interfacing Devices
- right-clicked** "Microsoft Hardware USB Keyboard", selected Properties, Driver...
The Driver date shown was 12/14/2010 and the version was 8.1.239.0.
Clicked "Roll back driver".
Then it showed Driver date 6/29/2010, version 8.0.219.0.

- did the same for "Microsoft Hardware USB Mouse";
it showed the same driver dates and version numbers.

Now I am no longer getting the messages.


(**) - is there any other term that can be used besides "right-click"? I have my mouse set up as a left-handed mouse, and my "right-click" is actually a left click.
I was thinking "alt-click" might be appropriate, but apparently that means to "left-click" while pressing the ALT button.

Win XP SP3.
I encountered a problem due to low disk space.
While logging onto my work computer via VPN, I got an error message that my user profile could not be loaded, due to insufficient disk space, and that the default profile would be loaded instead. The computer seemed to lock up while the default profile was being loaded. So I had someone turn the computer off and back on, and cleared up some space on the c: drive via the VPN connection. When I logged in again, it still seemed to be opening the default profile (with the Windows default color scheme instead of my personalized colors, and missing my other personalized settings).

I cleared up even more space on the c: drive, and tried logging back in several times, but still kept getting the default colors and settings.
I finally was able to get my original profile and settings back by doing the following.

The user profile folders are stored under C:\Documents and Settings\.
There were several folders there. (To avoid divulging my actual login ID, let's pretend my logon id was aaaabbbb and my logon domain was cccc.)
Under C:\Documents and Settings\ were the following folders, as well as some others which were not relevant.
aaaabbbb
aaaabbbb.cccc
aaaabbbb.cccc.000
aaaabbbb.cccc.001
aaaabbbb.cccc.002
aaaabbbb.cccc.003
aaaabbbb.cccc.004

I determined that the "aaaabbbb" folder appeared to be the one with all my personalized settings. Renaming the aaaabbbb.cccc.* folders and then logging in to the computer resulted in a new aaaabbbb.cccc folder being created, and the default settings still being shown.
So then I again renamed the aaaabbbb.cccc folder to something else, and renamed the "aaaabbbb" folder to "aaaabbbb.cccc", and logged back on.
This time my personalized colors and settings were shown.

I don't know if this was a good way of fixing the problem, but at least it worked.

With a widescreen laptop display, moving the taskbar to the left or right edge of the screen instead of having it at the bottom, gives your windows more vertical space. But when the taskbar is on the left or right edge, the Start button is always at the top. When you click the Start button, if you then want to click on "All Programs", you have to move the pointer a long distance downwards. It would make sense for the position of the Start button to be customizable, so that you could choose to have it at the bottom instead of the top.

The only way I've found to be able to change the color of scrollbars in Windows 7 from that boring gray-blue color, is to choose the Windows Classic theme, and then to customize the colors. I wish I could have Aero and have colorful scrollbars (etc.) at the same time.

.

Using my laptop in conjunction with a regular wireless keyboard, I noticed myself leaning forward over the table a lot, in order to see the screen better. But I came up with a solution. I now have the laptop sitting on a large dictionary, with the front edge of the laptop sticking out over the edge of the dictionary. This way I can move the laptop closer to me, partially *over* my regular keyboard. It also raises the laptop display up so that I don't have to look down as far to see the screen.

I tried hooking up the laptop to my desktop's LCD monitor, since the monitor is larger than the laptop's display. But the screen doesn't look good when displayed on the monitor, like the laptop isn't able to output a high enough resolution to look good on the monitor.