• Windows update fail

    From Newyana2@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 21 14:23:38 2024
    Tried to run the latest update. kb5041580-x64.cab downloaded
    from the MS catalog site. I keep getting a fail at 4.9%. Error
    8007000d. It seems to be a common error. I don't find anything
    helpful in the log.

    DISM.exe /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:L:\Win-security-update-8-24\kb5041580-x64.cab

    I've tried all the tricks I can think of: Make sure the services are running. Run SFC. Run DISM repair. I'm beginning to wonder whether
    there's some kind of tweak that the update is rejecting, but I wouldn't
    know where to start looking.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Simon GAHHH Creator@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 21 18:55:04 2024
    On 21/08/2024 19:23, Newyana2 wrote:
    Tried to run the latest update. kb5041580-x64.cab downloaded
    from the MS catalog site. I keep getting a fail at 4.9%. Error
    8007000d. It seems to be a common error. I don't find anything
    helpful in the log.


    Common error I normally come across is when people try to be too clever
    by downloading something they know nothing about. The correct download
    for Windows 10 22H2 64 bit is this link:

    <https://catalog.s.download.windowsupdate.com/c/msdownload/update/software/secu/2024/08/windows10.0-kb5041580-x64_b3de56748ec2ba6f57af49e58690585ed0c385ec.msu>

    After downloading open the file as Administrator and it should install
    without any problems.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Ed Cryer@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 21 19:39:07 2024
    TmV3eWFuYTIgd3JvdGU6DQo+ICDCoCBUcmllZCB0byBydW4gdGhlIGxhdGVzdCB1cGRhdGUu IGtiNTA0MTU4MC14NjQuY2FiIGRvd25sb2FkZWQNCj4gZnJvbSB0aGUgTVMgY2F0YWxvZyBz aXRlLiBJIGtlZXAgZ2V0dGluZyBhIGZhaWwgYXQgNC45JS4gRXJyb3INCj4gODAwNzAwMGQu IEl0IHNlZW1zIHRvIGJlIGEgY29tbW9uIGVycm9yLiBJIGRvbid0IGZpbmQgYW55dGhpbmcN Cj4gaGVscGZ1bCBpbiB0aGUgbG9nLg0KPiANCj4gRElTTS5leGUgL09ubGluZSAvQWRkLVBh Y2thZ2UgDQo+IC9QYWNrYWdlUGF0aDpMOlxXaW4tc2VjdXJpdHktdXBkYXRlLTgtMjRca2I1 MDQxNTgwLXg2NC5jYWINCj4gDQo+ICDCoCBJJ3ZlIHRyaWVkIGFsbCB0aGUgdHJpY2tzIEkg Y2FuIHRoaW5rIG9mOiBNYWtlIHN1cmUgdGhlIHNlcnZpY2VzIGFyZQ0KPiBydW5uaW5nLiBS dW4gU0ZDLiBSdW4gRElTTSByZXBhaXIuIEknbSBiZWdpbm5pbmcgdG8gd29uZGVyIHdoZXRo ZXINCj4gdGhlcmUncyBzb21lIGtpbmQgb2YgdHdlYWsgdGhhdCB0aGUgdXBkYXRlIGlzIHJl amVjdGluZywgYnV0IEkgd291bGRuJ3QNCj4ga25vdyB3aGVyZSB0byBzdGFydCBsb29raW5n Lg0KDQoNCldlbGwsIHRoYXQgZXJyb3IgbWVzc2FnZSBpcyBhbiBNUy1wcm9kdWNlZCBlcnJv ciBtZXNzYWdlLiBFcmdvIE1TIHNob3VsZCANCmhhdmUgaXQgbGlua2VkIHRvIG90aGVyIE1T IHNvZnR3YXJlLg0KVHJ5IHRoaXM7DQpTZXR0aW5ncy8gVXBkYXRlIGFuZCBTZWN1cml0eQ0K VHJvdWJsZXNob290DQpXaW5kb3dzIFVwZGF0ZQ0KDQpMZXQgdXMga25vdyB3aGF0IGhhcHBl bnMuDQoNCkVkDQo=

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Ed Cryer on Wed Aug 21 15:42:29 2024
    On 8/21/2024 2:39 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:


    Well, that error message is an MS-produced error message. Ergo MS should
    have it linked to other MS software.
    Try this;
    Settings/ Update and Security
    Troubleshoot
    Windows Update


    That doesn't help. I know the basic things to try. I'm hoping
    that someone might have an inside scoop on this problem.
    Though I fear that it might be an issue of too much customizing.
    Microsoft seems to be more controlling about things then they
    used to be. It used to just be a matter of relacing a few system
    files.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 21 20:46:33 2024
    On Wed, 8/21/2024 2:23 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
      Tried to run the latest update. kb5041580-x64.cab downloaded
    from the MS catalog site. I keep getting a fail at 4.9%. Error
    8007000d. It seems to be a common error. I don't find anything
    helpful in the log.

    DISM.exe /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:L:\Win-security-update-8-24\kb5041580-x64.cab

      I've tried all the tricks I can think of: Make sure the services are running. Run SFC. Run DISM repair. I'm beginning to wonder whether
    there's some kind of tweak that the update is rejecting, but I wouldn't
    know where to start looking.

    $ Err_6.4.5.exe 0x8007000d

    # for hex 0x8007000d / decimal -2147024883
    STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE stierr.h
    STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE stierr.h
    # as an HRESULT: Severity: FAILURE (1), FACILITY_WIN32 (0x7), Code 0xd
    # for hex 0xd / decimal 13
    ERROR_INVALID_DATA winerror.h <===
    # The data is invalid. >===
    # 3 matches found for "0x8007000d"

    It's a rather generic error, you'd need to examine a log file of some sort,
    and hope there is some context near by.

    *******

    I got 12 results for package download. The .msu ones are executable, double-click and use.

    https://i.postimg.cc/YSQLDtyw/catalog-search.gif

    The .msu also works out dependencies. If a servicing stack is missing,
    it will tell you something bogus like "not for this machine". The errors
    the .msu throws aren't always useful.

    And as you'd expect, on low-resource machines (Core2), processing a
    MSU can take a dogs age. You can even run out of RAM. I doubt an update
    could finish on one of those 1GB RAM tablets.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Wed Aug 21 20:58:26 2024
    On 8/21/2024 8:46 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Wed, 8/21/2024 2:23 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
      Tried to run the latest update. kb5041580-x64.cab downloaded
    from the MS catalog site. I keep getting a fail at 4.9%. Error
    8007000d. It seems to be a common error. I don't find anything
    helpful in the log.

    DISM.exe /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:L:\Win-security-update-8-24\kb5041580-x64.cab

      I've tried all the tricks I can think of: Make sure the services are
    running. Run SFC. Run DISM repair. I'm beginning to wonder whether
    there's some kind of tweak that the update is rejecting, but I wouldn't
    know where to start looking.

    $ Err_6.4.5.exe 0x8007000d

    # for hex 0x8007000d / decimal -2147024883
    STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE stierr.h
    STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE stierr.h
    # as an HRESULT: Severity: FAILURE (1), FACILITY_WIN32 (0x7), Code 0xd
    # for hex 0xd / decimal 13
    ERROR_INVALID_DATA winerror.h <===
    # The data is invalid. >===
    # 3 matches found for "0x8007000d"

    It's a rather generic error, you'd need to examine a log file of some sort, and hope there is some context near by.

    *******

    I got 12 results for package download. The .msu ones are executable, double-click and use.

    https://i.postimg.cc/YSQLDtyw/catalog-search.gif

    The .msu also works out dependencies. If a servicing stack is missing,
    it will tell you something bogus like "not for this machine". The errors
    the .msu throws aren't always useful.

    I also tried the MSU. No luck with either. The MSU ran fine on my
    laptop with Win10. On this computer it just showed a brief message
    that the computer was not updated. Yet it did replace my ieframe files,
    oddly.

    I had replaced both ieframe.dll files with versions from 20H2 to make
    IE functional. The update put back the old ones and thereby broke IE
    again, but it didn't perform the update! I get a distinct feeling that MS
    are trying to tell me I've been a bad boy and don't deserve an update. Something like, "Our way or the highway." So I need to figure out what
    tweak I've made that they don't like.

    I'm inclined to suspect this all the more because I had trouble
    when I first built this box. I installed, customized, then failed to
    run updates and failed to get it activated. After a lot of trying
    I finally installed fresh and did those thingss BEFORE tweaking,
    and it all worked just fine. But I'm not willing to spend another 2
    weeks doing the tweks all over again just for the sake of an update.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Thu Aug 22 00:25:04 2024
    On Wed, 8/21/2024 8:58 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/21/2024 8:46 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Wed, 8/21/2024 2:23 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
       Tried to run the latest update. kb5041580-x64.cab downloaded
    from the MS catalog site. I keep getting a fail at 4.9%. Error
    8007000d. It seems to be a common error. I don't find anything
    helpful in the log.

    DISM.exe /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:L:\Win-security-update-8-24\kb5041580-x64.cab

       I've tried all the tricks I can think of: Make sure the services are
    running. Run SFC. Run DISM repair. I'm beginning to wonder whether
    there's some kind of tweak that the update is rejecting, but I wouldn't
    know where to start looking.

    $ Err_6.4.5.exe 0x8007000d

    # for hex 0x8007000d / decimal -2147024883
       STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE                                         stierr.h >>    STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE                                         stierr.h >> # as an HRESULT: Severity: FAILURE (1), FACILITY_WIN32 (0x7), Code 0xd
    # for hex 0xd / decimal 13
       ERROR_INVALID_DATA                                             winerror.h  <===
    # The data is invalid.                                                       >===
    # 3 matches found for "0x8007000d"

    It's a rather generic error, you'd need to examine a log file of some sort, >> and hope there is some context near by.

    *******

    I got 12 results for package download. The .msu ones are executable, double-click and use.

    https://i.postimg.cc/YSQLDtyw/catalog-search.gif

    The .msu also works out dependencies. If a servicing stack is missing,
    it will tell you something bogus like "not for this machine". The errors
    the .msu throws aren't always useful.

      I also tried the MSU. No luck with either. The MSU ran fine on my
    laptop with Win10. On this computer it just showed a brief message
    that the computer was not updated. Yet it did replace my ieframe files, oddly.

       I had replaced both ieframe.dll files with versions from 20H2 to make
    IE functional. The update put back the old ones and thereby broke IE
    again, but it didn't perform the update! I get a distinct feeling that MS
    are trying to tell me I've been a bad boy and don't deserve an update. Something like, "Our way or the highway." So I need to figure out what
    tweak I've made that they don't like.

      I'm inclined to suspect this all the more because I had trouble
    when I first built this box. I installed, customized, then failed to
    run updates and failed to get it activated. After a lot of trying
    I finally installed fresh and did those thingss BEFORE tweaking,
    and it all worked just fine. But I'm not willing to spend another 2
    weeks doing the tweks all over again just for the sake of an update.

    Are you hinting that you damaged your WinSxS on purpose ???

    Maybe you need one of those DISM recipes (for repair) ?

    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /ScanHealth
    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /CheckHealth
    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth <===
    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup

    sfc /scannow
    sfc /verifyonly <===

    I don't know the details of how Windows knows a hardlinked
    file (in system32) has become unlinked from WinSxS.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Thu Aug 22 09:03:38 2024
    On 8/22/2024 12:25 AM, Paul wrote:


      I'm inclined to suspect this all the more because I had trouble
    when I first built this box. I installed, customized, then failed to
    run updates and failed to get it activated. After a lot of trying
    I finally installed fresh and did those thingss BEFORE tweaking,
    and it all worked just fine. But I'm not willing to spend another 2
    weeks doing the tweks all over again just for the sake of an update.

    Are you hinting that you damaged your WinSxS on purpose ???


    No. I don't touch that. But I do various things to
    customize. I disable a number of services. And I swapped out
    ieframe versions, as noted, in system32 and syswow64.

    Maybe you need one of those DISM recipes (for repair) ?

    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /ScanHealth
    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /CheckHealth
    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth <===
    dism /Online /Cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup

    sfc /scannow
    sfc /verifyonly <===

    As mentioned, I tried all that. The odd thing is that the update
    runner, before quitting with a failure message, swapped back the
    ieframe files, changed some services, and now when I boot I'm stuck
    at the user lockscreen for maybe 8 seconds. I didn't used to see
    that at all. There've been a lot of small changes.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Thu Aug 22 11:59:14 2024
    On 8/22/2024 11:21 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Size and free space of WinRE partition?

    Powershell admin command
    Get-Volume

    This is the first I've heard of this. Is it necessary for updates?
    I looked it up and found that RE is enabled by running reagentc /info.
    Could have fooled me. It says the partition is partition 4 on disk
    1. In disk management there's disk 0 and disk 1. I'm running on
    disk 0. Either way, the disks are largely redundant. Both have a
    556 MB RE partition. Both are empty.

    Where's the best place to read up on this? I hadn't even noticed
    that I have those partitions. Is it a staging area for updates?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Fri Aug 23 11:46:00 2024
    On 8/23/2024 3:34 AM, ...winston wrote:

    One can not look in Disk Management for the size and free space of WinRE.
    I am also assuming, at this time, your device is UEFI with GPT partitioning(not legacy BIOS and MBR partitioning)


    Yes. But I'm still wondering why WinRE matters. I've
    never used WinRE and never knowingly installed it.

    First question:
     Is this a dual boot device?

    Yes. Multi-boot. I've got Win10, Suse15, Xubuntu.

     If not a dual boot device
    Second and Third Question:
     Is Disk 1 a clone of O or is Disk 1 another different Windows o/s?
      if either case are they bootable from the UEFI BIOS settings?

    I use BootIt as a boot manager. Win10 and Suse boot
    from disk 0. Disk 1 is roughly a clone. Not exact and not
    the same size. Win10 is there mainly as a backup. I didn't
    figure out how to get it botting and don't need it to boot.


    Let's go back to WinRE
    Powershell admin command
     Get-Volume

    The above will show all the sizes of all partitions on the disks. If you labeled the o/s partition it will show that label. The other partitions
    shown should be System and WinRE. WinRE may also be shown as Recovery.
     - the MSR partition will not be shown in Get-Volume

    Tyiping Get-Volume and pressing Enter does nothing. It just
    goes back to a prompt in the next line. Power Shell running
    as admin. Get-Partition also does nothing.


    One can also see all the partitions but not size via Diskpart
     List vol
      - will show all partitions(like Disk Management with a bit more info)
    But, if you select a disk (in Diskpart)
     Select Disk 0
     List partition
      => you will see all partitions on Disk 0 including the MSR(i.e.
    System, MSR(shows as Reserved), Windows(your os), WinRE(Recovery)
      => Unlike Get-Volume(in Powershell) Diskpart list part does not show
    free size.

    Diskpart says 556 MB, same as the GUI tool.

    Fourth Question:
     Look in Windows Update\Update History
     Is KB5034441 shown as successfully installed?

    I show no Update History in Windows Update WinRT
    UI. I did find it in the control panel programs applet.
    That KB is not there. There are 3 503s, but none
    matches that number. I suspect those are the updates
    I ran when I first set up the machine. I think the last
    was in April.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Fri Aug 23 17:41:43 2024
    On Fri, 8/23/2024 11:46 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/23/2024 3:34 AM, ...winston wrote:

    One can not look in Disk Management for the size and free space of WinRE.
    I am also assuming, at this time, your device is UEFI with GPT partitioning(not legacy BIOS and MBR partitioning)


       Yes. But I'm still wondering why WinRE matters. I've
    never used WinRE and never knowingly installed it.

    First question:
      Is this a dual boot device?

      Yes. Multi-boot. I've got Win10, Suse15, Xubuntu.

      If not a dual boot device
    Second and Third Question:
      Is Disk 1 a clone of O or is Disk 1 another different Windows o/s?
       if either case are they bootable from the UEFI BIOS settings?

       I use BootIt as a boot manager. Win10 and Suse boot
    from disk 0. Disk 1 is roughly a clone. Not exact and not
    the same size. Win10 is there mainly as a backup. I didn't
    figure out how to get it botting and don't need it to boot.


    Let's go back to WinRE
    Powershell admin command
      Get-Volume

    The above will show all the sizes of all partitions on the disks. If you labeled the o/s partition it will show that label. The other partitions shown should be System and WinRE. WinRE may also be shown as Recovery.
      - the MSR partition will not be shown in Get-Volume

    Tyiping Get-Volume and pressing Enter does nothing. It just
    goes back to a prompt in the next line. Power Shell running
    as admin. Get-Partition also does nothing.


    One can also see all the partitions but not size via Diskpart
      List vol
       - will show all partitions(like Disk Management with a bit more info)
    But, if you select a disk (in Diskpart)
      Select Disk 0
      List partition
       => you will see all partitions on Disk 0 including the MSR(i.e. System, MSR(shows as Reserved), Windows(your os), WinRE(Recovery)
       => Unlike Get-Volume(in Powershell) Diskpart list part does not show free size.

    Diskpart says 556 MB, same as the GUI tool.

    Fourth Question:
      Look in Windows Update\Update History
      Is KB5034441 shown as successfully installed?

      I show no Update History in Windows Update WinRT
    UI. I did find it in the control panel programs applet.
    That KB is not there. There are 3 503s, but none
    matches that number. I suspect those are the updates
    I ran when I first set up the machine. I think the last
    was in April.


    [Picture]

    https://i.postimg.cc/yNmkTjW6/Get-Volume.gif

    https://i.postimg.cc/8PxRKykL/get-volume-win10.gif

    Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is like Windows Preinstall Environment (WinPE)
    but WinRE is managed separately and via being on a separate partition, allows C: to be smashed and the machine can still present info.

    reagentc /info

    gives some information. But reagentc commands such as

    reagentc /disable

    actually move the content around (whackamole, really).

    I presented a recipe in the past, on how you "reload" a reference
    version of WinRE from an install ISO. Then the updates such as Win10 KB5034441 can overwrite the "new" WinRE you set up. While it may try to "run away"
    on you, you can stomp it like a bug, with the correct recipe :-) Comforting.

    On one occasion, the bastardly thing moved WinRE to another folder on
    the same Recovery partition, rather than copy it back to a hidey hole on C: . It's devious, is all I can say. The person who designed that, is obviously
    OCD and is bound and determined to thwart user maintenance attempts.
    Thank God someone came up with a repair recipe, which I copied.

    Anyway, carry on.

    [Picture]

    https://i.postimg.cc/L5p570Q0/WU-Update-History-Ocean-Of-Success.gif

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Fri Aug 23 20:40:02 2024
    On 8/23/2024 5:41 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Fri, 8/23/2024 11:46 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/23/2024 3:34 AM, ...winston wrote:

    One can not look in Disk Management for the size and free space of WinRE. >>> I am also assuming, at this time, your device is UEFI with GPT partitioning(not legacy BIOS and MBR partitioning)


       Yes. But I'm still wondering why WinRE matters. I've
    never used WinRE and never knowingly installed it.

    First question:
      Is this a dual boot device?

      Yes. Multi-boot. I've got Win10, Suse15, Xubuntu.

      If not a dual boot device
    Second and Third Question:
      Is Disk 1 a clone of O or is Disk 1 another different Windows o/s?
       if either case are they bootable from the UEFI BIOS settings?

       I use BootIt as a boot manager. Win10 and Suse boot
    from disk 0. Disk 1 is roughly a clone. Not exact and not
    the same size. Win10 is there mainly as a backup. I didn't
    figure out how to get it botting and don't need it to boot.


    Let's go back to WinRE
    Powershell admin command
      Get-Volume

    The above will show all the sizes of all partitions on the disks. If you labeled the o/s partition it will show that label. The other partitions shown should be System and WinRE. WinRE may also be shown as Recovery.
      - the MSR partition will not be shown in Get-Volume

    Tyiping Get-Volume and pressing Enter does nothing. It just
    goes back to a prompt in the next line. Power Shell running
    as admin. Get-Partition also does nothing.


    One can also see all the partitions but not size via Diskpart
      List vol
       - will show all partitions(like Disk Management with a bit more info) >>> But, if you select a disk (in Diskpart)
      Select Disk 0
      List partition
       => you will see all partitions on Disk 0 including the MSR(i.e. System, MSR(shows as Reserved), Windows(your os), WinRE(Recovery)
       => Unlike Get-Volume(in Powershell) Diskpart list part does not show free size.

    Diskpart says 556 MB, same as the GUI tool.

    Fourth Question:
      Look in Windows Update\Update History
      Is KB5034441 shown as successfully installed?

      I show no Update History in Windows Update WinRT
    UI. I did find it in the control panel programs applet.
    That KB is not there. There are 3 503s, but none
    matches that number. I suspect those are the updates
    I ran when I first set up the machine. I think the last
    was in April.


    [Picture]

    https://i.postimg.cc/yNmkTjW6/Get-Volume.gif

    https://i.postimg.cc/8PxRKykL/get-volume-win10.gif

    Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is like Windows Preinstall Environment (WinPE)
    but WinRE is managed separately and via being on a separate partition, allows C: to be smashed and the machine can still present info.

    reagentc /info

    gives some information. But reagentc commands such as

    reagentc /disable

    actually move the content around (whackamole, really).

    I presented a recipe in the past, on how you "reload" a reference
    version of WinRE from an install ISO. Then the updates such as Win10 KB5034441
    can overwrite the "new" WinRE you set up. While it may try to "run away"
    on you, you can stomp it like a bug, with the correct recipe :-) Comforting.

    On one occasion, the bastardly thing moved WinRE to another folder on
    the same Recovery partition, rather than copy it back to a hidey hole on C: . It's devious, is all I can say. The person who designed that, is obviously OCD and is bound and determined to thwart user maintenance attempts.
    Thank God someone came up with a repair recipe, which I copied.

    Anyway, carry on.

    [Picture]

    https://i.postimg.cc/L5p570Q0/WU-Update-History-Ocean-Of-Success.gif

    Your posts get more mysterious by the day, Paul. Maybe
    you should be writing suspense novels. :)

    I guess I had some vague idea that WinRE was a recovery
    boot disk on a CD, like Hiren's. I was surprised to see that I
    have a partition on the disk for it. I don't know how I didn't notice
    that, except that I know UEFI creates a lot of junk in its
    wake and I just assumed that all of it was required.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Fri Aug 23 21:15:19 2024
    On 8/23/2024 7:50 PM, ...winston wrote:

    How did Disk 1 come to be. Windows 10 install, copied from another disk,
    disk originated from an earlier used device...etc. ?

    This is interesting. I have a 500GB NVMe drive and a
    1 TB SATA drive. I don't remember which I put in first, but
    the NVMe is disk 0 and the SATA is disk 1. I boot from
    disk 0. BootIt sees it that way. I would guess that the
    BIOS has to see the NVMe disk as in front of the SATA,
    but I didn't check that.

    But here's the strange thing: Windows computer
    management sees the SATA as disk 0 and the NVMe as
    disk 1. The reverse of what BootIt sees.



    Reagentc /info indicated Disk1 has the active Recovery partition(Disk 1, partition 4) - so its a bit more than just a backup.
    What does roughly a clone mean?
      It was never cloned, i.e. it was in use at one time before the
    current Disk 0 was added, Windows 10 installed to the machine and then configured using booting software or something similar.

    Roughly cloned means I didn't clone the disks but I did
    set them up in the same configuration to have redundant
    backup.

    Based on what I wrote above, I'm guessing that Windows
    is seeing both C drive and WinRE as being on disk 1, but that's
    really disk 0. Perhaps there's some kind of "history" there?
    In other words, maybe BootIt sees me booting disk 0 because
    that's what the BIOS sees, and maybe Windows sees disk1
    because it's ID-ing the first disk installed rather than the first disk
    in terms of hardware configuration. I may have set it up
    on disk 1, the SATA disk, then copied over to the NVMe and
    used that as the main disk. I really don't remember now.

    But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.

    Is the userprofile you logged on to and accessed Powershell and
    Administator account or just a Standard account?


    It's an Administrator account, which is to say a fake admin
    but not the real Administrator. I opened powershell with
    admin privilege via right-click, and the window titlebar says
    Administrator.

    It should work out-of-the-box and now unless something was tweaked
    preventing admin opening.  Did you disable UAC?

    You betcha. :) I've also disabled LUA, which is the real
    version of disabling UAC. That's an interesting story. I didn't
    know about LUA (limited user account) until I was running one
    of my own programs as admin and dropped a folder onto a textbox.
    The drop was supposed to fill in the path. Instead it showed
    a circle with a line through it, indicating that I couldn't drop
    there. How odd! After extensive research I discovered that
    LUA existed and blocked me from drag-drop to a higher status
    program window! Me is dropping a file on a program started by
    me, which is less restricted than the first me, yet the less restricted
    me doesn't have permission to receive the drop! Wild stuff.
    Long story short, I disabled LUA.

    When you open Powershell in admin mode, does the title bar say:
     Administrator: Windows Powershell

    Yes

     -i.e. for the sake of this discussion and why it matters, you'll need
    to figure out why its not working.

    I don't really care why PS is not working. Power Shell is a terribly designed mess. I use it only when necessary, such as for
    uninstalling "apps". It's worked fine for that.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sat Aug 24 03:45:42 2024
    On Fri, 8/23/2024 9:15 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/23/2024 7:50 PM, ...winston wrote:


      I don't really care why PS is not working. Power Shell is a terribly designed mess. I use it only when necessary, such as for
    uninstalling "apps". It's worked fine for that.

    Powershell has versions. Powershell can also have stuff added to it.
    When Winston uses a thing like that, that's likely a default commandlet
    that comes with the environment. You can install Powershell 7 over
    top of Powershell 5. Then, at runtime, specify which version you want.

    powershell /? # No, the option you expected is not there.

    $PSVersionTable # Returns PSVersion 5.1.22621.3958 (so I have 5.1 by default)
    $PSVersionTable.PSVersion

    *******

    How you clone or copy things, matters. On GPT disks
    there are two GUIDs. One GUID is the "type" of the partition,
    such as the pseudo-protected ESP partition (FAT32). But
    there is also a number which is a unique identifier for
    the partition. If you were to copy the partition in such
    a way the copy has the same identifier, then later, Windows
    will start putting updates for things in the wrong place.

    Macrium, when you clone a GPT disk, it changes all the unique
    identifiers so they do not conflict with the source disk.
    This helps prevent updates or operations which rely on
    the unique identifier from doing the wrong thing. (The unique identifier
    is similar to the Linux BLKID.) Many of the Linux tools for
    working with disks, do no disambiguation at all. Whereas we're spoiled
    in Windows, by tools that do the right thing. Note that cloning an
    EXT partition using Macrium, Macrium "comfort features" are for NTFS/FAT32
    and not for EXT partitions. The treatment of the partitions is not
    uniform, and while EXT is "supported" as a partition, the treatment
    is not exactly the same for them.

    And that's how Macrium is superior to "dd.exe" . If you dd transfer
    a disk, it is identical to the original, and now the computer is
    littered with two copies of the same identifier for each partition.
    For the things that matter to us, Macrium does a better job of it.

    I only provide pictures as visual examples, as a means of
    helping people prepare their own information. The Windows Update history,
    shows my '4441 being installed, once the partition it was trying to use,
    was made large enough for the job. One of the reasons a large enough
    partition is NOT large enough, is when the moribund WinRE.wim is STILL
    on that partition. This is why some people experienced a 1GB partition
    not being enough for '4441 to work. I only discovered that damn thing,
    later. I've manually fixed about three of those now, so "I'm learning things" each time I do one.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Aug 24 08:52:18 2024
    On 8/24/2024 3:45 AM, Paul wrote:
    On Fri, 8/23/2024 9:15 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/23/2024 7:50 PM, ...winston wrote:


      I don't really care why PS is not working. Power Shell is a terribly
    designed mess. I use it only when necessary, such as for
    uninstalling "apps". It's worked fine for that.

    Powershell has versions. Powershell can also have stuff added to it.
    When Winston uses a thing like that, that's likely a default commandlet
    that comes with the environment. You can install Powershell 7 over
    top of Powershell 5. Then, at runtime, specify which version you want.

    powershell /? # No, the option you expected is not there.

    $PSVersionTable # Returns PSVersion 5.1.22621.3958 (so I have 5.1 by default)
    $PSVersionTable.PSVersion


    I didn't understand how you're running those $ variables
    If I look in the parent folder I see only one subfolder named
    "v.1.0" 71 items in the Modules folder. Dism and Appx are there.
    I don't see anythnhing like "Volume". Though dism.psd1 says inside
    that it's PS v. 5.1.

    I'm surprised how complicated it is. I'd had the impression that
    this neo-DOS system was actually run on applets, but it's lots of
    files in subfolders.

    How you clone or copy things, matters. On GPT disks
    there are two GUIDs. One GUID is the "type" of the partition,
    such as the pseudo-protected ESP partition (FAT32). But
    there is also a number which is a unique identifier for
    the partition. If you were to copy the partition in such
    a way the copy has the same identifier, then later, Windows
    will start putting updates for things in the wrong place.


    That's not the problem. I just ran a WMI script to check. The
    two C drives are different IDs. And as explained, I didn't clone the
    disks. I just copied over partitions.

    But if Windows Update really
    can't figure out the landscape any better than that, then maybe
    it would work if I temporarily remove the SATA disk 1 that
    Winsdows is seeing as disk 0?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Sat Aug 24 13:03:07 2024
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
       But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.


    A lot.
     KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
     1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
     2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
     2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
     3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
     4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
     5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for
    5034441 and 5041580)

    OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

    When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From sticks@21:1/5 to All on Sat Aug 24 12:24:15 2024
    On 8/24/2024 12:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
       But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.


    A lot.
      KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
      1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
      2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
      2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows
    partition(where Windows expects it to be)
      3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
      4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
      5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for
    5034441 and 5041580)

         OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

      When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.


    It's hard to believe you know nothing about this problem as both winston
    and Paul helped numerous people on this forum get through the issue
    several months back and it was a huge couple of threads. I guess you
    never figured it would matter to you, since you know everything and have
    total control and didn't need to hear any of it, so you just ignored it
    all.

    Winston is a saint for continuing to help people with this update. Why
    don't you just search for the threads instead of making them repeat
    everything all over again?


    --
    Stand With Israel!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to sticks on Sat Aug 24 13:58:33 2024
    On 8/24/2024 1:24 PM, sticks wrote:

    It's hard to believe you know nothing about this problem as both winston
    and Paul helped numerous people on this forum get through the issue
    several months back and it was a huge couple of threads.  I guess you
    never figured it would matter to you, since you know everything and have total control and didn't need to hear any of it, so you just ignored it
    all.


    I don't read all posts and don't recall the discussion. I've
    also been unaware of WinRE. I'm also not as young as I used
    to be and tend to forget things that are not critical. I seem to
    have a lazy teenager in my head who has earbuds in. I send
    him down the the file room to retrieve a memory and I never
    know whether he'll be back... Sorry if that offends you. It
    sounds like you've had fun wallowing in indignation, so I won't
    worry about it. :)

    I don't consider it my job to know everything about everything
    Windows. Do you have any useful advice? You seem to imply that
    you know all about this issue. I tried moving WinRE to C drive, but
    the update still fails without explanation.

    But I did remedy the problem of the login screen stalling for
    8-10 seconds. It turned out that the update attempts left
    behind two folder with about 1400MB each of files, plus a copy
    of the updater file in the SoftwareDistribution folder. 3.5 GB
    altogether! Deleting all that fixed the login. Apparently Windows
    was counting temp files on boot.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sat Aug 24 13:49:52 2024
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 1:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
       But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.


    A lot.
      KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
      1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
      2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
      2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
      3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
      4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
      5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for 5034441 and 5041580)

         OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

      When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.


    1GB is enough, except in cases where after "reagentc /disable",
    the WinRE.wim was transferred from one folder to another folder
    in the 1GB partition. At that point, when '4441 tries to run,
    it finds there still isn't enough space, as now there are
    two WinRE.wim in the same partition. If you made it 2GB, it
    would likely work no matter how poor the conditions were.

    Since you have to use "dir /ah" in there, to see hidden materials,
    that makes it rather hard to discover things. There is absolutely
    no need for the idiots to be doing this. The people who might
    exploit this feature, don't give a rats ass about a weak-sauce
    attempt to hide the goods. The poor users forced to do maintenance
    on hidden partitions with hidden files, those bastards could
    use a break.

    *******

    The PBR (Push Button Reset) method, can be used to salt a "bait-set of files" in a partition you might have freshly created. The two files needed, come
    from your installer DVD of the same vintage as the OS. Since you are not expecting these files to live much past half an hour, when '4441 or a Cumulative
    install right after that, the rails are greased for the bait-set of
    files to be replaced by the WU update. I did this on an older setup,
    on a computer without UEFI boot, but the machine still has Win10 on it.
    For UEFI, some of the earlier postings on the expansion sequence for UEFI/GPT could be used to set up a partition of the proper type (and located next to C: ).

    http://al.howardknight.net/?STYPE=msgid&MSGI=%3Cv45t0r%244sh9%241%40dont-email.me%3E

    It looks like I didn't log the web page that provided the recipe. It was a discussion
    thread rather than a web page invented just for advertising.

    https://i.postimg.cc/Fz6X4Ljh/W10-DELL-reagentc-legacy-boot.gif

    But when you've completely lost control, the PBR is the one thing that is
    going to work. You're in control with that. You're still responsible
    for setting up a partition for it, one way or another.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From sticks@21:1/5 to All on Sat Aug 24 13:32:07 2024
    On 8/24/2024 12:58 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 1:24 PM, sticks wrote:

    It's hard to believe you know nothing about this problem as both
    winston and Paul helped numerous people on this forum get through the
    issue several months back and it was a huge couple of threads.  I
    guess you never figured it would matter to you, since you know
    everything and have total control and didn't need to hear any of it,
    so you just ignored it all.


      I don't read all posts and don't recall the discussion.

    Obviously, that's why I brought it up.

    I've also been unaware of WinRE. I'm also not as young as I used
    to be and tend to forget things that are not critical. I seem to
    have a lazy teenager in my head who has earbuds in. I send
    him down the the file room to retrieve a memory and I never
    know whether he'll be back... Sorry if that offends you.

    Oh jeeze, you're probably gonna turn into one of those posters who tell
    us all how old they are now in almost every post. Yippee!

    It sounds like you've had fun wallowing in indignation, so I won't
    worry about it. :)

    Indignation is not the right noun for how you make people feel. Amused
    and annoyed at the same time is what you do to people. No need to
    apologize, I actually have you filtered after your last nym shifting.
    Just happened to spot this and decided to see what silliness you were
    spouting today.

       I don't consider it my job to know everything about everything
    Windows. Do you have any useful advice?

    I did, but of course you didn't include it in your reply.

    You seem to imply that
    you know all about this issue.

    I know all about it because when the problem appeared I came here for
    help and got it. It affected some machines, others not. I got them all
    fixed thanks to Paul and winston.

    ---cut---

    --
    Stand With Israel!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Aug 24 14:25:30 2024
    On 8/24/2024 1:49 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 1:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
       But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.


    A lot.
      KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
      1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
      2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
      2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
      3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
      4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
      5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for 5034441 and 5041580)

         OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

      When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.


    1GB is enough, except in cases where after "reagentc /disable",
    the WinRE.wim was transferred from one folder to another folder
    in the 1GB partition. At that point, when '4441 tries to run,
    it finds there still isn't enough space, as now there are
    two WinRE.wim in the same partition. If you made it 2GB, it
    would likely work no matter how poor the conditions were.


    1GB. Thanks. I didn't find that anywhere. In the meantime, though,
    I've moved WinRE to C drive, as per Terabyteunlimited instructions.
    So size shouldn't be a problem. The update still fails.

    I could also try unplugging the second drive to reduce confusion,
    but I'm guessing this really isn't about WinRE. Winston said it
    might also complain if there's a Linux system present. It seems to
    me that the updater is being nosey... and it could at least tell me
    what the problem is. I couldn't find anything decipherable in the log.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sat Aug 24 21:37:48 2024
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 2:25 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 1:49 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 1:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
        But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.


    A lot.
       KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
       1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
       2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
       2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
       3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
       4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
       5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for 5034441 and 5041580)

          OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

       When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.


    1GB is enough, except in cases where after "reagentc /disable",
    the WinRE.wim was transferred from one folder to another folder
    in the 1GB partition. At that point, when '4441 tries to run,
    it finds there still isn't enough space, as now there are
    two WinRE.wim in the same partition. If you made it 2GB, it
    would likely work no matter how poor the conditions were.


    1GB. Thanks. I didn't find that anywhere. In the meantime, though,
    I've moved WinRE to C drive, as per Terabyteunlimited instructions.
    So size shouldn't be a problem. The update still fails.

       I could also try unplugging the second drive to reduce confusion,
    but I'm guessing this really isn't about WinRE. Winston said it
    might also complain if there's a Linux system present. It seems to
    me that the updater is being nosey... and it could at least tell me
    what the problem is. I couldn't find anything decipherable in the log.

    For a year now, Microsoft has been working on changing the root of
    trust for Secure Boot. Even if you don't have or use Secure Boot,
    the update still makes a nuisance of itself. If it wasn't for that,
    I would not have done this research.

    I installed Windows 11 on this PC, in Secure Boot mode, just for the
    side effect of when the update in question came in, it would change
    some detail in the UEFI key store to suit Secure Boot. Then,
    I turned off Secure Boot again and unplugged that drive.

    July 2024 was supposed to be the month where IT people in industry,
    checked for side effects from the change. August would be the month
    where the change is mandatory.

    From July 26th posting:

    To verify that the Secure Boot DB update was successful, open an Admin PowerShell

    [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match ‘Windows UEFI CA 2023’

    That should return True, if your machine had been properly patched. I only patch the key store on my machines, for the day I pass and someone else
    gets my crappy computer :-) I don't use Secure Boot here. The Microsoft patches, I don't think they even sniff for this, they just "roll forward"
    over whatever you've got.

    When you buy your motherboard from Microcenter and set up your machine, it comes
    from the factory with ‘Windows UEFI CA 2011’ , in other words, an older root of trust.
    Things like Linux shims, are *signed* by that key. Obviously, if you have Secure Boot
    enabled, and you were dual booting, and a new Linux shim had not been installed,
    there is going to be "friction" when the 2023 shim meets the 2011 key or
    the 2011 shim meets the 2023 key. I don't know what is going on this month,
    and absolutely none of my test configs were set up to catch the side
    effects of this. But to the best of my recollection, without researching
    this again, that's the basic idea. Something about messing around in UEFI
    key store, and breaking some aspect of Secure Booting in a mixed OS environment.

    I may have related the story, about finding a blog style post, where a Linux dev was involved in the re-signing of the shim for his distro. They actually have to *fly* to another city, for the signing. Presumably the setup
    is air gapped, you go into a locked room and work the knobs for a
    signing. Then jump back on the plane and fly home. Multiple people
    had to go through this. Just the coffee and donuts bill is staggering.

    *******

    '4441 is about WinRE.wim , an alternate boot OS when your regular C: is toast. Keeping WinRE.wim on a separate partition, may allow C: to be encrypted, and then something can still boot if you (say), reset your TPM.

    The other patch sequence (Linux dual boot, Secure Boot problem) is for BlackLotus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI

    "On March 1, 2023, researchers from ESET Cybersecurity Firm reported
    “The first in-the-wild UEFI bootkit bypassing UEFI Secure Boot” named
    ‘BlackLotus’ in their public analyses findings describing the theory behind
    its mechanics exploiting the patches that “do not (and cannot) remove the vulnerability”.

    I think that's the one. Microsoft was supposed to work on that over the
    period of one year, do it slowly, in the hope that humans could keep
    up with the side effects, and fewer people would be affected.

    I still have an outstanding BIOS update for the Asus motherboard.
    Yet another CVE. I did the one for the MSI motherboard. Both are AM4.
    MSI have lost the custody chain on their BIOS, so you have to say
    a prayer that when you download a BIOS, that MSI actually controls
    their own website. Motherboard websites (two of them) were hacked
    on the same day, a number of years back, so it's not a given that
    a BIOS update is the real deal. Someone can now make an MSI BIOS,
    and the existing BIOS will think it is a real item and not a fake.

    I can't see much improvement in our sense of security. One of the
    real concerns, is the technical staff are having trouble keeping
    up and doing the handling properly, for this crap.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Aug 24 23:09:27 2024
    On 8/24/2024 9:37 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 2:25 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 1:49 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 1:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
        But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data.


    A lot.
       KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
       1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
       2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
       2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
       3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
       4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
       5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for 5034441 and 5041580)

          OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

       When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.


    1GB is enough, except in cases where after "reagentc /disable",
    the WinRE.wim was transferred from one folder to another folder
    in the 1GB partition. At that point, when '4441 tries to run,
    it finds there still isn't enough space, as now there are
    two WinRE.wim in the same partition. If you made it 2GB, it
    would likely work no matter how poor the conditions were.


    1GB. Thanks. I didn't find that anywhere. In the meantime, though,
    I've moved WinRE to C drive, as per Terabyteunlimited instructions.
    So size shouldn't be a problem. The update still fails.

       I could also try unplugging the second drive to reduce confusion,
    but I'm guessing this really isn't about WinRE. Winston said it
    might also complain if there's a Linux system present. It seems to
    me that the updater is being nosey... and it could at least tell me
    what the problem is. I couldn't find anything decipherable in the log.

    For a year now, Microsoft has been working on changing the root of
    trust for Secure Boot. Even if you don't have or use Secure Boot,
    the update still makes a nuisance of itself. If it wasn't for that,
    I would not have done this research.

    I installed Windows 11 on this PC, in Secure Boot mode, just for the
    side effect of when the update in question came in, it would change
    some detail in the UEFI key store to suit Secure Boot. Then,
    I turned off Secure Boot again and unplugged that drive.

    July 2024 was supposed to be the month where IT people in industry,
    checked for side effects from the change. August would be the month
    where the change is mandatory.

    From July 26th posting:

    To verify that the Secure Boot DB update was successful, open an Admin PowerShell

    [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match ‘Windows UEFI CA 2023’

    That should return True, if your machine had been properly patched. I only patch the key store on my machines, for the day I pass and someone else
    gets my crappy computer :-) I don't use Secure Boot here. The Microsoft patches, I don't think they even sniff for this, they just "roll forward" over whatever you've got.

    When you buy your motherboard from Microcenter and set up your machine, it comes
    from the factory with ‘Windows UEFI CA 2011’ , in other words, an older root of trust.
    Things like Linux shims, are *signed* by that key. Obviously, if you have Secure Boot
    enabled, and you were dual booting, and a new Linux shim had not been installed,
    there is going to be "friction" when the 2023 shim meets the 2011 key or
    the 2011 shim meets the 2023 key. I don't know what is going on this month, and absolutely none of my test configs were set up to catch the side
    effects of this. But to the best of my recollection, without researching
    this again, that's the basic idea. Something about messing around in UEFI
    key store, and breaking some aspect of Secure Booting in a mixed OS environment.

    I may have related the story, about finding a blog style post, where a Linux dev was involved in the re-signing of the shim for his distro. They actually have to *fly* to another city, for the signing. Presumably the setup
    is air gapped, you go into a locked room and work the knobs for a
    signing. Then jump back on the plane and fly home. Multiple people
    had to go through this. Just the coffee and donuts bill is staggering.

    *******

    '4441 is about WinRE.wim , an alternate boot OS when your regular C: is toast.
    Keeping WinRE.wim on a separate partition, may allow C: to be encrypted, and then something can still boot if you (say), reset your TPM.

    The other patch sequence (Linux dual boot, Secure Boot problem) is for BlackLotus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI

    "On March 1, 2023, researchers from ESET Cybersecurity Firm reported
    “The first in-the-wild UEFI bootkit bypassing UEFI Secure Boot” named
    ‘BlackLotus’ in their public analyses findings describing the theory behind
    its mechanics exploiting the patches that “do not (and cannot) remove the vulnerability”.

    I think that's the one. Microsoft was supposed to work on that over the period of one year, do it slowly, in the hope that humans could keep
    up with the side effects, and fewer people would be affected.

    I still have an outstanding BIOS update for the Asus motherboard.
    Yet another CVE. I did the one for the MSI motherboard. Both are AM4.
    MSI have lost the custody chain on their BIOS, so you have to say
    a prayer that when you download a BIOS, that MSI actually controls
    their own website. Motherboard websites (two of them) were hacked
    on the same day, a number of years back, so it's not a given that
    a BIOS update is the real deal. Someone can now make an MSI BIOS,
    and the existing BIOS will think it is a real item and not a fake.

    I can't see much improvement in our sense of security. One of the
    real concerns, is the technical staff are having trouble keeping
    up and doing the handling properly, for this crap.


    Thanks... I think. I find all of this difficult to understand. When I installed Suse Linux it broke my system and I just got a black screen with
    a message saying "something has gone very wrong". I researched
    it, found that it was a bad Linux shim that the Suse people knew about
    but hadn't fixed. But it was curable by disabling secure boot. It's been disabled ever since.

    Last week, MS apparently screwed up something, causing the same
    message if Linux is installed:

    https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/08/a-patch-microsoft-spent-2-years-preparing-is-making-a-mess-for-some-linux-users/

    I don't understand enough of UEFI altogether to understand what that
    all means. But it sounds like having Linux on my computer may be a complication.

    Your PS commandline returns true for me. I just built this computer
    around February. Maybe that's it. Though I did run updates since. I did a cumulative security update in April. I still don't see what any of this has
    to do with cumulative security updates. Shouldn't they just be swapping
    out various system files? But maybe this explains why Suse broke secure
    boot... Beats me. I feel no closer to understanding what *could* have
    gone wrong than when I first tried to run this update.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sun Aug 25 00:51:53 2024
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 11:09 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 9:37 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 2:25 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 1:49 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 1:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
         But the question still stands... what has any of this got
    to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data. >>>>>>

    A lot.
        KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
        1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
        2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
        2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
        3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
        4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
        5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for 5034441 and 5041580)

           OK. Thanks for your help, Winston. I do have WinRE
    next to C, but I also have a boot manager and Linux installed.
    It appears that MS are simply not going to let updates through
    anymore unless they have control of the machine and of
    Windows.

        When I look up 5034441 I find that it caused lots of errors
    and that Ms stopped offering it unless there's plenty of room
    in the WinRE partition, though they never said exactly how
    much room is needed.


    1GB is enough, except in cases where after "reagentc /disable",
    the WinRE.wim was transferred from one folder to another folder
    in the 1GB partition. At that point, when '4441 tries to run,
    it finds there still isn't enough space, as now there are
    two WinRE.wim in the same partition. If you made it 2GB, it
    would likely work no matter how poor the conditions were.


    1GB. Thanks. I didn't find that anywhere. In the meantime, though,
    I've moved WinRE to C drive, as per Terabyteunlimited instructions.
    So size shouldn't be a problem. The update still fails.

        I could also try unplugging the second drive to reduce confusion,
    but I'm guessing this really isn't about WinRE. Winston said it
    might also complain if there's a Linux system present. It seems to
    me that the updater is being nosey... and it could at least tell me
    what the problem is. I couldn't find anything decipherable in the log.

    For a year now, Microsoft has been working on changing the root of
    trust for Secure Boot. Even if you don't have or use Secure Boot,
    the update still makes a nuisance of itself. If it wasn't for that,
    I would not have done this research.

    I installed Windows 11 on this PC, in Secure Boot mode, just for the
    side effect of when the update in question came in, it would change
    some detail in the UEFI key store to suit Secure Boot. Then,
    I turned off Secure Boot again and unplugged that drive.

    July 2024 was supposed to be the month where IT people in industry,
    checked for side effects from the change. August would be the month
    where the change is mandatory.

     From July 26th posting:

         To verify that the Secure Boot DB update was successful, open an Admin PowerShell

         [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match ‘Windows UEFI CA 2023’

    That should return True, if your machine had been properly patched. I only >> patch the key store on my machines, for the day I pass and someone else
    gets my crappy computer :-) I don't use Secure Boot here. The Microsoft
    patches, I don't think they even sniff for this, they just "roll forward"
    over whatever you've got.

    When you buy your motherboard from Microcenter and set up your machine, it comes
    from the factory with ‘Windows UEFI CA 2011’ , in other words, an older root of trust.
    Things like Linux shims, are *signed* by that key. Obviously, if you have Secure Boot
    enabled, and you were dual booting, and a new Linux shim had not been installed,
    there is going to be "friction" when the 2023 shim meets the 2011 key or
    the 2011 shim meets the 2023 key. I don't know what is going on this month, >> and absolutely none of my test configs were set up to catch the side
    effects of this. But to the best of my recollection, without researching
    this again, that's the basic idea. Something about messing around in UEFI
    key store, and breaking some aspect of Secure Booting in a mixed OS environment.

    I may have related the story, about finding a blog style post, where a Linux >> dev was involved in the re-signing of the shim for his distro. They actually >> have to *fly* to another city, for the signing. Presumably the setup
    is air gapped, you go into a locked room and work the knobs for a
    signing. Then jump back on the plane and fly home. Multiple people
    had to go through this. Just the coffee and donuts bill is staggering.

    *******

    '4441 is about WinRE.wim , an alternate boot OS when your regular C: is toast.
    Keeping WinRE.wim on a separate partition, may allow C: to be encrypted, and >> then something can still boot if you (say), reset your TPM.

    The other patch sequence (Linux dual boot, Secure Boot problem) is for BlackLotus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI

        "On March 1, 2023, researchers from ESET Cybersecurity Firm reported
         “The first in-the-wild UEFI bootkit bypassing UEFI Secure Boot” named >>      ‘BlackLotus’ in their public analyses findings describing the theory behind
         its mechanics exploiting the patches that “do not (and cannot) remove the vulnerability”.

    I think that's the one. Microsoft was supposed to work on that over the
    period of one year, do it slowly, in the hope that humans could keep
    up with the side effects, and fewer people would be affected.

    I still have an outstanding BIOS update for the Asus motherboard.
    Yet another CVE. I did the one for the MSI motherboard. Both are AM4.
    MSI have lost the custody chain on their BIOS, so you have to say
    a prayer that when you download a BIOS, that MSI actually controls
    their own website. Motherboard websites (two of them) were hacked
    on the same day, a number of years back, so it's not a given that
    a BIOS update is the real deal. Someone can now make an MSI BIOS,
    and the existing BIOS will think it is a real item and not a fake.

    I can't see much improvement in our sense of security. One of the
    real concerns, is the technical staff are having trouble keeping
    up and doing the handling properly, for this crap.


        Thanks... I think. I find all of this difficult to understand. When I installed Suse Linux it broke my system and I just got a black screen with
    a message saying "something has gone very wrong". I researched
    it, found that it was a bad Linux shim that the Suse people knew about
    but hadn't fixed. But it was curable by disabling secure boot. It's been disabled ever since.

      Last week, MS apparently screwed up something, causing the same
    message if Linux is installed:

    https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/08/a-patch-microsoft-spent-2-years-preparing-is-making-a-mess-for-some-linux-users/

     I don't understand enough of UEFI altogether to understand what that
    all means. But it sounds like having Linux on my computer may be a complication.

     Your PS commandline returns true for me. I just built this computer
    around February. Maybe that's it. Though I did run updates since. I did a cumulative security update in April. I still don't see what any of this has to do with cumulative security updates. Shouldn't they just be swapping
    out various system files? But maybe this explains why Suse broke secure boot... Beats me. I feel no closer to understanding what *could* have
    gone wrong than when I first tried to run this update.


    Remote debug is very hard. I've done threads with hundreds of
    posts, just trying to get some idea where a person is stuck.

    And just keeping up with CVE (it's not a fetish of mine actually),
    is hard enough for me. I'm not exactly breezing through these things.
    One of those WinRE.wim things, I spent *hours* on that. These are like
    bar bets, not maintenance problems.

    Most of the time I ignore security articles, except when
    they have a rating of 10/10 :-)

    I don't know why you would run Suse on Secure Boot. I stopped
    allowing that sort of thing here, after Ubuntu put up a red screen
    at boot time and said "we need to modify your MOK". My answer
    was "Oh no you don't" and I turned off the PC power. The BIOS is set
    to CSM here. Later, the Linux shim was invented, and there was
    less talk of trashing computers and red dialog boxes.

    With the Microsoft updates, they will attempt to "correct" Secure Boot
    issues, even though you have Secure Boot disabled. You will then have
    failed updates in your Update History. This is an extra synaptic load
    for the user, who doesn't need more of a hobby fixing this stuff.

    I don't remember saying "UEFI, oh what a wonderful idea" or "Voting YES"
    for it. Yet, here I am, having to deal with the shards.

    Anyway, call back, if you are making progress on one of the fixes.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Paul on Sun Aug 25 02:07:45 2024
    On Sun, 8/25/2024 12:51 AM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 11:09 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 9:37 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 2:25 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 1:49 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 8/24/2024 1:03 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/24/2024 12:27 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
         But the question still stands... what has any of this got >>>>>>>> to do with running an update? My laptop also has two disks
    and dual boots 10/11. I can't imagine that the updater
    can't figure out where C drive is. When I tried to run the
    updater it spent a few minutes looking in the Registry and
    such, getting to 5% complete before failing with error
    8007000d and then error 13. The latter is windows error code
    for invalid data. I think the former also came up as invalid data. >>>>>>>

    A lot.
        KB 5041580 failures have been reported for:
        1. 5034441(WinRE update not being installed)
        2. 5034441's SafeOS update not installed
        2. Windows Recovery partition not adjacent, right of active Windows partition(where Windows expects it to be)
        3. Presence of 3rd party Boot Manager's
        4. Dual booting Windows with Linux
        5. Inability to update the latest O/S Servicing Stack(necessary for 5034441 and 5041580)

    Here is a repair in preparation of a '4441 attempt, on a GPT disk.
    No PushButtonReset in this case, as the WinRE.wim still seemed
    to exist and be suited to sitting as "bait" for the update to finish
    it off.

    http://al.howardknight.net/?STYPE=msgid&MSGI=%3Cuo0dvr%24dfk4%241%40dont-email.me%3E

    MID: <uo0dvr$dfk4$1@dont-email.me>

    *******

    Also available as a pastebin, as Howard was acting funny a few minutes ago.

    https://pastebin.com/PqCrj7zB

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Sun Aug 25 08:15:40 2024
    On 8/25/2024 12:51 AM, Paul wrote:

    Remote debug is very hard. I've done threads with hundreds of
    posts, just trying to get some idea where a person is stuck.

    And just keeping up with CVE (it's not a fetish of mine actually),
    is hard enough for me. I'm not exactly breezing through these things.
    One of those WinRE.wim things, I spent *hours* on that. These are like
    bar bets, not maintenance problems.

    Most of the time I ignore security articles, except when
    they have a rating of 10/10 :-)

    I don't know why you would run Suse on Secure Boot. I stopped
    allowing that sort of thing here, after Ubuntu put up a red screen
    at boot time and said "we need to modify your MOK".

    The fact is that I just came from XP a few months ago. The
    dramatic changes in partitioning, booting, etc are all new to me.
    I was only vaguely aware of secure boot.

    Like most tech, I find it all hard to understand unless I dig deep,
    getting past the jargon. I think that's why the "for dummies" books
    were so popular. It's the only approach that starts from scratch
    and explains things. Once it gets to where each sentence has 3
    unfamiliar terms, there's no way to put it all together.

    I still remember my first night with a computer. The ISP instructions
    told me to move a file from their floppy to the Desktop. I sspent
    5 hours trying to figure out how to do that. I read the entire help
    manual. (Which used to exist back then.) Nowhere was it explained how
    to get a file from a floppy to the desktop. It was only much later
    that I understood the office metaphor is less than useful. Most people
    I know still couldn't move a file from an external drive to the Desktop.
    But they know that one icon is the Internet and the other is MS Word.

    > My answer
    was "Oh no you don't" and I turned off the PC power. The BIOS is set
    to CSM here. Later, the Linux shim was invented, and there was
    less talk of trashing computers and red dialog boxes.

    With the Microsoft updates, they will attempt to "correct" Secure Boot issues, even though you have Secure Boot disabled. You will then have
    failed updates in your Update History. This is an extra synaptic load
    for the user, who doesn't need more of a hobby fixing this stuff.

    I don't remember saying "UEFI, oh what a wonderful idea" or "Voting YES"
    for it. Yet, here I am, having to deal with the shards.

    Anyway, call back, if you are making progress on one of the fixes.


    Thanks. I'll post if I find anything useful. But I'm not sure that I
    care enough about these updates to keep messing with it and risking
    system security. Despite not installing, every time I run the update
    it messes with various things. It can't figure out how to update the
    system, yet it manages to swap out my ieframe.dll files that I specifically
    got from 20H2 so that IE will work.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sun Aug 25 14:46:10 2024
    On Sun, 8/25/2024 8:15 AM, Newyana2 wrote:

      Thanks. I'll post if I find anything useful. But I'm not sure that I
    care enough about these updates to keep messing with it and risking
    system security. Despite not installing, every time I run the update
    it messes with various things. It can't figure out how to update the
    system, yet it manages to swap out my ieframe.dll files that I specifically got from 20H2 so that IE will work.


    There is some package information in WinSxS. They can hardlink
    files from WinSxS to System32 for example.

    Findlinks can show you the hardlinks (if any), to a file. The H: drive
    is my Windows 10 installation.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/findlinks

    findlinks64 H:\Windows\System32\ieframe.dll

    h:\windows\system32\ieframe.dll
    h:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft-windows-ieframe_31bf3856ad364e35_11.0.19041.4648_none_1cf2ebf68ce75f28\ieframe.dll

    findlinks64 H:\Windows\SysWOW64\ieframe.dll

    h:\windows\syswow64\ieframe.dll
    h:\Windows\WinSxS\wow64_microsoft-windows-ieframe_31bf3856ad364e35_11.0.19041.4648_none_27479648c1482123\ieframe.dll

    The Windows Side-by-Side folder, is for maintenance, and it hardlinks
    from a particular package version (there could be more than one ieframe
    version in WinSxS_available to some system folder). Since both 32-bit and 64-bit
    versions of Internet Explorer exist, there are two ieframe.dll files, one in
    a 32-bit place, one in a 64-bit place.

    Hardlinks are like this. You can have more than two file pointers and this
    is just to keep the size of the diagram down. If I "delete" filename2 right now, nothing happens. If I next delete filename1, it is at that point the clusters are deleted (flag flipped indicating clusters can be reused or whatever).
    The concept of hardlinking existed in Unix and Linux, so it's not a new concept.

    filename1 filename2
    \ /
    Common-Set-Of-Clusters

    When you deleted the original ieframe.dll from System32, it broke the hardlink certainly. You copied another version of ieframe.dll into its place.
    However, if the system does any sort of maintenance, if it wants it
    can check that the WinSxS information matches the in-system information,
    and it is allowed to re-link the package-version of the file back
    into place. While I don't know how or when such maintenance might occur,
    just the long duration of a Cumulative Update suggests it's scanning
    the whole thing for juicy details. Windows Updates are managed at the
    package level. A Cumulative is "a thousand maintenance commands, in a can".

    I don't really know how best to help you on your mission. I've tried
    deleting the contents of WinSxS -- the system would not boot. That doesn't appear to be an option (even though it was suggested the system would
    survive if you wiped WinSxS, that did not work for me). If manually inserting
    a file into a semi-protected spot, there could be backlash. Only if the
    package providing the old version of file was in the tree, could you
    expect a hardlinking of the desired version, into place. And just about
    any Cumulative that gets loaded later, is going to try to "select"
    the package it wants, and not what you want.

    You know, that paddling upstream feeling.

    If you made a private copy of the IE installation, copied all
    dependency DLLs into your private folder, maybe you can coax it
    to use your privately-arranged DLL in the private folder. That should
    make you independent of maintenance. But that is only going to work,
    if the loader is smart enough to check for DLLs in the private folder
    first, instead of going straight to System32 or SysWOW64.

    For Metro.Apps, there would be much tighter management of content -- there is not much chance of meddling with Metro, just be glad iexplore
    is Win32 legacy material.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Sun Aug 25 15:38:12 2024
    On 8/25/2024 2:46 PM, Paul wrote:

    When you deleted the original ieframe.dll from System32, it broke the hardlink
    certainly. You copied another version of ieframe.dll into its place.
    However, if the system does any sort of maintenance, if it wants it
    can check that the WinSxS information matches the in-system information,
    and it is allowed to re-link the package-version of the file back
    into place. While I don't know how or when such maintenance might occur,
    just the long duration of a Cumulative Update suggests it's scanning
    the whole thing for juicy details. Windows Updates are managed at the
    package level. A Cumulative is "a thousand maintenance commands, in a can".

    What surprises me is that it's able to do such detailed housekeeping
    without being asked, but somehow isn't able to actually do the system
    update by swapping out the files that's it's actually supposed to deal with. (Ieframe actually is listed as a file in the update, but it's version 19041.4239.
    The version Windows keeps putting back is 3803. The version that fixes
    the problem is 610.)

    I don't really know how best to help you on your mission. I've tried
    deleting the contents of WinSxS -- the system would not boot. That doesn't appear to be an option (even though it was suggested the system would
    survive if you wiped WinSxS, that did not work for me). If manually inserting a file into a semi-protected spot, there could be backlash. Only if the package providing the old version of file was in the tree, could you
    expect a hardlinking of the desired version, into place. And just about
    any Cumulative that gets loaded later, is going to try to "select"
    the package it wants, and not what you want.


    That issue is not a problem. When Windows puts back the orignal ieframe
    I just take ownership, rename it, then put in the version from 20H2. Not
    a big deal. I just thought it was striking that the update was doing
    that, yet
    not succeeding in doing the actual update! Windows hasn't messed with
    my changed ieframe files except during attempts to run the update.

    If you made a private copy of the IE installation, copied all
    dependency DLLs into your private folder, maybe you can coax it
    to use your privately-arranged DLL in the private folder. That should
    make you independent of maintenance. But that is only going to work,
    if the loader is smart enough to check for DLLs in the private folder
    first, instead of going straight to System32 or SysWOW64.


    Again, you don't seem to understand. This is a known solution to
    Microsoft
    killing the IE GUI in Win10 when trying to run IE directly. It works
    fine to replace the DLLs with versions from 20H2. I've had them swapped
    out for months with no issues. It was only running the update that caused problems... I'm beginning to think this update business is probably not
    worth the trouble. I used to just occasionally install cumulative security updates, but they didn't used to be such a big deal. And these days I'm
    also
    wary that they might somehow sneal Copilot or worse in there.

    For Metro.Apps, there would be much tighter management of content -- there is not much chance of meddling with Metro, just be glad iexplore
    is Win32 legacy material.


    Indeed. I've pretty much removed Edge and anything else
    Metro. But I like IE as a quick, easy browser for local webpages.
    I set it as default for HTML, then block it from going online. That
    helps to prevent wiseguy tricks, like programs trying to send me
    to their website. They end up shelling IE and IE says it can't reach
    the site. Nice. :)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Sun Aug 25 23:20:28 2024
    On Sun, 8/25/2024 3:38 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/25/2024 2:46 PM, Paul wrote:

    When you deleted the original ieframe.dll from System32, it broke the hardlink
    certainly. You copied another version of ieframe.dll into its place.
    However, if the system does any sort of maintenance, if it wants it
    can check that the WinSxS information matches the in-system information,
    and it is allowed to re-link the package-version of the file back
    into place. While I don't know how or when such maintenance might occur,
    just the long duration of a Cumulative Update suggests it's scanning
    the whole thing for juicy details. Windows Updates are managed at the
    package level. A Cumulative is "a thousand maintenance commands, in a can". >>
      What surprises me is that it's able to do such detailed housekeeping without being asked, but somehow isn't able to actually do the system
    update by swapping out the files that's it's actually supposed to deal with. (Ieframe actually is listed as a file in the update, but it's version 19041.4239.
    The version Windows keeps putting back is 3803. The version that fixes
    the problem is 610.)

    I don't really know how best to help you on your mission. I've tried
    deleting the contents of WinSxS -- the system would not boot. That doesn't >> appear to be an option (even though it was suggested the system would
    survive if you wiped WinSxS, that did not work for me). If manually inserting
    a file into a semi-protected spot, there could be backlash. Only if the
    package providing the old version of file was in the tree, could you
    expect a hardlinking of the desired version, into place. And just about
    any Cumulative that gets loaded later, is going to try to "select"
    the package it wants, and not what you want.


     That issue is not a problem. When Windows puts back the orignal ieframe
    I just take ownership, rename it, then put in the version from 20H2. Not
    a big deal. I just thought it was striking that the update was doing that, yet
    not succeeding in doing the actual update! Windows hasn't messed with
    my changed ieframe files except during attempts to run the update.

    If you made a private copy of the IE installation, copied all
    dependency DLLs into your private folder, maybe you can coax it
    to use your privately-arranged DLL in the private folder. That should
    make you independent of maintenance. But that is only going to work,
    if the loader is smart enough to check for DLLs in the private folder
    first, instead of going straight to System32 or SysWOW64.


       Again, you don't seem to understand. This is a known solution to Microsoft killing the IE GUI in Win10 when trying to run IE directly. It works
    fine to replace the DLLs with versions from 20H2. I've had them swapped
    out for months with no issues. It was only running the update that caused problems... I'm beginning to think this update business is probably not
    worth the trouble. I used to just occasionally install cumulative security updates, but they didn't used to be such a big deal. And these days I'm also wary that they might somehow sneal Copilot or worse in there.


    The CoPilot icon on the desktop at the moment, makes a remote connection
    to their datacenter. The dialog box is likely based on MSEdge code (because
    I see CoPilot start MSEdge when you click it). CoPilot can answer questions, and can also run a remote copy of CoPilot Studio, to draw a picture you
    ask for (...don't bother).

    The future CoPilot is for local execution. Only one processor is certified
    at the moment, the Qualcomm ARM processor with NPU. Intel Lunar Lake could be next (a CPU with no Intel silicon inside, made entirely at TSMC). NVidia is working on a library, but NVidia is also likely to just do their own thing too, to compete with Microsoft. The end result of all this, is practically no one will be able to Opt-in to Local CoPilot. The Remote version, needs "rental" features for Microsoft to cash in, and I doubt most people will be whipping out any credit card for the features so far.

    There is not much chance of being mugged by CoPilot, just yet. CoPilot is
    in the basement of the building, playing cards with Clippy.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Mon Aug 26 08:51:18 2024
    On 8/25/2024 11:20 PM, Paul wrote:

    The CoPilot icon on the desktop at the moment, makes a remote connection
    to their datacenter. The dialog box is likely based on MSEdge code (because
    I see CoPilot start MSEdge when you click it). CoPilot can answer questions, and can also run a remote copy of CoPilot Studio, to draw a picture you
    ask for (...don't bother).

    The future CoPilot is for local execution. Only one processor is certified
    at the moment, the Qualcomm ARM processor with NPU. Intel Lunar Lake could be next (a CPU with no Intel silicon inside, made entirely at TSMC). NVidia is working on a library, but NVidia is also likely to just do their own thing too,
    to compete with Microsoft. The end result of all this, is practically no one will be able to Opt-in to Local CoPilot. The Remote version, needs "rental" features for Microsoft to cash in, and I doubt most people will be whipping out
    any credit card for the features so far.

    There is not much chance of being mugged by CoPilot, just yet. CoPilot is
    in the basement of the building, playing cards with Clippy.


    That's a sunny view. :) It reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield in
    the final scene of Easy Money. I saw an article about Copilot when they
    first came out with it. The author asked it for a picture of a pig
    celebrating St Patrick's Day and watching TV. It generated 4 apparent
    photos, of a pig in a green foil hat, sitting at a party-strewn table,
    with a TV on in the background. I could see that being very big.

    I suspect the longterm plan will be presenting Windows as the
    ultimate rental "experience machine". Something like Copilot will be
    the primary interface. Typing will seem old fashioned. And with such
    a middleman program, Windows will easily track your thought process
    and actions for ad targetting. It'll be like Star Trek gone Disney, by
    way of Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now:

    "Computer, what have you got for hot sex toys"?

    "A selection has been materialized in your cabin, Captain Kirk, and
    a suitable negligee has been materialized for your lover. But first, let's
    just do a little security update... Piece o' cake..."

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Mon Aug 26 20:07:14 2024
    On 8/26/2024 5:43 PM, ...winston wrote:
    Newyana2 wrote:
    1GB. Thanks. I didn't find that anywhere. In the meantime, though,
    I've moved WinRE to C drive, as per Terabyteunlimited instructions.
    So size shouldn't be a problem. The update still fails.

    Well...
    Did you run reagentc /info to determine if it points to the WinRE on the Windows o/s disk and that partition is located after and rt. adjacent to
    the C:/ drive Windows partition.

    As far as WinRe partition..
     - the size does not matter, its the amount of free space in the
    partition.
     And for that you need to get Powershell functional for the Get_Volume command or use a third party tool(or imaging software) to see the size
    *and* free space.

    Once done, maybe you updating issues can be better addressed.


    You must have missed my later post. I moved WinRE to C drive, as per instructions at Terabyte Unlimited. I figured that with that configuration
    it can grow as much as it needs to. The update still failed, and now
    the System and Privacy applets in Settings won't open.

    That's another
    mystery to me with Win10. Control Panel has never been unstable in
    any way, but now that the're moving applets to Metro/WinRT, several
    times I've had problems with them closing when I try to access them.
    I get the blue gear window and then it just closes.

    I appreciate your efforts but I don't want to waste peoples' time. This
    all started with me just thinking it was probably a known glitch and maybe someone knew the fix. It turns out to be numerous glitches that are not
    really known. The logs are not anything I can make sense of and they're
    far too verbose...

    I may try disconnecting
    the second drive and see if the update works. Or I may just put back my
    recent disk image and call it a day. There's no sense running updates if they're going to destabilize the system and then not even work.

    All I care about is security updates, but most of those relate to unsafe things that I don't use anyway, like Remote Desktop or Teams. So it's
    not really a big deal for me if I can't update. Maybe I'll wait until they
    end support and see if a third party comes out with a superpatch.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Mon Aug 26 22:57:11 2024
    On Mon, 8/26/2024 8:51 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/25/2024 11:20 PM, Paul wrote:

    The CoPilot icon on the desktop at the moment, makes a remote connection
    to their datacenter. The dialog box is likely based on MSEdge code (because >> I see CoPilot start MSEdge when you click it). CoPilot can answer questions, >> and can also run a remote copy of CoPilot Studio, to draw a picture you
    ask for (...don't bother).

    The future CoPilot is for local execution. Only one processor is certified >> at the moment, the Qualcomm ARM processor with NPU. Intel Lunar Lake could be
    next (a CPU with no Intel silicon inside, made entirely at TSMC). NVidia is >> working on a library, but NVidia is also likely to just do their own thing too,
    to compete with Microsoft. The end result of all this, is practically no one >> will be able to Opt-in to Local CoPilot. The Remote version, needs "rental" >> features for Microsoft to cash in, and I doubt most people will be whipping out
    any credit card for the features so far.

    There is not much chance of being mugged by CoPilot, just yet. CoPilot is
    in the basement of the building, playing cards with Clippy.


      That's a sunny view. :) It reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield in
    the final scene of Easy Money. I saw an article about Copilot when they
    first came out with it. The author asked it for a picture of a pig celebrating St Patrick's Day and watching TV. It generated 4 apparent
    photos, of a pig in a green foil hat, sitting at a party-strewn table,
    with a TV on in the background. I could see that being very big.

      I suspect the longterm plan will be presenting Windows as the
    ultimate rental "experience machine". Something like Copilot will be
    the primary interface. Typing will seem old fashioned. And with such
    a middleman program, Windows will easily track your thought process
    and actions for ad targetting. It'll be like Star Trek gone Disney, by
    way of Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now:

    "Computer, what have you got for hot sex toys"?

    "A selection has been materialized in your cabin, Captain Kirk, and
    a suitable negligee has been materialized for your lover. But first, let's just do a little security update... Piece o' cake..."

    None of the "art" created with CoPilot Studio (test version not the paid version) produced "acceptable output". Close but not quite there.

    When CoPilot answers questions, it's the same thing. CoPilot will ignore keywords on purpose, just to make it easier to craft an answer. And it
    will never answer a question with "I don't know". That's because
    "text completion" is the base technology, and it can always string
    words together to make some kind of answer, even if the answer
    serves no purpose.

    How much would a person pay in rent for that ? "I don't know" :-)

    I think it's good to be able to test this version, just to
    see what the spectrum of answers looks like.

    Is it worth a $10 billion investment ? Only if it comes with advertisements.

    The very first question I asked it, was unbounded. I was careless.
    I asked it "what are your capabilities?" I was expecting it to read its manifest and say something like "answer questions and provide web references". I wanted to know whether it could create art or do arithmetic.
    But the thing went nuts, started spewing a lot of text to the screen
    (faster than I could read it), it timed out after 15 or 20 seconds,
    and it *erased* all of the initial answer.

    This is why, if you haven't tried this before, I recommend
    drafting your question in Notepad first, then copy and paste
    the question into the CoPilot dialog. Staring at your question
    for a moment or two, helps you determine whether the
    question is too unbounded. While you can try to enter guidance
    phrases, that doesn't really help all that much. It doesn't
    take a T-square and draw sharp lines bounding the answer,
    and it would be a sheer accident, if the answer actually
    followed your suggestion or hint. It seems the more text you enter,
    the more text it can selectively ignore.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Tue Aug 27 08:22:08 2024
    On 8/26/2024 10:57 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Mon, 8/26/2024 8:51 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/25/2024 11:20 PM, Paul wrote:

    The CoPilot icon on the desktop at the moment, makes a remote connection >>> to their datacenter. The dialog box is likely based on MSEdge code (because >>> I see CoPilot start MSEdge when you click it). CoPilot can answer questions,
    and can also run a remote copy of CoPilot Studio, to draw a picture you
    ask for (...don't bother).

    The future CoPilot is for local execution. Only one processor is certified >>> at the moment, the Qualcomm ARM processor with NPU. Intel Lunar Lake could be
    next (a CPU with no Intel silicon inside, made entirely at TSMC). NVidia is >>> working on a library, but NVidia is also likely to just do their own thing too,
    to compete with Microsoft. The end result of all this, is practically no one
    will be able to Opt-in to Local CoPilot. The Remote version, needs "rental" >>> features for Microsoft to cash in, and I doubt most people will be whipping out
    any credit card for the features so far.

    There is not much chance of being mugged by CoPilot, just yet. CoPilot is >>> in the basement of the building, playing cards with Clippy.


      That's a sunny view. :) It reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield in
    the final scene of Easy Money. I saw an article about Copilot when they
    first came out with it. The author asked it for a picture of a pig
    celebrating St Patrick's Day and watching TV. It generated 4 apparent
    photos, of a pig in a green foil hat, sitting at a party-strewn table,
    with a TV on in the background. I could see that being very big.

      I suspect the longterm plan will be presenting Windows as the
    ultimate rental "experience machine". Something like Copilot will be
    the primary interface. Typing will seem old fashioned. And with such
    a middleman program, Windows will easily track your thought process
    and actions for ad targetting. It'll be like Star Trek gone Disney, by
    way of Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now:

    "Computer, what have you got for hot sex toys"?

    "A selection has been materialized in your cabin, Captain Kirk, and
    a suitable negligee has been materialized for your lover. But first, let's >> just do a little security update... Piece o' cake..."

    None of the "art" created with CoPilot Studio (test version not the paid version) produced "acceptable output". Close but not quite there.

    When CoPilot answers questions, it's the same thing. CoPilot will ignore keywords on purpose, just to make it easier to craft an answer. And it
    will never answer a question with "I don't know". That's because
    "text completion" is the base technology, and it can always string
    words together to make some kind of answer, even if the answer
    serves no purpose.

    How much would a person pay in rent for that ? "I don't know" :-)

    I think it's good to be able to test this version, just to
    see what the spectrum of answers looks like.

    Is it worth a $10 billion investment ? Only if it comes with advertisements.

    The very first question I asked it, was unbounded. I was careless.
    I asked it "what are your capabilities?" I was expecting it to read its manifest and say something like "answer questions and provide web references".
    I wanted to know whether it could create art or do arithmetic.
    But the thing went nuts, started spewing a lot of text to the screen
    (faster than I could read it), it timed out after 15 or 20 seconds,
    and it *erased* all of the initial answer.

    This is why, if you haven't tried this before, I recommend
    drafting your question in Notepad first, then copy and paste
    the question into the CoPilot dialog. Staring at your question
    for a moment or two, helps you determine whether the
    question is too unbounded. While you can try to enter guidance
    phrases, that doesn't really help all that much. It doesn't
    take a T-square and draw sharp lines bounding the answer,
    and it would be a sheer accident, if the answer actually
    followed your suggestion or hint. It seems the more text you enter,
    the more text it can selectively ignore.

    Interesting analysis. It seems in accord with popular
    news articles, like the lawyer who asked ChatGPT for precedent
    references and got 6 cases to cite. There was just the minor
    issue that the cases were fabricated in order to answer the question.
    Why 6? Maybe that's the typical number that lawyers use in their
    arguments? Last week a court reporter had AI accusing him of
    committing the crimes he was reporting on.

    I guess that most of the issue is just that AI has been so
    much hyped as the future of intelligence and the savior of
    the US economy. No such expectations were put on Siri. It
    was just a cool gimmick of speech interpretation. As soon as
    ChatGPT came out I started seeing people asking it for opinions
    and regarding the answers as valuable information. As in, "That's
    all well and good, but let's see what ChatGPT say."

    Why? I have zero curiosity. There's no such thing as AI. No
    matter how intelligent it might appear, it's still just math.

    It does raise interesting questions, though. Is intelligence
    actually different in nature from AI or only in scale? Is there
    mind? According to modern scientific materialism, mind as such
    is not possible because it would be separate from brain, thus
    not matter and not on the spectrum of known energy types, and
    therefore not included in the phenomenal world known to science.

    As the Cardinal said to Galileo, "I don't need to look through your telescope. I already know there are no craters on the moon because
    God would not create imperfect things." Similarly, science says, "We
    already know that mind can't exist because we can't find it with
    empirical observation."

    I saved a quote about that recently:

    ____________________________________
    "Modern neuroscience does not include any kind of mind-body dualism.
    It's not compatible with being a serious neuroscientist nowadays. I'm
    not a philosopher, but one succinct statement I like is saying, 'The
    mind is what the brain does.' The sum of the bio-computational functions
    of the brain makes up 'the mind,'" said study senior author Nico
    Dosenbach, a neurology professor at Washington University School of
    Medicine.
    ____________________________________

    The metaphor of computer has supplanted all other understanding
    of mind and intelligence.

    The very idea of computer intelligence -- an intuitive abacus --
    can only arise from the preconception of pure materialism. The
    attempts to somehow capture machine intelligence are pointing
    out interesting preconceptions in the designers and limitations
    in the technology. Not least of which is that values and truth are
    irrelevant to algorythms.... Maybe with any luck that will raise
    questions about the absurd reductionism of mind as "bio-computer".

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Tue Aug 27 16:14:24 2024
    On 8/27/2024 5:30 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Sorry, I don't see an answer if reagentc /info shows it on the same disk
    as C: as enabled and on that same disk(disk and partition number)


    That was in the beginning of this thread, before you sent me
    on a wild goose chase for 4441. I don't think WinRE was the
    problem, in any case.

    Fyi...just because it was moved doesn't mean it will grow.
    It's not going to grow until KB5042320 is successfully installed.

     - Correction -> I earlier stated KB5034441 which is now deprecated and replaced for Win10 with update KB 5042320 on Aug. 14, 2024
     <https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/5042320>


    Yes, I searched for the former and didn't find that this was the
    replacement. In any case, I did install 2320 fine, but it made no
    difference.

        That's another
    mystery to me with Win10. Control Panel has never been unstable in
    any way, but now that the're moving applets to Metro/WinRT, several
    times I've had problems with them closing when I try to access them.
    I get the blue gear window and then it just closes.

    Today, there's no such thing as Metro/RT.

    Yes. It's now WinUI. But not everyone knows that Microsoft
    changes the name with the seasons. Whatever you want to call it,
    it's their sandboxed, monotone, Mac-esque software
    that seems to be very unstable, but which they're determined to
    spread like a rash in order to get customers into the sandbox.
    Beats me how they can make simple applets so brittle that they
    break that easily. Then sometimes they come back again, without
    and indication of why that I can find.

    I got tired of how many things this non-update was breaking.
    Since 2320 didn't help I decided to wipe C drive and put back my
    disk image from last week. I think that's it for me with Windows
    updates. It's clear that no one really knows what's wrong with
    them. Lots of people get errors. The advice is generally SFC
    and DISM cleanup. Which is another bad joke. Those operations
    provide no useful details about what they've done, so there's no
    way to know or understand what might be changed or what it
    failed to fix.

    My suspicion is that the update didn't like something I removed
    or changed. The log, for example, talks about OneDrive files
    missing. Probably true. I've removed a lot of crap, including
    pretty much all the Metro/WinRT/WinUI "apps". But some
    bright bulb didn't have the sense to have the update provide
    some kind of better info than "invalid data", so there's no way
    for me to figure out what it might be complaining about.

    I now have my system applet back. Internet Options and Privacy
    are still broken. What a half-assed mess. But it's not really a big
    deal. I know where the Registry settings are for those things and
    I don't use any Microsoft browsers online.

    Up until now I've found Win10 to be mostly stable and quick,
    once I finished cleaning it up. So I think I'll let sleeping dogs
    lie and not mess around with the system as it is. It took a heck
    of a lot of work to get it so clean, and I don't have a thorough
    record of all the changes. Oddly, disk image system is also 1-2 GB
    smaller than the system was after the update that didn't update,
    even despite cleaning up remnants of that.

    Fyi...the most important update is the Secure Boot update that is in
    the interim releas

    I don't use Secure Boot. Suse Linux broke it and left the computer completely unbootable until I disabled Secure Boot. I'm not
    missing it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 28 03:51:15 2024
    On Tue, 8/27/2024 4:14 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/27/2024 5:30 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Sorry, I don't see an answer if reagentc /info shows it on the same disk as C: as enabled and on that same disk(disk and partition number)


       That was in the beginning of this thread, before you sent me
    on a wild goose chase for 4441. I don't think WinRE was the
    problem, in any case.

    Background information:

    When '4441 installs, it uses a directory similar to this, to build
    the WinRE.wim . There isn't much reason then, to be running a SHA256
    on the thing for identification purposes. Only the size is somewhat informative. If '4441 has not been successful yet, this area can have
    files, otherwise it might be clean. It uses DISM to build stuff in here.

    C:\$WinREAgent\Scratch

    diskpart

    Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.22621.1 (I'm using a Win11 tool to look into a Win10 issue...)

    Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
    On computer: WALLACE

    DISKPART> list disk
    DISKPART> select disk 0
    DISKPART> list partition

    Partition 6 Recovery 1025 MB 248 GB # This is a resized Recovery on a GPT disk

    DISKPART> select partition 6
    DISKPART> assign letter=k
    DISKPART> exit

    cmd

    Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22631.4037]
    (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

    k:

    dir /ah

    Sun, 03/17/2024 08:26 PM <DIR> Recovery

    cd Recovery

    K:\Recovery>dir /ah

    Sun, 03/17/2024 08:26 PM <DIR> WindowsRE

    K:\Recovery>cd WindowsRE

    K:\Recovery\WindowsRE>dir /ah

    Sun, 03/17/2024 08:26 PM 1,109 ReAgent.xml
    Sun, 01/14/2024 01:55 PM 517,679,270 Winre.wim <=== after KB5034441, it's bigger

    K:\Recovery\WindowsRE>

    *******

    To show what rough size the WIM had before '4441, we can look in a DVD.

    Windows10-x64-22H2.iso 4,783,996,928 bytes

    S:\DVD\Windows10-x64-22H2.iso\sources\install.esd\6\Windows\System32\Recovery\

    Sat, 12/07/2019 05:12 AM 837 ReAgent.xml \___ This pair is a PushButtonReset pair
    Wed, 09/07/2022 10:57 PM 449,274,568 Winre.wim / suitable for pre '4441 conditions.
    It's a bit smaller.

    After a reboot, the assignment of the letter K done in diskpart, is removed.

    Disk 0 +---------+---------+----------+----------+----------+--------+
    | 100MB | W11Home | Recovery | WIN10AMD | Recovery | Shared |
    | ESP | C: | 649MB | H: | 1GB K: | S: |
    +---------+---------+----------+----------+----------+--------+
    \___________________/

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Wed Aug 28 08:02:20 2024
    On 8/28/2024 3:51 AM, Paul wrote:
    On Tue, 8/27/2024 4:14 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/27/2024 5:30 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Sorry, I don't see an answer if reagentc /info shows it on the same disk as C: as enabled and on that same disk(disk and partition number)


       That was in the beginning of this thread, before you sent me
    on a wild goose chase for 4441. I don't think WinRE was the
    problem, in any case.

    Background information:

    When '4441 installs, it uses a directory similar to this, to build
    the WinRE.wim . There isn't much reason then, to be running a SHA256
    on the thing for identification purposes. Only the size is somewhat informative. If '4441 has not been successful yet, this area can have
    files, otherwise it might be clean. It uses DISM to build stuff in here.

    C:\$WinREAgent\Scratch

    diskpart

    Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.22621.1 (I'm using a Win11 tool to look into a Win10 issue...)

    Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
    On computer: WALLACE

    DISKPART> list disk
    DISKPART> select disk 0
    DISKPART> list partition

    Partition 6 Recovery 1025 MB 248 GB # This is a resized Recovery on a GPT disk

    DISKPART> select partition 6
    DISKPART> assign letter=k
    DISKPART> exit

    cmd

    Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22631.4037]
    (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

    k:

    dir /ah

    Sun, 03/17/2024 08:26 PM <DIR> Recovery

    cd Recovery

    K:\Recovery>dir /ah

    Sun, 03/17/2024 08:26 PM <DIR> WindowsRE

    K:\Recovery>cd WindowsRE

    K:\Recovery\WindowsRE>dir /ah

    Sun, 03/17/2024 08:26 PM 1,109 ReAgent.xml
    Sun, 01/14/2024 01:55 PM 517,679,270 Winre.wim <=== after KB5034441, it's bigger

    K:\Recovery\WindowsRE>

    *******

    To show what rough size the WIM had before '4441, we can look in a DVD.

    Windows10-x64-22H2.iso 4,783,996,928 bytes

    S:\DVD\Windows10-x64-22H2.iso\sources\install.esd\6\Windows\System32\Recovery\

    Sat, 12/07/2019 05:12 AM 837 ReAgent.xml \___ This pair is a PushButtonReset pair
    Wed, 09/07/2022 10:57 PM 449,274,568 Winre.wim / suitable for pre '4441 conditions.
    It's a bit smaller.

    After a reboot, the assignment of the letter K done in diskpart, is removed.

    Disk 0 +---------+---------+----------+----------+----------+--------+
    | 100MB | W11Home | Recovery | WIN10AMD | Recovery | Shared |
    | ESP | C: | 649MB | H: | 1GB K: | S: |
    +---------+---------+----------+----------+----------+--------+
    \___________________/


    That's all done now. As you probably know, 4441 was replaced
    with the other one that Winston mentioned, which I ran after
    I'd moved winre to C. The main update still failed without info.
    So I put winre.wim back into its own partition and re-installed
    my backup disk image. I think I'm done with Windows updates
    on this machine.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Wed Aug 28 08:41:06 2024
    On 8/28/2024 2:25 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Maybe Suse Linux is the
    real root of your problem.

    Maybe. But then again, how? How could it make sense that
    Linux on disk prevents updates, unless it's a blatant MS trick?
    Do you know? I assume you don't. Or you think you do, but
    assume I couldn't understand.

    It would be easier if you just explained what you
    know in these cases and didn't offer what you really don't know.
    Condescension is not tech support. Nor is it helpful to tell
    people to "try x and report back", without explaining, as though
    no one but you can possibly understand the details.

    The WinRE partition was always next to C and accurately
    identified. But you wouldn't believe that I was capable of figuring
    that out. I then moved winre to C and Windows again accurately
    saw it. But the update failed. I then installed the 4441 replacement,
    which worked, but the update still failed. Throughout all of that
    your response is to assume I did something wrong and that I must
    be at fault for the update failure. So you tell me to run reagentc /info
    again.

    Can you understand how condescending this is? It's like going
    to a doctor who says you're sick and "take these pills" but offers
    no explanation of the sickness or what's in the pills. Who would
    take pills without knowing what's in them? Not me. The first thing
    I do is to look it up in the PDR. Because I want to understand before
    I act. Your condescension is an assumption that people can't
    understand and should therefore be prevented from trying.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 28 17:04:23 2024
    On Wed, 8/28/2024 8:41 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/28/2024 2:25 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Maybe Suse Linux is the real root of your problem.

      Maybe. But then again, how? How could it make sense that
    Linux on disk prevents updates, unless it's a blatant MS trick?
    Do you know? I assume you don't. Or you think you do, but
    assume I couldn't understand.

       It would be easier if you just explained what you
    know in these cases and didn't offer what you really don't know. Condescension is not tech support. Nor is it helpful to tell
    people to "try x and report back", without explaining, as though
    no one but you can possibly understand the details.

      The WinRE partition was always next to C and accurately
    identified. But you wouldn't believe that I was capable of figuring
    that out. I then moved winre to C and Windows again accurately
    saw it. But the update failed. I then installed the 4441 replacement,
    which worked, but the update still failed. Throughout all of that
    your response is to assume I did something wrong and that I must
    be at fault for the update failure. So you tell me to run reagentc /info again.

       Can you understand how condescending this is? It's like going
    to a doctor who says you're sick and "take these pills" but offers
    no explanation of the sickness or what's in the pills. Who would
    take pills without knowing what's in them? Not me. The first thing
    I do is to look it up in the PDR. Because I want to understand before
    I act. Your condescension is an assumption that people can't
    understand and should therefore be prevented from trying.

    You could fix your WinRE, and then we could talk :-)

    I have some experience with multi-boot and no, SUSE
    isn't anything to do with anything. In the ESP, the SUSE folder
    is separate from the Microsoft folder. In the case of Ubuntu and LinuxMint, they share a folder, so if you had an interaction problem (unlikely),
    they do share a folder.

    Your BootIT is likely to be a chain loader. The one I used (BootMagic?) in Win98 era (launched three ecosystems), it was a chain loader.
    It did not particularly care about details, just figured out
    where there was a thing suited to chain loading. In the GUI, you
    clicked on FreeBSD and it added it underneath Win98 in the boot menu.

    So far, I've never seen one ESP folder reach out and trash another
    folder in the ESP. When a Clean Install of Windows wipes out GRUB,
    that's pretty easy to understand, and the GRUB areas affected are
    not likely to be the ESP part. Trashing the MBR in that case (440 bytes)
    is the most likely mechanism. You could do a Repair Install of Win10,
    without affecting SUSE. It's only Clean Installs that have a tendency
    to screw up GRUB. And the Boot Repair CD can fix that.

    At the current time, I don't see a positive upside to ignoring
    '4441. Why do you think I've been repairing them ? Doing
    one is a Bar Bet. Doing three of them (all different challenges
    too), implied there is a method to my madness. I want the
    Update system to remain working, and I don't want "a surprise
    during the xxx Cumulative and then I don't know what happened".
    THATS why we fix '4441 issue. No overhang. No excuses.

    If the attempt to update threw a tell-tale error number,
    that would be another way of collecting a breadcrumb to use.

    If '4441 was not installed, if it had failed to install,
    then the folder in the root of C: , used as a staging
    area for WinRE.wim preparation, it would have left-over
    content in it. That too is a hint that '4441 or whatever
    followed it, is not installed. When it installs successfully,
    the staging area seems to get cleaned out.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From sticks@21:1/5 to Paul on Wed Aug 28 18:56:16 2024
    On 8/28/2024 4:04 PM, Paul wrote:
    At the current time, I don't see a positive upside to ignoring
    '4441. Why do you think I've been repairing them ? Doing
    one is a Bar Bet. Doing three of them (all different challenges
    too), implied there is a method to my madness. I want the
    Update system to remain working, and I don't want "a surprise
    during the xxx Cumulative and then I don't know what happened".
    THATS why we fix '4441 issue. No overhang. No excuses.

    Absolutely. He could fix it if he would shut up, listen, and follow
    some of the procedures suggested. He don't want to do that. He's
    always been an MS basher and insists on acting like a cunt. The last
    reply of his to winston was totally uncalled for and just plain stupid. EOS


    --
    Stand With Israel!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to ...winston on Sat Aug 31 08:41:41 2024
    On 8/31/2024 2:43 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Not assuming that a successful 5042320 install updated WinRE to the
    latest servicepack build.


    5042320 is not available as a download. That means that to run it I'd
    have to let Microsoft do as they like with my computer by fully enabling automated Windows Update. (Though 5041580 ran fine on my laptop,
    which also has Windows Update disabled.)

     Most notable - Secure Boot disabled with/without TPM chip

    Which should not be an issue.

    GPO/Registry tweaking, Dual boot
    Windows/Linux

    Again, irrelevant to updating system files. The patch that breaks Linux supposedly doesn't get applied if Linux dualboot is found.

     - updating Edge to version 128.x';

    ?? I've completely removed Edge. Again, should not be relevant.

    What I've realized in all this is that Microsoft are pulling a kind of passive aggressive ploy: Don't let them control your computer?
    Then you don't get even security updates. I saw a sample of this
    when I first set up this computer. It wouldn't activate until I reinstalled
    and ran activation pre-tweaking... When I removed Edge I lost the
    Internet Options applet, which is just a front-end for Registry
    settings... Various brittleness aspects that I had assumed were
    poor design but seem to actually be by design.

    So I may have to give up on updates. I'm not prepared to let
    MS configure my system as they like. On the bright side, the vast
    majority of updates are not relevant, coming in two categories:

    1) A vulnerability requires physical access to the computer. That's
    only relevant for business computers where the people with access
    may not be trusted.

    2) Vulnerabilities in remote code execution or Microsoft products. The
    former are unsafe by design and I don't use either remote functions or
    MS products to begin with.

    In the list of 5041580 fixes I found none that are relevant for me,
    and some that seem to be problematic, such as increased blocking of
    unapproved drivers. Though it WILL be tough to live without an otion
    on my lockscreen to "use my Microsoft account". :)

    I understand that you're a party-line Microsoft devotee and will
    regard my views as some combination of stubborn and stupid. I post
    this because others need to know what they're getting into. MS are
    putting the squeeze on anyone who rejects their gradual transition
    of Windows to a service running in a kiosk system under their control.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Mon Sep 2 13:58:40 2024
    On Sat, 8/31/2024 8:41 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 8/31/2024 2:43 AM, ...winston wrote:

    Not assuming that a successful 5042320 install updated WinRE to the latest servicepack build.


      5042320 is not available as a download. That means that to run it I'd
    have to let Microsoft do as they like with my computer by fully enabling automated Windows Update. (Though 5041580 ran fine on my laptop,
    which also has Windows Update disabled.)

      Most notable - Secure Boot disabled with/without TPM chip

    Which should not be an issue.

    GPO/Registry tweaking, Dual boot Windows/Linux

    Again, irrelevant to updating system files. The patch that breaks Linux supposedly doesn't get applied if Linux dualboot is found.

      - updating Edge to version 128.x';

    ?? I've completely removed Edge. Again, should not be relevant.

      What I've realized in all this is that Microsoft are pulling a kind of passive aggressive ploy: Don't let them control your computer?
    Then you don't get even security updates. I saw a sample of this
    when I first set up this computer. It wouldn't activate until I reinstalled and ran activation pre-tweaking... When I removed Edge I lost the
    Internet Options applet, which is just a front-end for Registry
    settings... Various brittleness aspects that I had assumed were
    poor design but seem to actually be by design.

      So I may have to give up on updates. I'm not prepared to let
    MS configure my system as they like. On the bright side, the vast
    majority of updates are not relevant, coming in two categories:

    1) A vulnerability requires physical access to the computer. That's
    only relevant for business computers where the people with access
    may not be trusted.

    2) Vulnerabilities in remote code execution or Microsoft products. The
    former are unsafe by design and I don't use either remote functions or
    MS products to begin with.

      In the list of 5041580 fixes I found none that are relevant for me,
    and some that seem to be problematic, such as increased blocking of unapproved drivers. Though it WILL be tough to live without an otion
    on my lockscreen to "use my Microsoft account". :)

      I understand that you're a party-line Microsoft devotee and will
    regard my views as some combination of stubborn and stupid. I post
    this because others need to know what they're getting into. MS are
    putting the squeeze on anyone who rejects their gradual transition
    of Windows to a service running in a kiosk system under their control.

    Just a quick status update on some "fun" I had here.

    First, a broken '4441 does not affect the ability to complete

    2024-08 Cumulative W10 V22H2 x64 KB5041580 ("security Update")
    2024-08 Cumulative .NET 3,5,4.8,4.8.1 KB5042352 (".NET for August")

    Those both completed. The Test Machine just happened to have the perfect
    setup for working on your symptoms (some of them at least). I didn't
    even remember it still being broken.

    Now, when I booted into the Win10 setup, it had not had updates for
    some months. When I looked in the update history, it said 5034441 had
    tried to install at least three times but failed.

    After the two updates above were digested and installed, the Update History
    got edited, and all mention of 5034441 and its failure, were erased. Clever.

    So I notice that KB5042320 is the replacement for '4441 bad behavior.
    I gave it plenty of space. It failed. Note that, no matter what
    the root cause of the failure, it always returns the bogus "out of space"
    error result. This is, of course, throwing customers under the bus.
    People are pulling their hair out, trying to make "moar space" for
    the stupid thing :-) No kids, it's not always the space that is the issue.

    I looked in the DISM log, because preparation of WinRE.wim requires
    mounting and alterations via C:\$WinREAgent . If the folder has
    some amount of content in it, then your setup is in the middle of
    trying to install and has not entirely given up. When a SafeOS install
    is completed, it reduces the wasted space to less than 1 megabyte in
    that folder.

    The first time, I could see the DISM log

    C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log

    that "the preparation of something is rolling back, scavenging..."

    My initial theory, was the PBR (PushButtonReset) WinRE.wim I seeded
    it with, was too old (10.0.19041.1). When you screw with KB5042320

    KB5042320: Windows Recovery Environment update for Windows 10
    Version 21H2 and 22H2: January 9, 2024 <=== "Ha!" on the date reference

    then like a prima dona, it won't show up in Windows Update for some hours.
    You can punch the "check for updates" button all day long, and it won't
    come out of hiding. This is one of the Microsoft "we care about carbon deposits"
    behaviors. Something about making you wait for hours, as part of
    some power trip.

    So I eventually had it come back, and try to install again. It failed,
    even with a newer PushButtonReset version of Winre.wim. I read the
    DISM logfile a second time, and I can see "... compression failed". Hmmm.
    This is a machine where I turned off "new Windows compression" on purpose,
    to make the machine easier to service.

    fsutil behavior query disablecompression # This returned "1", which means compression disabled

    fsutil behavior set disablecompression 0 # This returns machine to as-installed state, compression available.

    After I did that, a reboot, a visit to WU, a press of the "Retry failed update?"
    and KB5042320 completed! My shocked face. (Sorry, couldn't help myself. Picture)

    [Picture]

    https://i.postimg.cc/K8vBMyYf/Win10-Another-Win-RE-WIM-fixed.gif

    I have since turned off compression again :-)

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Mon Sep 2 17:19:33 2024
    On 9/2/2024 1:58 PM, Paul wrote:

    Just a quick status update on some "fun" I had here.

    First, a broken '4441 does not affect the ability to complete

    2024-08 Cumulative W10 V22H2 x64 KB5041580 ("security Update")
    2024-08 Cumulative .NET 3,5,4.8,4.8.1 KB5042352 (".NET for August")

    Those both completed. The Test Machine just happened to have the perfect setup for working on your symptoms (some of them at least). I didn't
    even remember it still being broken.

    Now, when I booted into the Win10 setup, it had not had updates for
    some months. When I looked in the update history, it said 5034441 had
    tried to install at least three times but failed.

    After the two updates above were digested and installed, the Update History got edited, and all mention of 5034441 and its failure, were erased. Clever.

    So I notice that KB5042320 is the replacement for '4441 bad behavior.
    I gave it plenty of space. It failed. Note that, no matter what
    the root cause of the failure, it always returns the bogus "out of space" error result. This is, of course, throwing customers under the bus.
    People are pulling their hair out, trying to make "moar space" for
    the stupid thing :-) No kids, it's not always the space that is the issue.

    I looked in the DISM log, because preparation of WinRE.wim requires
    mounting and alterations via C:\$WinREAgent . If the folder has
    some amount of content in it, then your setup is in the middle of
    trying to install and has not entirely given up. When a SafeOS install
    is completed, it reduces the wasted space to less than 1 megabyte in
    that folder.

    The first time, I could see the DISM log

    C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log

    that "the preparation of something is rolling back, scavenging..."

    My initial theory, was the PBR (PushButtonReset) WinRE.wim I seeded
    it with, was too old (10.0.19041.1). When you screw with KB5042320

    KB5042320: Windows Recovery Environment update for Windows 10
    Version 21H2 and 22H2: January 9, 2024 <=== "Ha!" on the date reference

    then like a prima dona, it won't show up in Windows Update for some hours. You can punch the "check for updates" button all day long, and it won't
    come out of hiding. This is one of the Microsoft "we care about carbon deposits"
    behaviors. Something about making you wait for hours, as part of
    some power trip.

    So I eventually had it come back, and try to install again. It failed,
    even with a newer PushButtonReset version of Winre.wim. I read the
    DISM logfile a second time, and I can see "... compression failed". Hmmm. This is a machine where I turned off "new Windows compression" on purpose,
    to make the machine easier to service.

    fsutil behavior query disablecompression # This returned "1", which means compression disabled

    fsutil behavior set disablecompression 0 # This returns machine to as-installed state, compression available.

    After I did that, a reboot, a visit to WU, a press of the "Retry failed update?"
    and KB5042320 completed! My shocked face. (Sorry, couldn't help myself. Picture)


    And then you ran kb5041580, or no? I decided to skip KB5042320 because at least right now it's not available as a download. I'm wary of letting
    Windows Update
    run unbridled, then ending up with God-knows-what. Copilot and ads for
    air fresheners? Coupons littering the Desktop for $5 off Office 365? New and improved spyware? MS clearly have no respect for private property at
    this point
    and will have their way if they can get away with it.

    Interestingly, my laptop where 5041580 worked fine has not had
    5042320 and
    the WinRE version is old. It also never had 4441. I've had Windows
    Update disabled since I bought it a couple of years ago. Yet 1580
    worked. A notable difference is
    that I have it dual-booting with Win11. There are 2 recovery partitions.
    200MB
    and 1000MB. I had no role in creating those.

    Back on my main machine, I added a Registry setting to tell the 1580
    update not to
    screw with Linux boot. Did you know about that? Big talk in Linux
    circles. 1580
    is supposed to leave it alone if there's a Linux dual boot, but it
    wasn't doing so.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\SBAT\
    "OptOut" dword: 1

    I also enlarged the recovery partition to 1.5 GB. So I'm ready to
    try 5041580
    without 5042320. But by this point I'm gun shy. The update that
    supposedly failed nevertheless fucked with a lot of things when I ran
    it. My personalization and
    system Metro applets refused to open. Ieframe.dll got swapped out and
    then kept
    coming back. Services seemed to have been mucked with. (How did workstation service get started?) So I'm not sure I'll ever run that update. I
    reverted to a
    disk image that I'd made before I ran the update.

    Interesting thing about IE: Before I swapped in versions from 20H2
    (this is 22H2), trying to run iexplore.exe did nothing, though IE could
    still be instantiated as a webbrowser control and through COM
    automation. After I swapped them in I
    ended up with a fully functioning IE, which is handy. On the laptop
    where I ran 5041580 successfully, trying to run iexplore.exe now shows a message window:

    "Internet Explorer is no longer supported. Would you like to look for a different
    app in the Windows Store."

    I find that almost endearing. I rarely use the laptop,
    so I haven't made so much effort to clean it up. Since it doesn't
    matter, I have
    a sort of academic interest in seeing the sheer perversion of Microsoft's darkening scam. Maybe I'll let Win11 update at will and see what I get.
    I can
    always make a disk image and return it to reasonable civility if I want to.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Mon Sep 2 22:43:14 2024
    On Mon, 9/2/2024 5:19 PM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 9/2/2024 1:58 PM, Paul wrote:

    Just a quick status update on some "fun" I had here.

    First, a broken '4441 does not affect the ability to complete

        2024-08 Cumulative  W10 V22H2 x64        KB5041580  ("security Update") >>     2024-08 Cumulative .NET 3,5,4.8,4.8.1    KB5042352  (".NET for August") >>
    Those both completed. The Test Machine just happened to have the perfect
    setup for working on your symptoms (some of them at least). I didn't
    even remember it still being broken.

    Now, when I booted into the Win10 setup, it had not had updates for
    some months. When I looked in the update history, it said 5034441 had
    tried to install at least three times but failed.

    After the two updates above were digested and installed, the Update History >> got edited, and all mention of 5034441 and its failure, were erased. Clever. >>
    So I notice that KB5042320 is the replacement for '4441 bad behavior.
    I gave it plenty of space. It failed. Note that, no matter what
    the root cause of the failure, it always returns the bogus "out of space"
    error result. This is, of course, throwing customers under the bus.
    People are pulling their hair out, trying to make "moar space" for
    the stupid thing :-) No kids, it's not always the space that is the issue. >>
    I looked in the DISM log, because preparation of WinRE.wim requires
    mounting and alterations via C:\$WinREAgent . If the folder has
    some amount of content in it, then your setup is in the middle of
    trying to install and has not entirely given up. When a SafeOS install
    is completed, it reduces the wasted space to less than 1 megabyte in
    that folder.

    The first time, I could see the DISM log

        C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log

    that "the preparation of something is rolling back, scavenging..."

    My initial theory, was the PBR (PushButtonReset) WinRE.wim I seeded
    it with, was too old (10.0.19041.1). When you screw with KB5042320

         KB5042320: Windows Recovery Environment update for Windows 10
                    Version 21H2 and 22H2: January 9, 2024  <=== "Ha!" on the date reference

    then like a prima dona, it won't show up in Windows Update for some hours. >> You can punch the "check for updates" button all day long, and it won't
    come out of hiding. This is one of the Microsoft "we care about carbon deposits"
    behaviors. Something about making you wait for hours, as part of
    some power trip.

    So I eventually had it come back, and try to install again. It failed,
    even with a newer PushButtonReset version of Winre.wim. I read the
    DISM logfile a second time, and I can see "... compression failed". Hmmm.
    This is a machine where I turned off "new Windows compression" on purpose, >> to make the machine easier to service.

        fsutil behavior query disablecompression   # This returned "1", which means compression disabled

        fsutil behavior set disablecompression 0   # This returns machine to as-installed state, compression available.

    After I did that, a reboot, a visit to WU, a press of the "Retry failed update?"
    and KB5042320 completed! My shocked face. (Sorry, couldn't help myself. Picture)


      And then you ran kb5041580, or no? I decided to skip KB5042320 because at least right now it's not available as a download. I'm wary of letting Windows Update
    run unbridled, then ending up with God-knows-what. Copilot and ads for air fresheners? Coupons littering the Desktop for $5 off Office 365? New and
    improved spyware? MS clearly have no respect for private property at this point
    and will have their way if they can get away with it.

      Interestingly, my laptop where 5041580 worked fine has not had 5042320 and the WinRE version is old. It also never had 4441. I've had Windows Update disabled since I bought it a couple of years ago. Yet 1580 worked. A notable difference is
    that I have it dual-booting with Win11. There are 2 recovery partitions. 200MB
    and 1000MB. I had no role in creating those.

     Back on my main machine, I added a Registry setting to tell the 1580 update not to
    screw with Linux boot. Did you know about that? Big talk in Linux circles. 1580
    is supposed to leave it alone if there's a Linux dual boot, but it wasn't doing so.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\SBAT\ "OptOut"   dword: 1

       I also enlarged the recovery partition to 1.5 GB. So I'm ready to try 5041580
    without 5042320. But by this point I'm gun shy. The update that supposedly failed nevertheless fucked with a lot of things when I ran it. My personalization and
    system Metro applets refused to open. Ieframe.dll got swapped out and then kept
    coming back. Services seemed to have been mucked with. (How did workstation service get started?) So I'm not sure I'll ever run that update. I reverted to a
    disk image that I'd made before I ran the update.

      Interesting thing about IE: Before I swapped in versions from 20H2 (this is 22H2), trying to run iexplore.exe did nothing, though IE could still be instantiated as a webbrowser control and through COM automation. After I swapped them in I
    ended up with a fully functioning IE, which is handy. On the laptop where I ran 5041580 successfully, trying to run iexplore.exe now shows a message window:

    "Internet Explorer is no longer supported. Would you like to look for a different
    app in the Windows Store."

       I find that almost endearing. I rarely use the laptop,
    so I haven't made so much effort to clean it up. Since it doesn't matter, I have
    a sort of academic interest in seeing the sheer perversion of Microsoft's darkening scam. Maybe I'll let Win11 update at will and see what I get. I can always make a disk image and return it to reasonable civility if I want to.



    My mission when working on this "example setup", was to see if I could get
    the thing to put an updated WinRE.wim on the machine. The KB5041580 and KB5042352
    went in while I was working on that. That is how I know those aren't blocked by the WinRE.wim status.

    And it was "opportunity" that made me do it. I thought all my Win10 were
    fixed, but this one happened to be still busted (three attempts at '4441).
    Now, it's fixed. I don't think the size or checksum of the WinRE.wim
    file is useful, and no two are alike.

    Name: winre.wim
    Size: 481,405,782 bytes (459 MiB)
    SHA256: 67D5C21C87435E2C519496F986A728DFA0200743F24CD393DC5280DEB8CF9C33

    SafeOS installer defined this brand new entry:
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinREVersion REG_SZ 10.0.19041.3920

    Since my setup was not a dual boot with Linux, there was no opportunity for mayhem.
    That particular machine doesn't even Secure Boot (has no TPM, BIOS only supports
    TPM 1.2 if you had one plugged to the header). Adding a Linux to the machine, might not have been enough. One reason it might have an effect on Secure Boot, is the Microsoft signed "2011 thing" might be getting changed to the "2023 thing",
    which breaks old shims that haven't been updated. At the moment, I don't
    know the details of how Linux bridges between the two situations (needing a different
    shim for the two situations, in order to Secure Boot). While there is the "Boot Repair"
    disc, I don't know how good it is about repairing Secure Boot situations.

    https://b1490832.smushcdn.com/1490832/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Boot-Repair-Live-USB-drive.jpg?lossy=2&strip=1&webp=1

    That's an example of what you can use, if Windows damages your GRUB.
    Years ago, it wasn't bulletproof, and there are just too many setups
    to guarantee anything in any case. You would hope though, it would
    handle "common situations".

    July/August are near the end of the one-year plan to repair Secure Boot
    on the computers. And revoking something in the UEFI BIOS, is how this
    is being done.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Wed Sep 4 08:58:06 2024
    On Mon, 9/2/2024 5:19 PM, Newyana2 wrote:


      And then you ran kb5041580, or no? I decided to skip KB5042320 because at least right now it's not available as a download. I'm wary of letting Windows Update
    run unbridled, then ending up with God-knows-what. Copilot and ads for air fresheners? Coupons littering the Desktop for $5 off Office 365? New and
    improved spyware? MS clearly have no respect for private property at this point
    and will have their way if they can get away with it.

      Interestingly, my laptop where 5041580 worked fine has not had 5042320 and the WinRE version is old. It also never had 4441. I've had Windows Update disabled since I bought it a couple of years ago. Yet 1580 worked. A notable difference is
    that I have it dual-booting with Win11. There are 2 recovery partitions. 200MB
    and 1000MB. I had no role in creating those.

     Back on my main machine, I added a Registry setting to tell the 1580 update not to
    screw with Linux boot. Did you know about that? Big talk in Linux circles. 1580
    is supposed to leave it alone if there's a Linux dual boot, but it wasn't doing so.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\SBAT\ "OptOut"   dword: 1

       I also enlarged the recovery partition to 1.5 GB. So I'm ready to try 5041580
    without 5042320. But by this point I'm gun shy. The update that supposedly failed nevertheless fucked with a lot of things when I ran it. My personalization and
    system Metro applets refused to open. Ieframe.dll got swapped out and then kept
    coming back. Services seemed to have been mucked with. (How did workstation service get started?) So I'm not sure I'll ever run that update. I reverted to a
    disk image that I'd made before I ran the update.

      Interesting thing about IE: Before I swapped in versions from 20H2 (this is 22H2), trying to run iexplore.exe did nothing, though IE could still be instantiated as a webbrowser control and through COM automation. After I swapped them in I
    ended up with a fully functioning IE, which is handy. On the laptop where I ran 5041580 successfully, trying to run iexplore.exe now shows a message window:

    "Internet Explorer is no longer supported. Would you like to look for a different
    app in the Windows Store."

       I find that almost endearing. I rarely use the laptop,
    so I haven't made so much effort to clean it up. Since it doesn't matter, I have
    a sort of academic interest in seeing the sheer perversion of Microsoft's darkening scam. Maybe I'll let Win11 update at will and see what I get. I can always make a disk image and return it to reasonable civility if I want to.



    kb5041580 ran before WinRE.wim was repaired. Remember, it took about
    eight hours for KB5042320 (WinRE.wim) to show up.

    I'm not sure the Secure Boot issue, is all the same materials. There
    was a revoked certificate in a previous session (July 2024) and it was claimed that month was for testing. That is a certificate with "2011?" in it,
    which got revoked and a "2023" item took its place.

    The SBAT seems to be related to the shim issue on Linux -- but I can't
    tell if this is just a different bunch of people using another label for
    that area, or what is going on.

    I did catch the word "mandatory" with respect to an August 2024 change,
    as if the final steps of the year long process were to happen in August.
    Does that mean OptOut would be ignored ? should this have blown up in July ? would the OptOut have worked in July but not August ? I don't know.

    It's all part of the same breakage. We know that revoking the 2011?
    certificate should kill the old Linux shims. It's an unknown for me,
    whether they can "bracket" or "bridge" between situations by having
    two shims.

    While you found the BleepingComputer reference to OptOut, the SBAT section
    does not exist and needs to be created.

    There seems to be some material as well, in the OpenSUSE forum.
    And in the second thread, someone gets a free lunch, by installing
    latest Leap, and a side effect of that is it fixes up the shim
    that it uses. Would that cause a previous broken thing to work ? Dunno.
    There should be some sharing going on in the folder in the ESP partition,
    so a newer Leap side effect should get applied to an older Tumbleweed.

    https://forums.opensuse.org/t/insane-secure-boot-issue/174345

    https://forums.opensuse.org/t/sbat-self-check-failed-security-policy-violation-after-moving-tumbleweed-to-new-ssd/175855

    On the Windows side, the terminology a month ago was like this.

    [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match ‘Windows UEFI CA 2023’

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to Paul on Wed Sep 4 11:21:59 2024
    On 9/4/2024 8:58 AM, Paul wrote:
    On Mon, 9/2/2024 5:19 PM, Newyana2 wrote:


      And then you ran kb5041580, or no? I decided to skip KB5042320 because at >> least right now it's not available as a download. I'm wary of letting Windows Update
    run unbridled, then ending up with God-knows-what. Copilot and ads for air fresheners? Coupons littering the Desktop for $5 off Office 365? New and
    improved spyware? MS clearly have no respect for private property at this point
    and will have their way if they can get away with it.

      Interestingly, my laptop where 5041580 worked fine has not had 5042320 and
    the WinRE version is old. It also never had 4441. I've had Windows Update disabled since I bought it a couple of years ago. Yet 1580 worked. A notable difference is
    that I have it dual-booting with Win11. There are 2 recovery partitions. 200MB
    and 1000MB. I had no role in creating those.

     Back on my main machine, I added a Registry setting to tell the 1580 update not to
    screw with Linux boot. Did you know about that? Big talk in Linux circles. 1580
    is supposed to leave it alone if there's a Linux dual boot, but it wasn't doing so.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\SBAT\
    "OptOut"   dword: 1

       I also enlarged the recovery partition to 1.5 GB. So I'm ready to try 5041580
    without 5042320. But by this point I'm gun shy. The update that supposedly failed nevertheless fucked with a lot of things when I ran it. My personalization and
    system Metro applets refused to open. Ieframe.dll got swapped out and then kept
    coming back. Services seemed to have been mucked with. (How did workstation >> service get started?) So I'm not sure I'll ever run that update. I reverted to a
    disk image that I'd made before I ran the update.

      Interesting thing about IE: Before I swapped in versions from 20H2 (this is 22H2), trying to run iexplore.exe did nothing, though IE could still be instantiated as a webbrowser control and through COM automation. After I swapped them in I
    ended up with a fully functioning IE, which is handy. On the laptop where I ran 5041580 successfully, trying to run iexplore.exe now shows a message window:

    "Internet Explorer is no longer supported. Would you like to look for a different
    app in the Windows Store."

       I find that almost endearing. I rarely use the laptop,
    so I haven't made so much effort to clean it up. Since it doesn't matter, I have
    a sort of academic interest in seeing the sheer perversion of Microsoft's
    darkening scam. Maybe I'll let Win11 update at will and see what I get. I can
    always make a disk image and return it to reasonable civility if I want to. >>


    kb5041580 ran before WinRE.wim was repaired. Remember, it took about
    eight hours for KB5042320 (WinRE.wim) to show up.

    I'm not sure the Secure Boot issue, is all the same materials. There
    was a revoked certificate in a previous session (July 2024) and it was claimed
    that month was for testing. That is a certificate with "2011?" in it,
    which got revoked and a "2023" item took its place.

    The SBAT seems to be related to the shim issue on Linux -- but I can't
    tell if this is just a different bunch of people using another label for
    that area, or what is going on.

    I did catch the word "mandatory" with respect to an August 2024 change,
    as if the final steps of the year long process were to happen in August.
    Does that mean OptOut would be ignored ? should this have blown up in July ? would the OptOut have worked in July but not August ? I don't know.

    It's all part of the same breakage. We know that revoking the 2011? certificate should kill the old Linux shims. It's an unknown for me,
    whether they can "bracket" or "bridge" between situations by having
    two shims.

    While you found the BleepingComputer reference to OptOut, the SBAT section does not exist and needs to be created.

    There seems to be some material as well, in the OpenSUSE forum.
    And in the second thread, someone gets a free lunch, by installing
    latest Leap, and a side effect of that is it fixes up the shim
    that it uses. Would that cause a previous broken thing to work ? Dunno.
    There should be some sharing going on in the folder in the ESP partition,
    so a newer Leap side effect should get applied to an older Tumbleweed.

    https://forums.opensuse.org/t/insane-secure-boot-issue/174345

    https://forums.opensuse.org/t/sbat-self-check-failed-security-policy-violation-after-moving-tumbleweed-to-new-ssd/175855

    On the Windows side, the terminology a month ago was like this.

    [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match ‘Windows UEFI CA 2023’


    You'd think this doesn't need to be so complicated, wouldn't you?
    In accord with what you're saying, my laptop didn't have an updated
    WinRE and secure boot is disabled. (I don't recall doing that.) Yet 1580 installed just fine.

    On my main system I've had secure boot disabled since the Suse install
    broke it back in the beginning. I haven't kept careful records of all these things, but I have had the sense that MS are cracking down on tweaks,
    as I mentioned earlier. For example, my home-built machine wouldn't
    activate until I re-installed Windows and did it before all tweaking. Why? There's no credible reason for that, aside from MS trying to maintain
    tight control.

    Maybe they also don't like home-built machines? I wouldn't
    put anything past them at this point. I can't imagine any good reason
    for all this complication; nor for the voluminous but mainly useless logs created, which detail thousands of operations but don't say exactly why
    the update quit.

    And why would an update that failed to install nevertheless swap out
    my ieframe DLLs and break settings applets?

    But lately I'm having fun with something less critical: How do I change
    the background color of selected text to something less dreary? The
    default is dirty sky blue: 0 120 215 0r 0078D7. I want the decidedly
    cheerful
    45 150 255 or 2D96FF. I found settings in HKCU\Ccontrol Panel\Colors\Hilight and a similar setting in HKU. There's also a custom theme file. Why doesn't Windows give me access to all those settings, like it used to? And there's
    a hotdrag color. And there are old color settings under
    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop.

    So far my choice seems to be holding, but it's reverted several times.
    Where is Windows finding that old color? Where is my custom color for
    active title bars stored? What I'm using doesn't match any of the settings
    I've found. How do MS spend billions of dollars and still fuck up so many things? The default color for selected text... How hard is that to just put that into one damn setting and use it?

    Even more strange, the RichEdit50W class window I'm using in my own
    text editor is not going with my choice of bright blue sky with white
    text. It's
    showing pale blue with black text. 132 193 255. Where the heck is it
    getting that? I can't find it in the Registry or in my custom.theme file. Everything else from Firefox to Notepad to VS6 is using my choice. (If it
    fails again I intend to put a little EXE in the startup folder to make a
    call
    to SetSysColors at each boot.)

    So, as you can see, I have a critical emergency here and have to put
    security
    updates on the back burner. :)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Wed Sep 4 17:37:28 2024
    On Wed, 9/4/2024 11:21 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
    On 9/4/2024 8:58 AM, Paul wrote:
    On Mon, 9/2/2024 5:19 PM, Newyana2 wrote:


       And then you ran kb5041580, or no? I decided to skip KB5042320 because at
    least right now it's not available as a download. I'm wary of letting Windows Update
    run unbridled, then ending up with God-knows-what. Copilot and ads for air fresheners? Coupons littering the Desktop for $5 off Office 365? New and
    improved spyware? MS clearly have no respect for private property at this point
    and will have their way if they can get away with it.

       Interestingly, my laptop where 5041580 worked fine has not had 5042320 and
    the WinRE version is old. It also never had 4441. I've had Windows Update disabled since I bought it a couple of years ago. Yet 1580 worked. A notable difference is
    that I have it dual-booting with Win11. There are 2 recovery partitions. 200MB
    and 1000MB. I had no role in creating those.

      Back on my main machine, I added a Registry setting to tell the 1580 update not to
    screw with Linux boot. Did you know about that? Big talk in Linux circles. 1580
    is supposed to leave it alone if there's a Linux dual boot, but it wasn't doing so.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\SBAT\
    "OptOut"   dword: 1

        I also enlarged the recovery partition to 1.5 GB. So I'm ready to try 5041580
    without 5042320. But by this point I'm gun shy. The update that supposedly failed nevertheless fucked with a lot of things when I ran it. My personalization and
    system Metro applets refused to open. Ieframe.dll got swapped out and then kept
    coming back. Services seemed to have been mucked with. (How did workstation >>> service get started?) So I'm not sure I'll ever run that update. I reverted to a
    disk image that I'd made before I ran the update.

       Interesting thing about IE: Before I swapped in versions from 20H2 (this is 22H2), trying to run iexplore.exe did nothing, though IE could still be instantiated as a webbrowser control and through COM automation. After I swapped them in I
    ended up with a fully functioning IE, which is handy. On the laptop where I ran 5041580 successfully, trying to run iexplore.exe now shows a message window:

    "Internet Explorer is no longer supported. Would you like to look for a different
    app in the Windows Store."

        I find that almost endearing. I rarely use the laptop,
    so I haven't made so much effort to clean it up. Since it doesn't matter, I have
    a sort of academic interest in seeing the sheer perversion of Microsoft's >>> darkening scam. Maybe I'll let Win11 update at will and see what I get. I can
    always make a disk image and return it to reasonable civility if I want to. >>>


    kb5041580 ran before WinRE.wim was repaired. Remember, it took about
    eight hours for KB5042320 (WinRE.wim) to show up.

    I'm not sure the Secure Boot issue, is all the same materials. There
    was a revoked certificate in a previous session (July 2024) and it was claimed
    that month was for testing. That is a certificate with "2011?" in it,
    which got revoked and a "2023" item took its place.

    The SBAT seems to be related to the shim issue on Linux -- but I can't
    tell if this is just a different bunch of people using another label for
    that area, or what is going on.

    I did catch the word "mandatory" with respect to an August 2024 change,
    as if the final steps of the year long process were to happen in August.
    Does that mean OptOut would be ignored ? should this have blown up in July ? >> would the OptOut have worked in July but not August ? I don't know.

    It's all part of the same breakage. We know that revoking the 2011?
    certificate should kill the old Linux shims. It's an unknown for me,
    whether they can "bracket" or "bridge" between situations by having
    two shims.

    While you found the BleepingComputer reference to OptOut, the SBAT section >> does not exist and needs to be created.

    There seems to be some material as well, in the OpenSUSE forum.
    And in the second thread, someone gets a free lunch, by installing
    latest Leap, and a side effect of that is it fixes up the shim
    that it uses. Would that cause a previous broken thing to work ? Dunno.
    There should be some sharing going on in the folder in the ESP partition,
    so a newer Leap side effect should get applied to an older Tumbleweed.

    https://forums.opensuse.org/t/insane-secure-boot-issue/174345

    https://forums.opensuse.org/t/sbat-self-check-failed-security-policy-violation-after-moving-tumbleweed-to-new-ssd/175855

    On the Windows side, the terminology a month ago was like this.

    [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match ‘Windows UEFI CA 2023’


      You'd think this doesn't need to be so complicated, wouldn't you?
    In accord with what you're saying, my laptop didn't have an updated
    WinRE and secure boot is disabled. (I don't recall doing that.) Yet 1580 installed just fine.

      On my main system I've had secure boot disabled since the Suse install broke it back in the beginning. I haven't kept careful records of all these things, but I have had the sense that MS are cracking down on tweaks,
    as I mentioned earlier. For example, my home-built machine wouldn't
    activate until I re-installed Windows and did it before all tweaking. Why? There's no credible reason for that, aside from MS trying to maintain
    tight control.

       Maybe they also don't like home-built machines? I wouldn't
    put anything past them at this point. I can't imagine any good reason
    for all this complication; nor for the voluminous but mainly useless logs created, which detail thousands of operations but don't say exactly why
    the update quit.

      And why would an update that failed to install nevertheless swap out
    my ieframe DLLs and break settings applets?

      But lately I'm having fun with something less critical: How do I change
    the background color of selected text to something less dreary? The
    default is dirty sky blue: 0 120 215 0r 0078D7. I want the decidedly cheerful 45 150 255 or 2D96FF. I found settings in HKCU\Ccontrol Panel\Colors\Hilight and a similar setting in HKU. There's also a custom theme file. Why doesn't Windows give me access to all those settings, like it used to? And there's
    a hotdrag color. And there are old color settings under
    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop.

      So far my choice seems to be holding, but it's reverted several times. Where is Windows finding that old color? Where is my custom color for
    active title bars stored? What I'm using doesn't match any of the settings I've found. How do MS spend billions of dollars and still fuck up so many things? The default color for selected text... How hard is that to just put that into one damn setting and use it?

      Even more strange, the RichEdit50W class window I'm using in my own
    text editor is not going with my choice of bright blue sky with white text. It's
    showing pale blue with black text. 132 193 255. Where the heck is it
    getting that? I can't find it in the Registry or in my custom.theme file. Everything else from Firefox to Notepad to VS6 is using my choice. (If it fails again I intend to put a little EXE in the startup folder to make a call to SetSysColors at each boot.)

    So, as you can see, I have a critical emergency here and have to put security updates on the back burner. :)

    It takes 7000 developers to do that.

    They get paid by the "if-then-else" clause used in the source code.

    Some of their code, uses contrast colors (not exactly the complement
    of the color, but something along those lines). There isn't a reason
    for something like that to be cast in concrete.

    Paul

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)