"Daily Driver" Desktop PC

My "daily driver" PC had a power supply failure. I turned on an older machine which had been unused for some time. This writeup is the setup of my new daily driver PC running Microsoft Windows 10.

 

    Printer drivers are hardware-specific. Install printer hardware drivers and programs from the printer vendor.
    Video drivers are hardware-specific. Other than default Microsoft driver through Windows Update, look for a driver from video card manufacturer.



 

    Install a lightweight PDF viewer instead of relying on the Microsoft Edge viewer.
    Download and install SumatraPDF viewer from github. Then set PDF files to open with SumatraPDF instead of Microsoft Edge viewer. Open File Explorer and go to a PDF filename. Right-click the filename, choose Properties, then Change to SumatraPDF.
    In the SumatraPDF program, go to Advanced Options and set "NoHomeTab = true" and "ShowFavorites = false".

    PDF Arranger allows individual pages to easily be rotated. This is often useful when scanning double-sided pages or pages that were printed in landscape mode. The program is lightweight and is available on github.

    Install a word processing, spreadsheet, and drawing package such as LibreOffice.

 

    For web browsing, install Brave web browser.
    Consider also installing Firefox web browser via the Microsoft Store app (installs only for your user and not for every user, thus not requiring Administrator privileges nor a Services entry).

    The VLC music player is good for playing audio and video files.

    Apple still provides the iTunes podcast player. The integrated iTunes store, to more easily find and subscribe to podcasts, keeps this program relevant and useful.
    When migrating or refreshing an iTunes install, you can start with the prior iTunes settings: find the config library file, hold down SHIFT key, with mouse right-click SendTo itunes. This will start the prior configuration. 

    Add programs to File Explorer "SendTo" context menu. Press "Windowskey & R". In the box type "shell:sendto". That will open File Explorer to the folder which contains shortcuts. Add shortcuts for your programs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    For file sharing and smartphone picture sync, Dropbox has a userful no-cost tier. Instead of running the Dropbox app via Administrator settings (which the program's cloud provider can potentially abuse), get the app via the Microsoft Store app.

    Use the MS Windows built-in night blue light screen warmth adjustment in Settings Display, or download f.lux or from the Microsoft Store. If using f.lux you will probably turn off the "Backwards alarm clock" popups. For both f.lux and the Microsoft settings, the mouse pointer will be all-white instead of warm colors in the evening. This is caused by the mouse pointer being drawn on-screen using the GPU instead of CPU. If you grab a windows title bar and move it, the mouse pointer will change colors. F.lux has an option to fix this, while it can not be fixed when using Microsoft's night light. Microsoft's night light requires "Connected Devices Platform Service" CDPSvc to be running.

    Depending on your tolerance for visual animations, consider making adjustments in the Settings app.
    Turn off unnecessary visual movement in Control Panel "Control Panel\Ease of Access\Ease of Access Center\Make the computer easier to see".
    Search for "scroll" and turn off "Automatically hide scroll bars".

    While in the Settings app, review the following:
    "Privacy settings" and turn off most permissions.
    Review the "Startup apps". If an app does not need to run constantly, don't start it. Also look in Task Manager tab Startup and consider disabling some apps from running at Startup.
    Lock screen "cards" may be turned off in Settings, Personalization, Lock Screen. If the cards still appear, turn it on, below the line "Choose one app" and set it to none, then turn it off.
    If screen text is a little blurry or difficult to read, run Settings -> ClearType. You may have to run it several times until you find what you like.
    The taskbar "news and interests" are managed in Settings. 

    Go to Settings, Network & Internet, Change adapter options, choose properties of a connection, choose IPv4 or IPv6 and the properties. Edit the DNS servers to do name lookups with a service which filters malware sites, such as 1.1.1.3 and 1.0.0.3. 
    Unless you have a specific need for IPv6, go to Network Connections -> Networking and uncheck IPv6. This is particularly true for home machines which stay at home behind your own router. An IPv6 address is unique to the hardware in your machine, so it is unlikely to be beneficial to provide that unique identifier to every website you access.

    Remove the web advertising when typing in the Start menu of MS Windows. 

    Run "Windows Features" and turn off functionality you are not using to reduce the surface area of possible bugs. For example, many people can safely uncheck "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" and "Work Folders Client".

 

 

 

 

 
    Review the MS Windows shutdown power states. Is the PC really off or just deep-sleep hibernating?

    Create a restore point. Configure System Protection to Turn ON system protection, then create restore point for system drive. systempropertiesprotection.exe
    Check and repair corrupt system files with DISM and SFC.
    Open Windows Security and run a full virus scan.
    Controlled Folder Access is part of ransomware protection in Windows Security. Some apps such as Dropbox like to look all over a machine. To protect your personal files from external command & control software, restrict access to some folders. Turn the ransomware setting ON, and set some PROTECTED FOLDERS. You can use Controlled Folder Access to block access to an entire drive (like your backups) or by folder.


    Configure File History Service to make file copy backups off the local machine.


    Remove unwanted MS Windows apps and functionality:
Look in Settings and consider which Windows Feature are not being unused and can be uninstalled.
Run services.msc and change services you don't need to "Manual" or "Disabled" things you won't need - like "Cellular Time" and "Retail Demo Service" and "TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper".
Use Powershell to remove other apps. For some apps you may need to be Adminstrator. Over time it may not be possible to remove some apps. For example, the Microsoft Bing app seems have become deeply integrated in MS Windows 10 and is now difficult to remove.

    Remove to turn on Core Isolation, Memory Integrity in Windows Security.

    Add items to File Explorer context-sensitive menu using Registry Editor as administrator.

 

Failing Hard Disk Drive

I have a couple of the Seagate 3000GB drives from a few years ago which are known to fail. Files sporadically became unreadable. Running the MS Windows built-in check disk command didn't recognize any errors. From a command window, the check disk syntax is: chkdsk driveletter: like "chkdsk d:".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check disk completed without finding errors. See the line "0KB in bad sectors".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to reformat the drive and it would not format correctly. 

If you have a failing drive, promptly back up the contents. Then try a reformat or a disk stress tool. It's unlikely a failing drive will heal itself, so have some fun opening the drive. Safety glasses and a small screwdriver should open the drive case. 

 

Shutdown Power States Of Microsoft Windows

To enable a faster startup experience, MS Windows implemented various levels of power off such as "standy" and "hyrbrid sleep" and "fast startup". The "fast startup" was included with MS Windows 8, and it often made a significant difference in startup speed. "Fast startup" is still available in versions 10 and 11. A "shut down" Microsoft Windows can be in various levels of being actually shut down. Microsoft describes the system power states used by MS Windows.

An important differentiating point of the "shut down" states is when all disk writes are finally persisted to disk. A person who is concerned about minimizing risk of data loss or corruption, or wants to ensure a full reboot wil actually work, will want to ensure a complete shut down. This will slow down getting MS Windows to the "working state".

 

Open the Control Panel and go to power options at Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options. 

Choose one of the plans and click on "Change plan settings" then click on "Change advanced power settings". This will open the "Power Options" window and various running and hybernation settings are available, along with hardware settings such as the wireless adapter.

 

In Control Panel, click on the option on the left for "Choose what the power button does". This is in Control Panel at Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\System Settings .

Under "Shutdown settings", uncheck "Turn on fast startup" to completely shut down and fully persist state information at shut down. If the checkmark is grayed out, click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now open a Powershell as Administrator.

Run "powercfg.exe /list" to view the existing schemes. This is similar to the "Power Options" GUI.

 

 

 

 

Run "powercfg.exe /a" to view which power states are available for your motherboard and CPU.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may want to explore the powercfg.exe options /ENERGY and /SYSTEMPOWERREPORT.

When the PC is doing a complete shut down and restart with all data persisted, upon startup you will see the power on POST messages from BIOS firmware. If you are not seeing POST messages, you may not be doing a full shut down and restart. The only way to know if the PC will restart successfully is to persist everything to disk and do a complete and slower restart.

Quick Check of Hard Disk Drive

The data drive for personal and work files began to have some picture files unable to be read. I copied all files to another drive. Then I did a couple quick disk checks in MS Windows 10, and suprisingly no errors were found. A thorough test of the disk would do repeated reads and writes across the entire disk.

 

Run PowerShell as admin and use the deprecated wmic command:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Run cmd as admin and use chkdsk:

 

refresh topic: Remove Microsoft Windows packages from PowerShell

How to remove Microsoft packages from PowerShell was previously discussed in year 2021 here. Microsoft continues to provide app installs which some of us do not want. 

Look at apps in Windows Settings (press WindowsKey+i then choose Apps) and attempt to uninstall apps there. Some apps allow uninstall, and others such as Bing Search do not.

 

Steps to remove Bing Search app: 

- Right-click on Start button and choose "Windows PowerShell (Admin)" 

- In the PowerShell window, look for the package name: Get-AppxPackage | select-string  "bing"

- Remove the package: Get-AppxPackage *bing* | Remove-AppxPackage

 

Alternative PDF viewer

As an alternative to the bloated and AI-interrupting PDF readers from Microsoft and Adobe, the SumatraPDF is a streamlined and free PDF viewer from Microsoft Windows. 

Download the latest Sumatra PDF release.

Most Windows users will likely choose the "Installer" so it integrates with the Start menu and file name extensions. The "Portable version" is a self-contained program that simply runs. 

After download, run the installer. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I usually choose Options for making files searchable and for preview.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I prefer to not have the "Home" blank page, so I disable that in the Menu -> Settings -> Advanced Option. In the configuration file change item "NoHomeTab" from "false" to "true". Save the configuration file and restart Sumatra PDF.

Remove "Start" menu folders in Micrsoft Windows

If there is a folder you can't remove with Uninstall, you may remove it by hand. For example, let's remove the "Acer" folder. 

Press Microsoft Windows 10 Start button. 

 

 

 

Open the File Explorer. In the location area enter: %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
You will see the list of folders displayed when pressing the Start button.

 

 

 

 

Within File Explorer, right-click on the folder to remove and select DELETE. The folder should be removed.

Press the Start button to verify the folder was removed.

Privacy and Yahoo email summaries

Yahoo mail recently introduced email summaries which are auto-generated and display above the email. This was a surprising change which is intrusive and annoying. From the settings in email, there does not appear to be a method to disable the summaries.

The Yahoo brand owns "oath" which provides security and privacy settings. Go to yahoo.mydashboard.oath.com and you may need to log in again.

Turn off "Automated email analysis". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There may be a privacy option specifically for your location. Review the other privacy and marketing settings.

Keep Unneeded Microsoft Services Turned Off

In any environment, it is wise to not install unneeded software. Software and services which are rarely used may be run only when needed.

Microsoft Windows print spooler vulnerability affects systems actively running the print server. The service unfortunately runs as Administrator, so the vulnerability is significant. The CERT notice of July 2021 notes, "... VulNote for a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Print spooler service ..."

In MS Windows 10, let's set the service to MANUAL and create a script to start the service when needed. To begin, run services.msc as Administrator from the Start menu. Set the Print Spooler service to Manual.

Create a file named printspoolerstart_RunAsAdministrator.bat.

Using a text editor such as Notepad, place these lines in the file named printspoolerstart_RunAsAdministrator.bat
@echo off
echo This should be Run As Administrator to start Print Spooler service.
pause
net start spooler
pause

Save and close the file.

 

 

 

 

Run the file as Administrator. 

Refresh the Services windows to verify the service is running.

GUI Interface Switching Confusion

Good, simple, clean user interfaces are consistent. Cutesy-hacks to change consistency harm the user experience.

Microsoft Windows alt-tab has been used to switch between applications. Microsoft's Edge web browser changes the alt-tab behavior so it switches between tabs in Edge, instead of switching from Edge to the next application. This is annoying to users because it is inconsistent.

To restore alt-tab so it switches out of Edge, in MS Windows 10 choose the MS Windows Start button, Settings App, Multitasking. In the "Alt + Tab" section, choose "Open windows only".

 

While considering web browser user interface annoyances, the Brave web browser can be configured to not auto-play embedded videos. In a new Brave tab, enter brave://settings/content/autoplay

 

Brave web browser has it's own implementation of cycle-through-tabs-in-the-app, via ctrol-tab, which can be configured.

Remove Android Apps with ADB

Many pre-installed Android apps can not be easily removed within the phone app store. With a PC you can remove unwanted apps.

On phone, enable developer mode. Open the Settings app on phone and scroll down to About Phone, Software Info. Tap on the Build Number seven times to enable Developer Options.
On phone in Settings app, enable USB Debugging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plug the phone into PC with USB cable.

On MS Windows, download Google's adb tools from https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-windows.zip

Unzip the file.

Open MS Windows PowerShell.

In the PowerShell window, cd into the downloaded directories. 

In the PowerShell window, run: ./adb devices

The phone device is listed with status "unauthorized". Phone can not yet be accessed from PC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the phone there should be a prompt to allow connection to PC. Press Allow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the PowerShell window, again run: ./adb devices

 

After running the next command to enter the shell, the remainder of commands in this example will be run within the shell. In the PowerShell window, run: ./adb shell

    pm list packages

 

 

 

 

 

You may want to copy the list of packages to a text editor for review. 

Let's remove the weather apps.
    pm list packages | grep weather
acexlm:/ $ pm list packages | grep weather
package:com.lge.sizechangable.weather.platform
package:com.lge.sizechangable.weather.theme.optimus
package:com.lge.sizechangable.weather

 

 

 
Uninstall each entry:
    pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.lge.sizechangable.weather.platform
    pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.lge.sizechangable.weather.theme.optimus
    pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.lge.sizechangable.weather

 

 

 

On the phone please refresh the list of apps. Notice the weather apps are listed as "Not installed".

 

Remove a few other apps. Notice the shell command "pm list packages" is used with flag "-f" instead of a pipe to "grep".

The older Google Duo app is "tachyon":
acexlm:/ $ pm list packages -f tachyon
package:/product/app/Duo/Duo.apk=com.google.android.apps.tachyon
acexlm:/ $ pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tachyon
Success

 

 

 

Remove Google Pay:
acexlm:/ $ pm list packages -f wallet
package:/system/app/GooglePay/GooglePay.apk=com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel
acexlm:/ $ pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel
Success

 

 

 

 

Restart the phone and check for functionality.

VirtualBox Hosting Multiple Linux Installs

Broadcom recently announced that a personal license of VMWare Workstation Pro is now free. The commercial version has a price. For those people who use VMWare at work, a free home version may be useful.

Oracle has provided the base version of VirtualBox for free for several years. The source code is available under the GNU licensing scheme. 

Let's install a virtual machine using VirtualBox from Oracle. This example uses a host Microsoft Windows 10 Pro build 19045. There are 24 GB of memory and storage is a 2 TB SSD. The "guest" virtual machine will be a version of Ubuntu Linux. This example uses drive L: for virtual machine files.

Explanations and definitions:

• The physical PC running VirtualBox and has the virtual machines (VM) running on it is called the host. Virtual machines are called guests.
• VirtualBox Manager GUI may be thought of as the main VirtualBox window, where you can start and stop and reconfigure guest VMs. Once guest VMs are running, the VirtualBox Manager GUI does not need to continue to run and can be stopped and restarted without affecting guest VMs.
• The GUI windows that show the guest operating systems are the "guest windows". There are options to start VMs as "headless" without the windows.

Learning resources and downloads are available at:

www.virtualbox.org

docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/7.0/user/Introduction.html

www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

The install will need C++, which may be found here. "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable latest supported downloads".

 

Virtualization must be enabled in the BIOS settings of the PC. Check this now by rebooting machine, press the proper function key to setup BIOS, and look in the BIOS menus.

Before running the VirtualBox installer, consider these two items:

• If you don't write Python scripts then you don't need to install Python. The guest VMs will be full operating systems and should have support for whatever you normally use in that operating system. For example, Ubuntu Linux includes the typical tools and scripting such as Python. We will not install Python scripting support. 
• If you are using a Standard User account, there is a prompt for Administrator access to run the installer. You will likely want to use a non-Administrator Standard Account in MS Windows, because the later steps of installing and configuring VMs can use the Standard User account permissions instead of using a MS Windows privileged Administrator account for daily VirtualBox tasks.

Download the VirtualBox installer. Run the VirtualBox installer. This example used installer "VirtualBox-7.0.18-162988-Win".

Run the VirtualBox installer. 

Click Yes at the warning about adding a network interface.

Click install. The installer runs for less than a minute.

After the installer completes, the new network interface "VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter", will be visible.

Let's create a new virtual machine. 

Start the VirtualBox Manager application and click New. 

Pick a name for the machine, an OS and version, and location to store files. This machine name is going to be the hostname when inside Ubuntu Linux.

The OS version choices are often slightly behind OS releases from the vendor. For best compatibility, choose an OS version which is displayed in the "Create Virtual Machine" dropdown. It is typically good to choose a long-term support version, such as "Ubuntu Server 22.04.4 LTS". 

Download the corresponding ISO file from the OS vendor. For this example, choose a server version at the Ubuntu download website.

Set the amount of memory and number of CPUs.

Set the disk space. For testing or home use, it is not necessary to pre-allocate the drive space. For production systems with high uptime requirements on hosts with shared storage, it is often good to pre-allocate disk space to remove a potential problem. Not pre-allocating disk space will allow for reduced backup sizes.

On the screen "Unattended Guest OS Install Setup", set the username, machine name, and passwords. Username is going to be what you log in as on the Ubuntu Linux console, so maybe choose "admin" or "install". Chapter 3 "Configuring Virtual Machines" has an explanation of the choices.

Press Next. Review the Summary page and press Finish. 

The new VM will be created and will try to start.

There were several issues while trying to start the VM. The issues were centered around hypervisor memory access and appeared as "VERR_NEM_NOT_AVAILABLE" and "VT-x Is Not Available (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX)".

Press MS Windows Start button and type "cmd" to start a command prompt as Administrator. Then configure MS Windows hypervisor in the command prompt as Adminstrator:

bcdedit.exe /enum {current} | find "hypervisorlaunchtype"

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Press the MS Windows Start button and type "windows features". Click on "Turn Windows features on or off". There will be a prompt for the Administrator password.  

Install two features "Hyper-V" and "Windows Hypervisor Platform".

Press the Start button in MS Windows and type: core isolation

Turn off core isolation memory integrity then reboot the machine.

After rebooting, run the VirtualBox Manager application. Highlight the VM name which previously failed to start and press the Start button. If it does not start there is more troubleshooting to do.

When the VM is running the configuration can be seen in the VirtualBox Manager. Choose Settings --> System. It is not possible to dynamically change settings such as CPU count or memory. These settings can be changed when the VM is not running. 

This shows increasing the number of CPUs when the VM is not running.

Start the virtual machine. In the VM window log in to Linux. 

From the Linux command line, run command: htop 

The htop command is typically installed with Ubuntu server, though not with the desktop version of Ubuntu.

Notice there are 4 CPUs (which are typically numbered 0 through 3).

Let's do a quick stress test on the VM. In MS Windows, run the Task Manager to monitor machine usage. On the Linux command line, run a couple commands to stress the CPU and disk. Type the following lines which are after the "$" prompt. The next line with the loop should have numbers up to the VM configured CPU count.

$ for loop in 1 2 3 4; do while : ; do : ; done & done

# Run htop or top or uptime.
$ cat /dev/random > /tmp/testing 

# In the host operating system MS Windows, look in Task Manager.
# Find the process ID numbers to kill to stop the stress testing.
# Look in "top" or run the next line.
$ ps -fu 

# Choose the PIDs for the stress tasks.
# (Use your own PIDs for the next line.)
$ kill 1034 1035 1036 1037 1055

On the Linux command line, shutdown Linux.

$ shutdown

In a minute, VirtualBox Manager GUI should recognize the VM exiting and set status to "Powered Off". You will see in the host machine performance monitoring (Task Manager in MS Windows) that memory used by the VM has been freed. 

The prior example used a "server" version of Linux which did not have a desktop GUI. Installing the desktop version of Ubuntu Linux is a similar process. At the Ubuntu website, download the ISO image to correspond with an image which is pre-populated in the VirtualBox Manager GUI. You may need to go to the Ubuntu past releases downloads.

If you try to use the latest Linux version which is not in the pre-populated list you may encounter an error. 

Run the VirtualBox Manager GUI and press the New button.

In a graphical Linux window, the "Welcome to Ubuntu" screen will be shown. 

After the install completes, log in.

Log in and you will see the graphical desktop. Skip the prompt for adding online accounts.

If there are annoying wave patterns across the GUI display, in the Ubuntu Linux desktop go to Settings --> Displays and adjust the Resolution and Refresh Rate to common values such as 1024 x 768 and 60 Hz. Settings is the gear icon on the left of the graphical desktop.