Replies

Alex5723 wrote:

Isn’t SysInternals portable app that needs download and extraction.

That’s what winget does, and handles the unblocking of files downloaded from the internet… and a whole lot more.

It’s great for uninstalling Store-based apps… which the new, re-written from scratch, Store and winget are trying to join seamlessly.

RetiredGeek wrote:

SysInternals is the one I’m having problems with.

RG – I believe your install was successful and that you may have clicked the Launch button in the notification:

There’s no front-end to the suite so, instead, it opens:

As  you have more than one browser installed, it’s asking you which one to use to take you there.

I believe you’ll find the tools in:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.SysinternalsSuite_2023.3.0.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Tools

Hope this helps…

Susan Bradley wrote:

Personally I do not like search highlights, turn it off and in fact wonder why in Windows 11 the dang settings has moved to permissions (which IMHO make zero sense).

I dislike both Search Highlights and the related News and interests.

IMO their purpose is to add easily-trackable ‘user behaviour’ elements. It’s now all too easy to track 1) how many people turn the dynamic content ‘gleams’ off and, IMO much more importantly, 2) what specific articles are clicked on as a result of the default Open on hover panel behaviour. I think that this helps build up a ‘user interests’ profile (linked to MSA or even local account username), probably to better target additional ‘helpful and relevant’ dynamic content. IMO when the Open on hover panels appear, they’re like regular multiple choice questionnaires where you don’t even realise that you are being profiled.

I think this is why the entries have been moved to Windows 11’s Settings > Privacy umbrella… because ‘you are now the product‘.

How’s that for a tinfoil hat theory? 🙂

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WCHS

WCHS wrote:

1) you don’t think making the “IsBigGleam” entry go missing and changing the dword for the “OpenOnHover’ entry to 0 will do any good?

I deleted the IsBigGleam entry and changed the DWORD value for OpenOnHover to 0 then restarted Explorer to refresh the taskbar. As you can see, both ‘gleams’ are still there:

… but hovering now does nothing, as expected. So, no, it didn’t do any good.

WCHS wrote:

2) Did you find anything out when playing with the differences in (b) and (c) of #254353?

ShellFeedsTaskbarPreviousViewMode – This entry isn’t relevant.

ShellFeedsTaskbarContentUpdateMode – This entry records the speed of updating, the equivalent of using the context menu to Reduce taskbar updates, i.e. the refresh interval. Again, not relevant.

ShellFeedsTaskbarOpenOnHover – This entry doesn’t appear on your ‘good’ machine yet is set to a DWORD value of 1 on your ‘bad’ machine… which is exactly the same value as on my fully working test machine. As a result it’s safe to say that the section of 3 entries I marked as b have no effect on the issue.

The ‘good’ machine has a IsLocationTurnedOn entry (c) which doesn’t exist in the ‘bad’ machine. The entry on the ‘good’ machine has a DWORD value of 1; my test machine has a DWORD value of 0. That’s because the choices I made during OOBE turned off all entries in Settings > Privacy > Location. (As a result, my machine makes a guess that it’s in the north of England when it’s actually in the south-west.) So, not relevant to the issue.

I *have* found an additional ‘per user’ Search setting called IsDynamicSearchBoxEnabled that is apparently relevant to the display of Search Highlights. Well, I didn’t find it… I read about it on TenForums. My only reservation about suggesting trying it is that my test machine doesn’t have the entry at all, yet works perfectly… so I’m wondering how relevant it is.

(The same TenForums article describes an ‘all users/per machine’ policy setting called EnableDynamicContentInWSB which should be removed. However, this would have shown up in the Group Policy results report if it had been configured so, again, not relevant.)

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WCHS

Which app are you referring to, RG?

I’ve just tried installing IrfanView (using both agreement switches) from an elevated PS console (not script) and it installed and launched without any issues.

winget install --ID 9PJZ3BTL5PV6 --source msstore --accept-source-agreements --accept-package-agreements

Next, I uninstalled IrfanView then tried the same install command run from a script. Again, it installed and launched without any issues:

WCHS wrote:

Since this is the result of /ScanHealth, I am guessing that it wouldn’t do any good to run…

I don’t think so. The System File Checker results answered my query.

There are no more registry settings to check so I don’t really know what to suggest next, other than use the new account and change it to MSA and copy data from the ‘bad’ account to the ‘good’ account.

Hmm… from what I’ve now seen, it looks like you may need to add both agreement types, e.g.:

winget install --ID 9WZDNCRFJ3PZ --accept-source-agreements --accept-package-agreements

Hope this helps…

RG – I can’t duplicate the errors you’re getting:

Temporary store glitch? Or did you mean you want to ‘accept the terms’ automatically?

If so, try, for example:

winget install 9PJZ3BTL5PV6  --source msstore --accept-source-agreements

Also, if you enter winget source list you’ll probably find that the MS Store is the default, i.e. first in the source list:

Hope this helps…

I suppose there’s a small possibility of system file corruption. Have you considered opening the PowerShell console (as Admin) and entering sfc /scannow to check?

Have a look at Option 3 of How to Repair System Files with SFC Command in Windows 10 for more info.

Hope this helps…

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WCHS

I’ve been thinking about this… and I don’t understand the mindset of making a core process –  so important to Windows’ stability and functionality – monitor/change such a bunch of nonsense IMO as Search Highlights/News and interests.

It makes no sense whatsoever. I must have made a mistake somewhere in my test methods.

I find Siri incredibly useful. Why replace Siri with an entity that has already been proved it can be subverted to be positively unhelpful, recalcitrant or just rude at times? I have teenage family members for that, without any coding required. 🙂

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Alex5723, PKCano

So, I prepped ProcMon with a filter that, in English, meant ‘Show me only events that make changes to the %localAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Search_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\ShellFeeds\ folder’… and let it capture events.

I was more than surprised that it’s explorer.exe making changes to the folder and, specifically, updating the .SVG image files:

That’s the core ‘in-your-face’ OS shell… and it’s monitoring/changing what is, IMO, essentially a frippery. Not even the background ‘Windows Shell Experience Host’ process which I would have understood more.

I don’t actually know how to progress this any further.

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WCHS

WCHS wrote:

This looks like it’s getting deep. I hope I can hang in there with you!!

Up until now we’ve just been looking at the registry… a database of recorded changes already made. It’s also been useful trying to understand the interactional relationship of Search Highlights to News and interests.

Even though many changes to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry hive are dynamic (i.e. make a change and the results often show immediately after the change, possibly prompted by a refresh of explorer.exe to update the taskbar), the registry isn’t a change mechanism itself. It needs outside assistance to effect change (for example, the front-end LGPE which fires gpudate.exe when you click on the Apply button).

ProcMon will, hopefully, show what’s actually making the changes. It records (nearly) every event that occurs in Windows as it happens, dozens and dozens a time every second. (I write ‘nearly’ because there’s a way to make ProcMon look even lower into the depths of what’s going on… but it’s not necessary for what we want here.)

 

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WCHS

The partitions you mention add up to just 1.5GB… hardly worth worrying about when you have 186.3GB of unallocated space sat there just waiting to be put to good use. 🙂

Hope this helps…

WCHS wrote:

There must be some documentation of this refresh in ‘Events’, don’t you think? If so, would this provide some clue as to how/where the currency of the gleam is being monitored?

I turned on my test machine and it opened the last folder I had been viewing, the ShellFeeds one with both .SVG files in. I noticed that they (and the .JSON file) had all been modified at the time I turned the machine on.

I used Nir Sofer’s FullEventLogView to search *all* event levels of *all* Event logs created at the time the 3 files were updated. There was no mention of any of the files and only one possible backgroundTaskHost.exe process event that may be relevant (although I discovered new telemetry events that I wasn’t previously aware of and have made a note of the Microsoft-owned endpoint).

So, as Event logs didn’t help, the next step is going to have to be Process Monitor (ProcMon), configured to filter for changes to the ShellFeeds folder. It will be a good test of ProcMon as it’s just been updated a few days ago.

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WCHS