Windows 11

[sedrosken]

I have to scale 1080p to 130ish to keep it readable at 14", and I've found a lot of my clients get mileage out of the scaling due to similarly (though usually to a worse degree) poor vision.

 

[mubs]

As usual, you da man, Merc! Thanks a mil! I'm trying Small icons and 100% scaling. Will probably get used to this.

You know, I've searched on Google massively the last few days for various issues. It's amazing how much ignorance and crap there is out there. For the icon size issue, the only solution I found was the scaling adjustment. And here, bingo, you nailed it.

I don't work on PCs as much as I used to, and have forgotten a ton of stuff.

 

[Mercutio]

I have to scale 1080p to 130ish to keep it readable at 14", and I've found a lot of my clients get mileage out of the scaling due to similarly (though usually to a worse degree) poor vision.

I massively regret having a 4k 15" screen on my current laptop so believe me, I understand.

 

[mubs]

I have to scale 1080p to 130ish to keep it readable at 14", and I've found a lot of my clients get mileage out of the scaling due to similarly (though usually to a worse degree) poor vision.

Doesn't the scale go up in steps of 25 starting at 100? How are you setting it at 130? Unless it works differently on laptops.

BTW, Can't remember: who was Hawkeye in SF? The guy who used to scale it down and use tiny fonts on his screen?

 

[Mercutio]

Sounds like dd.

You can set custom scaling if you want. It's a better idea than using nonstandard screen resolutions.

 

[sedrosken]

See, I used to scale DPI lower so I could fit more on a screen, but this was like… fitting 1920x1200 into a 19 inch 1440x900 screen, nothing crazy. This was of course before my vision went completely to shit.

mubs, Windows supports setting an arbirtrary percentage for scaling now, and has at least for a couple years. Surface devices have such high DPI screens they come out of the box at 300% now. Windows will throw up a scare screen and say arbitrary percentages might break for some older applications, but in my experience it’s been fine. And you can override scaling application by application as needed.

 

[mubs]

Do you guys use your systems with Memory Integrity on or off?

 

[mubs]

My W10 build was running with Windows audio drivers. No probs. Now on W11, same machine, I installed Realtek's audio drivers for W11 provided by Asus. Every time I adjust volume up or down, there's a BING! Searched and tried a few suggestions, but they don't work. Any suggestions? Should I uninstall the Realtek audio driver and go back to Windows default driver? It's driving me mad.

 

[ddrueding]

Sounds like dd.

You can set custom scaling if you want. It's a better idea than using nonstandard screen resolutions.

Not me, once I had enough money to choose I started running 40"+ monitors. The last few have been 42" 4k with 150% scale. Before that I ran for a while with 2x 49" 5k ultrawide stacked vertically, still at 150%. That setup was interesting, but not as useful for monotasking. Now I'm considering a 16-21" 4k secondary for reference material.

 

[Mercutio]

Mubs, I've never heard of that. Maybe it is something in the full driver package that nobody bothers to install?

I use 3x 32" displays with the one on my left in portrait mode, plus my Samsung tablet as a drawing tablet/display. My 4k screen is set to 125% scale but the others are just 100%. My eyesight is terrible but I sit very close to my screens, maybe only 15 - 18" from them.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm at least 30" from my screens, I find the eye strain isn't as bad.

 

[Mercutio]

I just found Operese, someone's project to upgrade Windows 10 straight in to Kubuntu. It maintains user data folders, but the install can be kicked off directly from Windows, which seems pretty sweet to me.

There isn't even a working web site for it yet, but the project is interesting enough that I'm definitely going to keep tabs on it.

 

[Mercutio]

Apparently, one of the updates currently being tested in Windows 11 25H2 is an update to the Mixer application that will allow sound output from multiple devices simultaneously. Android has been able to do sound to multiple bluetooth devices or output to both speaker and bluetooth for years, so it's LONG past time for Windows to do this.

 

[Mercutio]

Also in the name of BS no one asked for, MS365 users are getting a bunch of new widgets to do things like Mail and Calendar, replacing the apps that Windows used to ship with, I guess, and a file search tool specifically to deal with all the places where people trapped in Microsoft's ecosystem put files that aren't actually a filesystem.

This is a 365 thing rather than a Windows thing but I specifically think it's funny because they just took away "lightweight mail and calendar" tools and having to have a tool to deal with files that are attachments in Teams and Outlook and Onedrive is just telling the rest of us not to put things into your ecosystem.

 

[Mercutio]

The newest Windows 11 updates changed the Out of Box Experience to get rid of another workaround to force users to create a Microsoft account. There is still at least one known escape to command prompt that allows for a local account but they're clearly intent on patching out all of them. Autounattend.xml is looking like a fact of life for technicians and hobbyists going forward.

 

[Mercutio]

As fallout from the Windows 11 switchover, I have had a dozen i7-7700k mITX systems inflgifted to me. They're in a chassis that supports 2x 2.5" drives and they support 1x m.2, as well as a giant HSF. These guys were pulled out of an industrial setting of some sort, so they're absolutely filthy, but so far, all of them have booted up just fine into Windows 10 just fine. I can't tell who made the motherboards; they aren't badged as any of the usual suspects, but they do use standard-looking PSU connectors.

I don't know what to do with these things. A 91W 4c8t system with no PCIe or interesting IO options seems like a bit of a non-starter. With only 4GB RAM installed, they're not going to be great Windows PCs for much of anything going forward. ChromeOS? Batocera? Seems like a shame to toss them but an N150 is probably better all around than one of these.

 

[Mercutio]

Do you guys use your systems with Memory Integrity on or off?

On unless I'm using it on unsupported hardware. Older Intel iGPUs won't install their Windows 10 driver with memory integrity turned on. If I'm running Windows 11 on Sky Lake hardware, I'm probably not that worried about that particular level of security anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

Windows 11 25H2 is available for download now. Most everything that makes it different form 24H2 only happens for systems that meet the branding requirements for CoPilot but apparently they HAVE improved the automated system recovery if you manually turn the setting on.

 

[Chewy509]

Fun fact, on Windows 11 Home, if you disable location services in settings (during the initial setup), you cannot manually set the timezone of the system via the Settings UI. (It's greyed out). Setting the timezone is now tied to enablement of location services. There are two workarounds:

• User powershell to set the time zone (see Get-TimeZone and Set-TimeZone).
• Via Settings UI, Enable location services enabling all apps, set a manual location, wait 20 secs for the timezone to change to the zone appropriate for the location automatically, and then disable location services. This will fix the timezone.

 

[Mercutio]

You can also set all the regional options in an autounattend.xml, which is the only way to make Windows 11 acceptable in the first place.

 

[sedrosken]

Fun fact, on Windows 11 Home, if you disable location services in settings (during the initial setup), you cannot manually set the timezone of the system via the Settings UI. (It's greyed out). Setting the timezone is now tied to enablement of location services. There are two workarounds:

• User powershell to set the time zone (see Get-TimeZone and Set-TimeZone).
• Via Settings UI, Enable location services enabling all apps, set a manual location, wait 20 secs for the timezone to change to the zone appropriate for the location automatically, and then disable location services. This will fix the timezone.

Making it visibly unchangable without location services to normal users has to be illegal in some jurisdiction, probably Europe where they actually kind of-sort of have to give a shit about privacy sometimes. But I bet being able to Powershell it probably would keep Microsoft from being fined over it in the end.