cmd.exe opens to a blank/black screen

Is your cmd.exe opening to a blank/black screen?    It works if you run-as administrator?  It works if you open PowerShell first, and then execute cmd.exe?     Yeah, that's where I have ended up on several various machines, including home and enterprise edition.     

In all my cases, the prompt is actually working as I tested it with .bat file and they ran, but screen still looks blank/black, implying hung process.  Nope, somehow the colors have gotten reset to black on black on black.   I certainly did not set these values on over a dozen different machines with the same problem.

Pick the top left of the blank/black cmd.exe screen, and select properties.  Then simply make sure your text, background, and are not all the same value.  In all my situations somehow Windows set them to RGB 0. 

I changed my background to a flavor of green for this quick fix, and now the problem is rather simply solved.

Apparently this was never really was an OS problem for my multiple machines, but I've seen dozens of forum posts from people all reverting to restores, and resets to fix when it was simply black-on-black text.   Still no idea why this has happened so many times, can't blame me on this one as my corporate enterprise Windows has had the same problem and I have no admin control of those systems to modify or install software.

WSL installation workaround

Is the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10 giving you some troubles during install?  Are you getting the black screen on shell startups?

Here is my hack-around the normal method which usually just involves adding the WSL feature, rebooting and then installing the Linux flavor from the Windows Store.  For me, this resulted in a black screen hang when launching Ubuntu on multiple PCs.   Or WSL would work for my full admin account but my standard user account would get the black screen hang; no one's suggestions on various forums actually seemed to help me.   Hopefully, someone else will find this solution useful.

1. Change your user account from standard to admin type.  Remember that this is temporary, we will undo this later.  
2. Following https://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2019/06/install-wsl-2-on-windows-10/  I then ran these from my account via PowerShell (run as administrator) 
• Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
• Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform
3. A reboot (or two) might be needed before continuing.
4. Then install the CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu*.appx (or whatever name it happens to be this month) for Ubuntu downloaded from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual.
5. Now launch WSL and finish initializing your account in the WSL shell 
• username = whatEverUwant, 
• password = iSuggestSomethingUniqueFromYourActualWin10login)
6. Now reboot again, and then login with your real admin account so we can undo step one.
7. Switch your account back to standard type, as we no longer need to leave it elevated, nor should you.   It is no longer the year 2005 so your daily usage account should not be full admin.
8. Now verify WSL shell still works after lowering account back to non-admin.
9. Verify you can add a package such as: sudo apt-get install zip
10. Enjoy the Linux prompts and get to bash'n Windows!

PS.  Your personal Linux home folder can be found from within Windows 10 by going to:
%APPDATA%\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu*\LocalState\rootfs\home\

Batman & Scooby-Doo finally colored

It only took me 7 years to have someone color Freddie E. Williams II's (@Freddieart) Batman & Scooby-Doo artwork for me.   Andrew Dalhouse (@adalhouse) did a really nice job of completing the process.

You can see the full posting on my original twitter post, or this link to the best image I have published on the web.  The actual finished commissioned image is over 4500pixels of glorious detail work.

US Movie Poster

We saw Jordan Peele's new film "Us" at the theatre today, I enjoyed it.   Came home and made my own movie poster.

Hi-rez image link [1782px tall]

Captain Marvel - the website

Gotta love the new website put up in 2019 by Marvel Comics productions for the new Captain Marvel movie featuring Carol Danvers (starring Brie Larson).    The movie is set in the 1990s and the website designers have built the site using the best of Netscape 3.0 technology.  Fun retro stuff.  Go take a peek at https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel.

CPU running slow (0.48GHz instead of 2.10GHz) !?

Recently ran into a laptop performance issue after doing the monthly updates for Windows 10 and suddenly my Intel CPU is running super slow.   Reset power plans to default.   Reset BIOS to default.   Even disabled power idle, C-step, throttling in BIOS.  Nope.   Reset OS saving files, and then thought it was working until I logged into cloud account and back to slow again.  Now it's the profile.  Full nuke from DVD install.   Now running slow with default local only account.      Pulled battery, running with AC adapter only. Nope.   Run battery only. Nope.    Local Throttleshop utility to see if I could force CPU into gear.  Nope, utility showed all cores and multiples as normal, no speedstep active, CPU temperature safe and in the green.  Boot from Linux ISO image to rule out Microsoft, and it is slow there too.

Reboot PC again and decide to test using the built-in diag utility which I forgot was even there.   CPU processor fan fails the test.     Well, now all is clear.   Apparently CPU boots normal, then after a few minutes the sanity check between CPU, motherboard and fan controller shows fail and locks CPU at 20% maximum speed.  I'll never overheat and burn-up the CPU so I guess that is good but nowhere in event logs or boot-up sequence was there an alert this problem existed.

A can of compressed air has the processor fan back to working, at least until an OEM replacement can arrive.  Maybe this post will save someone else a waste of time re-imaging, and troubleshooting.

Craving some non-Disney Star Wars?

Are you craving some non-Disney produced Star Wars?  Then you should check out this very slick professionally produced fan-film about Darth Vader called VADER EPISODE 1: SHARDS OF THE PAST.   It runs about 18 minutes and feels like it should belong permanently within the regular Star Wars canon.