Windows Hell while setting up to take photos

Sad to say, the first part of this process is to boot up my Windows machine. I hate to complain, but I have nothing better to do given that the Windows machine is taking forever to boot. It has been turned off for over a week due to storm activity, and apparently that is a crisis for it. It has updates to install (why do this when someone is starting the machine and wants to use it?) It also is deceptive. It acts like it is booted up and lets me log in, but it is still busy doing all kinds of unknown crap and isn't really usable.

And it keeps badgering me about something called "OneDrive", which is some kind of cloud storage thing that I never asked for and do not want. I have been putting up with this nuisance for months, but decide that I am angry enough now to take time and try to get rid of it. I find and launch Settings, go to System, go to Notification and actions. There is supposed to be a notice I can turn off for OneDrive, but there isn't, but I do turn off a bunch of things.

Now windows wants to restart and install more updates. Here is a message for Microsoft. This computer is supposed to be for me to get things done. All of this endless and unwanted maintenance should be gotten out of my way. Why can't this be done automatically and not when I am eager to use the computer. I am just lucky I have a working linux machine that I can use to type all of this on while I battle with my Windows machine. It has been over 30 minutes since I turned my machine on and I am still not able to use it.

I right click on the taskbar (the thing along the bottom of my screen). This brings up a menu from which I can select "Task Manager". It lies and tells me there is nothing running. A link at the bottom offers "More details" and this is what I want. Once I click this I get something useful and it has a tab labeled "Startup". I look at the list and find "Microsoft OneDrive". I click to select it, then a button at the lower right allows me to disable it. As long as I am here, I disable a bunch of other rubbish.

I restart to see if that actually did the trick (and to see if Windows has any other tricks up its sleeve). That seems to have done it, no more nagging from OneDrive.

EOS Utility

Now on Windows, I launch the "EOS Utility" by clicking on an icon in the mess of icons I have on my desktop. This launches and tells me it is "pairing over WiFi/LAN" but goes nowhere. Actually that is a button and when I click it, it tells me it needs to change windows firewall settings (note that this really isn't LAN, the camera is USB). Windows did see the camera when I turned it on again (it had powered off while I was fighting to get Windows booted). At any event, the EOS Utility goes nowhere and never does seem to find my camera. This used to work. I wonder if the EOS Utility has automatically updated itself to some version that no longer supports USB connections and/or my camera.

The camera does have an "auto power off" setting that I use the menu to turn off. Someone suggests that the EOS utility has some kind of launcher that then decides to run either the USB version or the LAN version (and clearly I am getting the LAN version if this story is true).

So, let's try updating the EOS utility. I find 3.10.20 on the nk.canon site and download it. I see 3.13.30 on the Thailand site. This give me an .exe file on download. I click to run it, but it fails telling me it needs administrator privileges to run (it ought to be able to ask me to give them to it, but apparently Canon isn't smart enough to arrange that).

The downloaded file are apparently in "This PC/Downloads" They say I can click on the file and select "run as administrator", but nothing like that seems to work for me. (I see no such menu offering). Another claim is that I can use the start menu along with ctrl+shift and run things as the administrator. I change users and login as "root", which I have set up as an administrator on my machine. But now "This PC/Downloads" does not show me the stuff I downloaded as "Tom". This is pretty broken. On top of that, when I go to Users/Tom I get told I don't have permission to view those files. What? As the administrator?? So back I go to user tom, I navigate using "file explorer" to my downloads folder, find the zip file. unzip it, then select the exe and now get the "run as administrator" option in a menu. I think I have it made, but it still complains when I run it that "installation program requires administrator privileges". What?

Now another approach. As user Tom, I right click the start menu, and select "Power shell (administrator)". Then I use "cd" to navigate to Users/Tom/Downloads and find the installer exe (euw2.14.20a-updater.exe). I run this. It unzips, and gives me the same error about not being able to install without administrator priveleges). This gives me another idea. I log out as Tom and back in as Root (my administrator user). Once again, I right click the start menu to launch an administrator power shell. (Maybe just launching a power shell would suffice since I am the administrator). Now I navigate to Users/Tom/Downloads, search for the file I want using the pattern "euw*" and find the exe I already unzipped. I run it and voila! I am running the installer and it says it will install "EOS Utility 2". It finishes, and I see messages about "already installed", which worries me. It gives no helpful messages about where it installed it.

My old EOS Utility shortcut (from 2012) now no longer works (for root), which is good in a sense because whatever it ran didn't work anyway. The old shortcut does work for Tom and is still running the useless 32 bit EOS utility. My job now is to find the new utility that I think I just installed.

The old thing is in "c:/Program Files (x86)/Canon/EOS Utility" and shows dates from 2015 and 2017. There is no new thing anywhere that I can find. I expected the new thing in c:/Program Files" -- but there is no Canon subdirectory there.

But this is interesting. I right click start, look at apps and features (with the intent of finding and deleting the old EOS utility (which is still a good idea)) and I find Canon Utilities EOS Utility 2 with a 2020 date). (While fumbling around with the start menu, I even find mention of an EOS Utility 3). Aha! The start menu has Canon Utilities with a submenu, and under there is EOS Utility 2. This serves to start it. And it seems to work. It finds my Canon 1D III and brings up a GUI. I select "live view shoot" and get a display. And there I am, only 3 hours after starting this business thinking that I would just turn on my computer, launch the EOS utility and take photos.

There is an EOS Utility 3, but the only Canon 1D in the supported camera list is the 1D X, so my guess is that I will need to stick with the EOS Utility 2 for my camera, which is fine since it seems to work. I sort of anticipate the day when Windows will move along to some newer version, this software will no longer work, and Canon will no longer see any reason to support it. Something to lay awake worrying about I suppose. Note that the Canon 1Ds and my Canon 5D mark ii are also not on the supported list for EOS Utility 3.

I do manage to get EOS Utility 2 pinned to my start menu as well as on my taskbar. I cannot figure out how to get it as a desktop shortcut, nor can I figure out where it is installed on my disk (thus far anyway).

This is turning into an ugly story of me dealing with Windows. I decided to clean up this ever growing cloud of shortcuts on my desktop. I can create folders and move shortcuts into them. I can move shortcuts or folders into my start menu (which is a great place for them).

I just got an "out of memory" error when trying to move a shortcut into a fresh new folder. This is ridiculous as I have plenty of disk space and a generous amount of ram. Apparently the error is bogus and misleading. There is some hidden/secret directory called c:/Users/Public/Public Desktop. As near as I can tell the intent here is for all users to share the shortcuts in this folder. Along with that, I was logged in as both Tom and Root since I had been trying various things while figuring out how to get the EOS utility installed. I decide to just bite the bullet and reboot. Windows has more updates for me, so this is going to take a while.

And a side note. For xfce under linux, shortcuts are managed in the directory /u1/home/tom/.local/share/applications. Take a look at gtopo.desktop I don't know yet about stuff on the "taskbar".

Now back to Windows and trying to clean up my desktop. When I go to c:/Users/Public/Public Desktop, select one of my shortcuts, and then select delete from the menu, it locks up showing 0 percent progress. Why should there be progress on a deletion, just delete it! I try using an administrator power shell to go into the Public Desktop directory, but it is hidden in some way that makes that impossible.

A search leads me to this amazingly complex process:

-- run powershell as a full admin

$acl = Get-ACL “C:\Users\Public\Desktop”
$rule=new-object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule (“everyone”,”FullControl”, “ContainerInherit,ObjectInherit”, “None”, “Allow”)
$acl.SetAccessRule($rule)
Set-ACL “C:\Users\Public\Desktop” $acl

Folders in the Start Menu?

Now for the next trick -- adding folders to the start menu. This does not seem to be directly supported, but these postings seems to explain ways to do it.

• Shortcut aggregation
• Adding Files and folders to the Windows 10 start menu

The start menu is configured via files in:

C:/ProgramData/Microsoft/Windows/Start Menu/Programs

For example, I can scroll down and find each and every Turbo Tax I have ever installed. And this is nice because I can just delete all those shortcuts and forget about that mess. However things are organized under Manufacturers, so where I once had a shortcut labeled "GeForce Experience", I now need to look under Nividia and I find it there, should I ever need it. Shortcuts to file explorer paths and individual files don't appear there, just applications.

So, in truth, I don't want all of these shortcuts! I can scroll down the list and find them alphabetically, or use the windows search to find the harder things. I just want start menu shortcuts for the handful of things I use a lot. And the things I use a whole lot, I put shortcuts on the taskbar.

So forget the idea about having folders of pinned shorcuts.

Now I have everything gone except the trash can. To get rid of it, I right click on the desktop (background). This gives a menu, and I select personalize. Go to themes and click on "Desktop icon settings" on the right. Uncheck "recycle bin".

Desktop background

To set an image of my own as the desktop wallpaper, use file explorer to locate the image, right click on it and select "set as desktop background".

My monitor is a Dell 2413 with 1920 by 1200 pixels. This is not the usual 16x9 aspect ratio, but instead is 16x10. I find an image using lightroom, make some adjustments to it, then copy it to /Users/Tom/Backgrounds -- and do as above after the copy, and voila!