Windows 11 HDR not working switches off automatically

Do you want to use HDR on Windows 11? Go to System => Display and switch on Use HDR.

What if HDR doesn’t work on Windows?

It doesn’t work if you don’t have an HDR supported monitor or an HDR compatible graphics card on your computer. You also need a compatible cable. Windows 11 just switches off HDR again when it doesn’t work. It would be very handy if Windows would give a reason why it doesn’t work!

In my case the refresh rate was set to high! It was on 60 Hz, but my mini Displayport to HDMI cable only supports 30 Hz on a 3840 x 2160 resolution monitor. Switching back to 30 Hz does the trick and now HDR works again. Also a new cable would help!

Windows 11 HDR

UPDATE: I have a new cable which supports 8k and 60 Hz.
I can now watch 60 Hz 59.94 Hz content on 3840×2160. If the Use HDR switch switches back to off again on Windows try to reboot Windows. In my case Windows starts up with HDR turned on and it sets the output from 60 Hz to 59.94 Hz.

 

Windows 11 monitor turns black after full screen

When switching an application to full screen the monitor turns black for a couple of seconds. Reinstalling drivers and resetting the BenQ monitor didn’t help.

The solution was to change the refresh rate of the monitor from 59.94 Hz to 30 Hz. To do in Windows 11 go to Settings => System => Display => Advanced Display and switch “Choose a refresh rate” to 30 Hz.

UPDATE: the used cable doesn’t support 59.94 Hz or 60 Hz, so switching back to 30 Hz did the trick.

Advanced Display

Google Chrome update error code 3 0x80080005

To update Google Chrome you go to: Settings => About Chrome. Google Chrome than checks if there is a new version available.

Recently I got this error: Update check failed to start – error code 3: 0x80080005. Reinstalling Google Chrome didn’t work.

It turns out it has to do with the Google Update Service that Google is running in the background on Windows 11 (see Services: run services.msc or just type services in Windows 11). This doesn’t get uninstalled if you also have Google Chrome Dev. After reinstalling both browsers Chrome and Chrome Dev the Google Update Service worked again.

About Google Chrome

 

Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file.

Windows 11 has a bug when it comes to installing windows features.

This happened several times after a fresh install of Windows 11. Say you have some windows open, say Firefox and MySQL Workbench. Than you want to install IIS on your machine, to do this you can search for: “turn windows features on or off” and click on “Internet Information Services” and the desired options. After a restart you will get this error message when you want to open Firefox again:

Windows Error Message

Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.

The administrator user has lost all it’s user rights on the programs that were open while installing IIS. So make sure to close all apps before installing windows features!

If you get this error you can reapply the admin user rights on the program. Go to: C:\Program Files and right click on Mozilla Firefox => Properties => Security => Advanced => Add
Here you select your principal (the administrator user account) and give it full control.

Windows permissions

 

Outlook invalid grant

If you use Outlook in WP Mail SMTP and get this error:

Mailer: Outlook invalid_grant: AADSTS70000

It’s because the authorization expired. To make it work again go to WP Mail SMTP => Settings.

Under the 365/Outlook settings you find the Authorization setting. Click on: “Remove OAuth Connection”.

Than authorize the same connection again.

Can’t find my YouTube Live Stream from New York by searching

This live stream from New York is impossible to find with YouTube search:

The title of the stream is: LIVE: stream from 10th Ave, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, Manhattan, New York on Friday, March 3, 2023

If I use parts of the title to search, for example: live stream from midtown, manhattan nothing comes up!

I get results from streams which are not even live! The live stream search results are: Times Square in 4k, Winter Village SkateCam, 4k New York City walk tour, New York harbor cam, Brooklyn Bridge cam, Plane Spotting JFK.  That’s not much for a big city like New York.

If you filter the results for “live” and “today” you get the actual live streams (including the above one), but you would expect that if you search for “live streams from New York”, you would get actual live streams from New York, but no. What’s the point of live streaming if your stream is impossible to find?

UPDATE: YouTubeCreators on Twitter gave me this link: Why your channel or video isn’t in YouTube search results. This new stream basically check’s everything to not be ranked high on YouTube:

  1. Your handle or channel name is commonly used in video titles.
  2. You have a common channel name.
  3. Your YouTube channel is new.

I have to give it a couple of days and come up with a better channel name!

Windows 10 wrong display resolution

Normally you can change your display resolution in Windows 10 this way: go to settings => System => Display and under Scale and layout you change the Display resolution.

I couldn’t find my correct resolution. Windows 10 only allowed me to select 1920×1080 as the biggest option.

The main solution you can find on the internet is to update your drivers and/or uninstall your drivers in Device Manager so Windows automatically installs them again.

After reinstalling AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 drivers and AMD Software Pro Edition a couple of times. I still couldn’t select a higher resolution so I messed with a lot of settings AMD Software Pro offers.

I also installed the latest monitor drivers from the BENQ website.

I also changed my BIOS settings for my Video Display so it uses the Intel UHD Graphics 630 first instead of the AMD video cart. DON’T DO THAT, after changing this I couldn’t get back into BIOS settings. It was almost impossible to get the setting back in default mode.

It’s the cable stupid!

It turned out I used the wrong HDMi cable! I have two Cable Matters cables for my two monitors and they look exactly the same, but the newer one supports 4k monitors, and the other doesn’t.

Cable Matters

So if you get stuck with the same problem, check your cable specs!

Cable Matters

Now I know. I can finally enjoy my 3840×2160 resolution with 150% scaling.

Adobe InDesign how to add a linked Excel table spreadsheet

In InDesign you can create links to files or Excel spreadsheets. This way if you change the content in Excel you can update the content in InDesign easily by clicking on the modified icon in the Update Panel.

For this to work you have to change a setting in your new document. Go to: Edit => Preferences => File Handling and select the setting:

  • Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files

InDesign File Handling

To add the table go to File => Place…

InDesign Place

Make sure to NOT select “Replace selected item”, because if you select this the link will not always work, but DO select “Show Import Options” so:

InDesign Place Table Excel

The default import options can be used:

InDesign Microsoft Excel Import Options

Make sure to position the table with the menu on top:

InDesign Position

Now if you change the numbers in Excel you just click on the modified button in the Links Panel:

InDesign Modified

How to opt out of dotnet telemetry

By default .NET core collects telemetry when you use it. Telemetry data should be an opt-in process and not ON by default. How do you disable it?

The DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT environment variable must be set to 1 or true.

In Windows you can do this by running in the command prompt:

set DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1

You can check if the environment variables by running “set” in the command prompt.