Getting to see the analog clock in Windows 10/11

The analogue clock is supposedly no more in Windows 11, and probably also in Windows 10: Only the clock app icon has an analogue face, but that's kinda it for this app.

Downloading an app from Microsoft Store is one option. Installing Linux over Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to run something like xclock is yet another option, but would take plenty of storage and a lot of additional RAM memory.

And what if Microsoft Store cannot be accessed for whatever reason, and Linux-over-WSL cannot be installed? Parts of Linux are not always easy for beginners either. Or what if one doesn't want to download an app, in pursuit of a built-in solution native to Windows?

So, there is a thing called the Date and Time Control Panel applet, which does have an analog clock. It has no dark theme, unfortunately.

Over the years, this applet has been reworked a few times, but it has always shown an analog clock since Windows 95. Windows 3.1 and earlier had a dedicated clock program. Between Windows 95 and Windows XP, the applet could usually be accessed by double-clicking the clock in the taskbar.

Windows Vista introduced a very nice analog clock widget, which I think carried over to Windows 7. I don't know if this widget was ever present in Windows 8/8.1.

The applet's filename is timedate.cpl, and it's located in the System32 folder, the typical address being

C:\Windows\System32\timedate.cpl

Getting to access it, or creating a shortcut to it depends on whether one has the necessary access privileges. On most computers at the private/consumer end, this is possible. In business and enterprise settings, a Windows system may be variously restricted per policies set or deployed by the company IT department, usually through group policy.

Open Control Panel, open Date and Time, and the analog clock is there.

For quick access, right-click on the Date and Time item, and click on Create shortcut. This will create a shortcut to the applet on the Windows desktop. The shortcut can then be renamed to whatever you like: "Analog clock", "Date and Time", or something else.

The desktop shortcut can then be copied to the Start menu, but cannot be moved there via drag-and-drop, and cannot be moved or pinned to the taskbar either.

The desktop shortcut can be copied to several locations.

To find out what those are, it's useful to investigate the locations of some of the Start menu shortcuts. Right-click on several to find out which of their context menus offer the Open file location command. This applies to shortcuts of non-UWP apps. Clicking on this command will open the folder where the shortcut is located at.

One of the more common locations is

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

— but copying a shortcut there may require User Account Control (UAC) confirmation.

Copying the shortcut to the Programs folder in the local user profile is more useful, as it has fewer restrictions, and is visible in the All apps section of the logged-on user's Start menu:

C:\Users\yourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Changes made in either folder will reflect in the All apps section of the Start menu. From there, one can right-click on the shortcut to pin it to Start from the context menu.

Finding drivers for obscure devices on Windows 10. A short walkthrough.

This post goes back to "Obscure ways to get and old hp printer driver for Windows XP".

Long story short, aka the quick-and-dirty version:

If a computer or notebook with Windows 10 has an 'unknown device' with this ID:

ACPI\CPL0002\2&DABA3FF&2

Then the Windows Update Catalog does offer a driver for it.

But the following conditions must be met:

• Windows Update is unable to find drivers for this device;
• the maker of your PC does not have drivers available for your model of notebook pertaining to this device. If the maker of your computer does actually provides a driver for this device on the particular make and model of your computer, use that driver and no other;
• you might not be able to tell the make and model of your laptop, because the labels at the bottom of the computer have faded, and so, it's hard to find the correct driver from the PC maker's official website.
• the non-availability of the driver can coincide with one or both following possiblities:
  • Your notebook is no longer supported by the manufacturer; and/or
  • the maker of your PC is not a big-name outfit that is able to reliably provide drivers on its own for this device.
    (I've decided against naming individual PC makers, as some people would specify a search prepending the particular PC makers' names with negative operators, so excluding their name[s] to get a more precise result.)

If one ore more of these conditions are met, go to the Windows Update Catalog, and search using the CPL0002 device ID. (search link here)

In this case, the device ID was the only useful piece of information, and so, searching by device ID is more likely to yield results matching the hardware installed. Searching using the name or make/model of this device may yield incompatible results.

The result is "Compal Embedded System Control" version 1.0.0.4 as 'Other hardware' (listed like that as of 2021).

I picked the latest version, dated 26.11.2015, and clicked on the Download button.

The download is a .cab file that must be extracted with an extractor program of your choice into a separate folder. I used 7-Zip to do that.

Before installing:
• have Device Manager open, to see if there are any changes during install.
• create screenshots of all listed System devices in Device Manager. This ought to help in comparing changes.
• create a system restore point. You will need this, if and when things go wrong.

The extracted contents of the .cab package include four files, among them ENFC.inf. Right-click on that, and click Install.

The Device Manager should display a change, and the identified device should be listed. Other newly-recognised devices may also be listed. Worked for me.

After that, power management in a specific old notebook I have, improved, and the fan began blowing out less hot air. At least it seemed to me like that.

Do keep in mind, that I also did a large number of optimisations in the system to switch off most unnecessary background tasks, which certainly helped to reduce the size of the system commit, and the strain on system RAM and the hard drive.

I also reduced the maximum state of the CPU from 100% to 90% in advanced power management options. It's one of those nice things to have in Windows 10.

As a coda, I cannot recommend this process for upgrading the drivers of all devices inside, or connected to a computer. Because if things work normally, one should not update the drivers like this at all. Usually, and on most computers, Windows Update is good enough anyway at finding the right driver for you. In this very particular case and device, I see Windows Update as having missed it.

How to prevent gwx.exe from running

This affects Windows 7, Windows 8.x, and this post is only about the "Get Windows 10" nag message seen in the taskbar notification area.

04.04.2016 Update: Before even of this post, there have been more sophisticated efforts to keep Windows 10 from automatically installing itself on computers with Windows 7 and 8.x. Never10 is the latest effort. Computerworld article here.

• This post assumes, that the user already knows how to change file permissions and attributes.
• I wrote it from memory, because I used the below method on someone else's computer that had Windows 7 in it.

I won't vouch, that following the below steps will prevent drive-by installs of Windows 10, but in a computer I worked on, the nagging stopped.

There are also several updates that should be hidden, and which one would be smart not to install. Or, if they're there, to uninstall. Upon returning the computer, I instructed the user only to install critical updates from Windows Update, but not recommended updates.

* As Administrator or a user with admin rights, go to the location where gwx.exe is at;
* Go to its file properties and take ownership of the file. The default owner is TRUSTEDINSTALLER
* After that, change file permissions for all users so, that only you or the administrator can only read it.
* Repeat that with other executables in the same folder.

Writing to the file(s) should thus be forbidden, and also deleting it (them).

You or a designated administrator account should be the only ones who can change the file's attributes. I don't know, if prohibiting file attribute changes also affects changing whether rights to the file can be modified in the future.

In total, this should mean, that the file can't be executed and its attributes can't be changed by other users.

I also remember doing some changes at Windows Scheduler as to whether gwx.exe should run, and I remember disabling some of these items, too.

And then restart the computer. After that, the "Get Windows 10" notification did not appear anymore. #worksforme