A thermal pad for my laptop

I saw a video from LTT how to improve the performance of a M1 MacBook Air with some thermal pad. The aluminium body helps to dissipate the heat. I thought: “well, my Yoga has an aluminium body!”.

So, I put a piece on the heat pipes (and squished them a little bit between) and a bigger one on top of everything, both 1 mm thick.

Cinebench R23 was before around 3000 pts., now the 30 min test was 3366 pts.


I replaced the grinding fans with a new cooling unit from China in 2023. Performance seems to be similiar and I tried some new thermal pad ideas.

The old thermal compount might be a bit dry now or I used too much. Cinebench R23 is around 2900 points.

1mm Pads from ARCTIC

New Intel UHD 620 driver for Lenovo Yoga 720-13

So Lenovo doesn’t release new drivers for my 81C3, so I tried (and failed) to install something directly from Intel. After some adventures with two others, I reverted back to the 2018 driver (OpenCL apps crashed, like the ones from Affinity).

Now I’ve found something newer that runs. You need to download the driver for a ThinkPad, like that one: https://support.lenovo.com/de/en/downloads/ds502320/

It’s not supported to install, but you can extract it. Use the Device Manager to update. Works fine and you can use the Intel Control Center and the new one from the store.

Remove „Share with Skype“ from the context menu

Many apps bloat the right click context menu. One of which is Skype with it’s Share feature. I don’t need that, so here’s the reg keys to remove:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes*\shell\ShareWithSkype]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PackagedCom\Package\Microsoft.SkypeApp_15.63.43.0_x86__kzf8qxf38zg5c\Server\1]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PackagedCom\Package\Microsoft.SkypeApp_15.63.43.0_x86__kzf8qxf38zg5c\Class{776DBC8D-7347-478C-8D71-791E12EF49D8}]

Just put this in a .reg file

Disable Windows Search webresults

Up from Windows 10 2004 this should deactivate the websearch if the useless Windows Search can’t find your files.

  • Regedit
  • Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
  • DWORD (32bit) DISABLESEARCHBOXSUGGESTIONS = 1
  • Restart Explorer or reboot

Smaller touchkeyboard Windows 10

In my opinion, the Windows 10 touch-keyboard is always too large. To make it smaller do this:

  • Open regedit
  • Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ and create a Key (Schlüsse) called “Scaling”.
  • Within, create a string (Zeichenkette) “MonitorSize”
  • Set the MonitorSize to a Value (I go for 15 on a 13” FullHD Laptop)
  • Crash explorer with task manager and start explorer again (or reboot)
  • Play with the value, higher = smaller

Source

Lenovo Yoga Mode Control

The Yoga notebooks are equipped with a tool called Yoga Mode Control (YMC.exe). It’s always running and checks the position of the notebook.

If you rotate the device, it corrects the display, tablet, keyboard and maybe even audio settings. Many times, it had a very high CPU load depending on your system / windows or driver version. It’s sometimes bundled with the „Energy Manager Driver“ but can be downloaded directly.

Watch out! After updating Windows, it sometimes reverts back to another version of YMC. You need to replace it yourself in C:\Windows\System32\

This is my guide for 2020:

  • 2.0.0.9 = broken (doesn’t work at all)
  • 2.0.1.4 = works, but buggy with heavy CPU load
  • 3.0.0.6 = perfectly fine!

And here is the download link to the current version: https://support.lenovo.com/in/en/downloads/DS504952

Open command window here as administrator

I had to start tools with elevated rights today from different folders. To save some time I added this registry settings to „Open command window here as administrator“ instead of navigating with cd and pushd all day long, brilliant!

There are many sites with how to do it, but this one gives you the reg-files to simply activate it (tested on Windows Server 2016)
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/59686-open-command-window-here-administrator-add-windows-10-a.html


After I wrote this, I figured out that it’s easy to do that from the menu… 🤦

Fix Mobile Hotspot

So I wanted to mirror my Phone screen via miracast on my Windows 10 Laptop. After installing the additional Windows Feature, it didn’t work. So let’s start troubleshooting!

After some Google magic, I assumed that Mobile Hotspot needs to work. But of course it didn’t.

I downloaded the newest Wifi driver from the Intel site, uninstalled the current Windows one and installed the new Intel. Well to be honest I changed between 4 different drivers on my system but the uninstall part seems to be important. Don’t forget to reboot. I don’t know if that is still needed but with an SSD who cares?

Now lets check netsh:

netsh wlan show drivers

The last line looks promising!

Unterstützte drahtlose Anzeige: Ja (Grafiktreiber: Ja, Wi-Fi-Treiber: Ja)

It still didn’t work, so I tried this trick from Andre for Directly: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/mobile-hotspot-no-longer-working-intel-ac-8260/eee92061-fefe-41e9-b9a7-ed94ad0d5a82

  1. Press Windows key + X
    Click Device Manager
    Expand Network adapters
    Right click then uninstall all virtual adapters
  2. Open Start then type: regedit
    Right click Regedit then click Run as administrator
    Navigate to the following registry key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WlanSvc\Parameters\HostedNetworkSettings\
    Delete the following key: HostedNetworkSettings
  3. Restart then try again.

My hotspot worked again! 🙂

After disabling Mobile Hotspot and both phone and notebook on the same network, I could choose my notebook for miracast! I had to activate the PIN setting on the Laptop or id wouldn’t connect.

And now let’s be honest. It worked once, video has low quality. You would only use that for PowerPoint 😉

Update!

18.06.2021: Over the time, Microsoft installed a new WiFi driver without Hotspot-Support. So again, download the newest Intel Driver directly: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/30434/Windows-10-Wi-Fi-Drivers-for-Intel-Wireless-Adapters

AppGestures for Firefox

So I replaced my Wacom Bamboo with an Intuos Pen&Touch small.
To be honest they are so similiar, the only thing that changed is the design and the name.
The good news, you can use the newest Intuos Drivers!

Update!
Using keystrokes for pan has some weird behaviours with pages that support left or right. I change it to shift-scrollwheel:

<PanLeft type="map">
	<modifiers type="string">shift</modifiers>
	<input type="string">scrollwheelup</input>
	<amount type="double">1</amount>
	<amountmultiplier type="double">2</amountmultiplier>
	<granularity type="double">1</granularity>
</PanLeft>
<PanRight type="map">
	<modifiers type="string">shift</modifiers>
	<input type="string">scrollwheeldown</input>
	<amount type="double">1</amount>
	<amountmultiplier type="double">2</amountmultiplier>
	<granularity type="double">1</granularity>
</PanRight>

First thing that annoyed me: „Paning“ with two fingers in Firefox triggers Left / Right Arrow keys much too fast! So I added more „amount“ to the AppGestures.xml. As I’m doing this, why not change the Zoom-amount from 1 to 5.

<ArrayElement type="map">
	<displayname>Mozilla Firefox</displayname>
	<identifier type="string">firefox</identifier>
	<PanLeft type="map">
		<keystroke type="kestring"><![CDATA[&left;]]></keystroke>
		<amount type="double">300</amount>
		<amountmultiplier type="double">1</amountmultiplier>
	</PanLeft>
	<PanRight type="map">
		<keystroke type="kestring"><![CDATA[&right;]]></keystroke>
		<amount type="double">300</amount>
		<amountmultiplier type="double">1</amountmultiplier>
	</PanRight>
	<ZoomIn type="map">
		<modifiers type="string">control</modifiers>
		<input type="string">scrollwheelup</input>
		<amount type="double">5</amount>
		<amountmultiplier type="double">10</amountmultiplier>
		<granularity type="double">1</granularity>
	</ZoomIn>
	<ZoomOut type="map">
		<modifiers type="string">control</modifiers>
		<input type="string">scrollwheeldown</input>
		<amount type="double">5</amount>
		<amountmultiplier type="double">10</amountmultiplier>
		<granularity type="double">1</granularity>
	</ZoomOut>
	<ScrollUp type="map">
		<input type="string">scrollwheelup</input>
		<amount type="double">1</amount>
		<amountmultiplier type="double">2</amountmultiplier>
		<granularity type="double">1</granularity>
	</ScrollUp>
	<ScrollDown type="map">
		<input type="string">scrollwheeldown</input>
		<amount type="double">1</amount>
		<amountmultiplier type="double">2</amountmultiplier>
		<granularity type="double">1</granularity>
	</ScrollDown>
</ArrayElement>

Wacom Tablet300 „amount“ (x-axis)
Intuos Pen&Touch small2 cm
Intuos Pro M3 cm
This is very roughly measured