From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

So, you may know that I'm a regular in comp.os.linux.advocacy, and had
been fairly outspokenly critical of Win11, since switching from it to
Linux on my self-assembled desktop I bought the parts for in 2021.
Well, it's interesting, a few months ago, I purchased a second NVMe
drive for the computer, intending to try dual-booting Win11 24H2 to
evaluate it compared to what I'd last seen with 23H2 in 2023. This
never happened, because when I booted the media, 24H2's installer had forgotten my motherboard and needed additional media to discover it and install 24H2 on my hardware, and I just said screw it and made the new
drive a second Linux drive. But, recently, I had a fiasco where I
pirated an episode of "South Park" at the urging of someone on IRC, and
that caused my NVIDIA-based GPU to start putting a blurry effect on the
image on my TV screen as as second monitor. So, to cut my losses, I
purchased an AMD-based GPU, and when I tried to swap them out and
install it, it being summer in this hemisphere, and I didn't take off my
shirt or tie my very long hair back, I was sweating, and beads of sweat dripped onto my motherboard. Not good. When I put everything back
together, the power button did nothing. Oh shit. Rather than get
depressed, though, I used my phone to visit Amazon to see what I could
get cheap, and sure enough there was a mini PC from China, with an offer
to pay in installments, and it looked usable.

My intention was to see how terrible Win11 was on it, and replace that
with Linux, but to my surprise, Win11 24H2 has actually alleviated my
beef with the modern Windows platform! I do miss Linux in some ways, to
be sure, but I would miss this if I deleted it too, and moreover it's
more practical for my daily use. So, I decided to keep it. And thus I
am making a return to this NG. Hello! :)
--
Joel W. Crump

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2025-08-27, Joel W. Crump <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote:

My intention was to see how terrible Win11 was on it, and replace that
with Linux, but to my surprise, Win11 24H2 has actually alleviated my
beef with the modern Windows platform! I do miss Linux in some ways, to
be sure, but I would miss this if I deleted it too, and moreover it's
more practical for my daily use. So, I decided to keep it. And thus I
am making a return to this NG. Hello! :)

May I suggest that you turn on WSL2 so you can have Linux, too?
The default is Ubuntu, but I run Fedora on mine, both at home and at
work. From your bash shell, you can run lots of GUI Linux programs,
whose windows pop up on your Windows desktop. I much prefer running the
"real" Perl on the Linux side instead of dealing with Strawberry Perl
on the Windows side.
--
Lars
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Tue, 8/26/2025 8:41 PM, Joel W. Crump wrote:

So, you may know that I'm a regular in comp.os.linux.advocacy, and had been fairly outspokenly critical of Win11, since switching from it to Linux on my self-assembled desktop I bought the parts for in 2021. Well, it's interesting, a few months ago, I purchased a second NVMe drive for the computer, intending to try dual-booting Win11 24H2 to evaluate it compared to what I'd last seen with 23H2 in 2023.-a This never happened, because when I booted the media, 24H2's installer had forgotten my motherboard and needed additional media to discover it and install 24H2 on my hardware, and I just said screw it and made the new drive a second Linux drive.-a But, recently, I had a fiasco where I pirated an episode of "South Park" at the urging of someone on IRC, and that caused my NVIDIA-based GPU to start putting a blurry effect on the image on my TV screen as as second monitor.-a So, to cut my losses, I purchased an AMD-based GPU, and when I tried to swap them out and install it, it
being summer in this hemisphere, and I didn't take off my shirt or tie my very long hair back, I was sweating, and beads of sweat dripped onto my motherboard.-a Not good.-a When I put everything back together, the power button did nothing.-a Oh shit.-a Rather than get depressed, though, I used my phone to visit Amazon to see what I could get cheap, and sure enough there was a mini PC from China, with an offer to pay in installments, and it looked usable.

My intention was to see how terrible Win11 was on it, and replace that with Linux, but to my surprise, Win11 24H2 has actually alleviated my beef with the modern Windows platform!-a I do miss Linux in some ways, to be sure, but I would miss this if I deleted it too, and moreover it's more practical for my daily use.-a So, I decided to keep it.-a And thus I am making a return to this NG.-a Hello! :)

For your hardware detection, very little is required to bring up a Windows OS. Storage has to work, to do an install, and the storage follows standards, and there should not be any "quirks" to speak of. The network does not have to work,
and I've had to use an ASIX network adapter (for both Windows and Linux), when the onboard NIC from RealTek was "too new". But initially, you can do a bringup on a Windows PC, without a LAN.

You don't particularly need a video driver either. The Microsoft Basic Display Adapter
driver, that is the "VESA" driver for Windows, it accesses the frame buffer at the
well-known address, and it runs the screen at a fixed (and low resolution) standard.
This is sufficient during bringup, to be able to visually work with the new installation.
This would be weaker than a Nouveau driver.

For the install attempt to be failing like that, suggests a storage issue. As the CPU
and RAM are unlikely to have been disturbed while the install work was going on.

On slightly older stock, one of the NVMe stops working if you add
too many PCI Express cards. One of my PCs, you might have to move the video card, to get both NVMe working at once. The user manual for your board, should have a few comments about any "combination interactions".

*******

Have you tried the original PC since the incident ?

Maybe it is working again, after drying out.

There are definitely a few signals on a motherboard, that are sensitive to handling, but a lot of them, after the board dries out, it might work.

*******

Yes, the mini PC would work, but on occasion it might be lacking on speed.
This is a typical choice for the processor in those.

Processor Number N150
4C 4T
Max Turbo 3.6 GHz
Cache 6MB Cache
Processor Base Power 6 W
Launch Date Q1'25
Max Memory Size 16 GB
Memory Types DDR4-3200, DDR5-4800 (only the one socket type selected per board)
Memory Channels 1 (not dual channel, could be two sockets on one channel)

The "ZIP - English" package here, will give a portable EXE for displaying details
on the hardware on the mini-PC.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Paul

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 27/08/2025 01:41, Joel W. Crump wrote:

So, I decided to keep it.-a And thus I am making a return to this NG. Hello! Efya

Joel, you are warmly welcomed. Windows has always aimed to be as stable
and user-friendly as possible. It's people who need something to
complain about :).

I don't know much about Linux, though I have booted up a live flash
drive once or twice to see what it's all about. I couldn't do much on
it, as I spend most of my time working on Visual Studio 2022 with SSIS
and Oracle SQL for a large bank in London. VS Code doesn't offer much
for SSIS, so you need Visual Studio running on Windows 10/11. Oracle
does run on Linux, but I haven't tried doing anything meaningful on it.

You need to adjust the line width of your posts in your newsreader
because they're too long for my liking. 72 characters is the maximum you should set.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 8/26/2025 10:27 PM, Lars Poulsen wrote:

My intention was to see how terrible Win11 was on it, and replace that
with Linux, but to my surprise, Win11 24H2 has actually alleviated my
beef with the modern Windows platform! I do miss Linux in some ways, to
be sure, but I would miss this if I deleted it too, and moreover it's
more practical for my daily use. So, I decided to keep it. And thus I
am making a return to this NG. Hello! :)

May I suggest that you turn on WSL2 so you can have Linux, too?
The default is Ubuntu, but I run Fedora on mine, both at home and at
work. From your bash shell, you can run lots of GUI Linux programs,
whose windows pop up on your Windows desktop. I much prefer running the "real" Perl on the Linux side instead of dealing with Strawberry Perl
on the Windows side.

I've used it once before, to test it out, it's pretty cool but would be
a hit on resources.
--
Joel W. Crump
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Jack wrote:

You need to adjust the line width of your posts in your newsreader
because they're too long for my liking. 72 characters is the maximum you should set.

Joel's message is split into lines of no more than 72 characters, but is
using "format=flowed" so it is *your* client that's stitching them back
into long lines, limited by your actual window width ...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 8/27/2025 3:07 AM, Paul wrote:

On Tue, 8/26/2025 8:41 PM, Joel W. Crump wrote:

So, you may know that I'm a regular in comp.os.linux.advocacy, and had been fairly outspokenly critical of Win11, since switching from it to Linux on my self-assembled desktop I bought the parts for in 2021. Well, it's interesting, a few months ago, I purchased a second NVMe drive for the computer, intending to try dual-booting Win11 24H2 to evaluate it compared to what I'd last seen with 23H2 in 2023.-a This never happened, because when I booted the media, 24H2's installer had forgotten my motherboard and needed additional media to discover it and install 24H2 on my hardware, and I just said screw it and made the new drive a second Linux drive.-a But, recently, I had a fiasco where I pirated an episode of "South Park" at the urging of someone on IRC, and that caused my NVIDIA-based GPU to start putting a blurry effect on the image on my TV screen as as second monitor.-a So, to cut my losses, I purchased an AMD-based GPU, and when I tried to swap them out and install it, it
being summer in this hemisphere, and I didn't take off my shirt or tie my very long hair back, I was sweating, and beads of sweat dripped onto my motherboard.-a Not good.-a When I put everything back together, the power button did nothing.-a Oh shit.-a Rather than get depressed, though, I used my phone to visit Amazon to see what I could get cheap, and sure enough there was a mini PC from China, with an offer to pay in installments, and it looked usable.

My intention was to see how terrible Win11 was on it, and replace that with Linux, but to my surprise, Win11 24H2 has actually alleviated my beef with the modern Windows platform!-a I do miss Linux in some ways, to be sure, but I would miss this if I deleted it too, and moreover it's more practical for my daily use.-a So, I decided to keep it.-a And thus I am making a return to this NG.-a Hello! :)

For your hardware detection, very little is required to bring up a Windows OS.
Storage has to work, to do an install, and the storage follows standards, and there should not be any "quirks" to speak of. The network does not have to work,
and I've had to use an ASIX network adapter (for both Windows and Linux), when
the onboard NIC from RealTek was "too new". But initially, you can do a bringup
on a Windows PC, without a LAN.

You don't particularly need a video driver either. The Microsoft Basic Display Adapter
driver, that is the "VESA" driver for Windows, it accesses the frame buffer at the
well-known address, and it runs the screen at a fixed (and low resolution) standard.
This is sufficient during bringup, to be able to visually work with the new installation.
This would be weaker than a Nouveau driver.

For the install attempt to be failing like that, suggests a storage issue. As the CPU
and RAM are unlikely to have been disturbed while the install work was going on.

On slightly older stock, one of the NVMe stops working if you add
too many PCI Express cards. One of my PCs, you might have to move the video card, to get both NVMe working at once. The user manual for your board, should
have a few comments about any "combination interactions".

I'm telling you what the 24H2 media told me - it was quite clear. I
knew what it meant. My motherboard was Gigabyte Aorus, I would've had
to make a second media with its drivers.

*******

Have you tried the original PC since the incident ?

Maybe it is working again, after drying out.

There are definitely a few signals on a motherboard, that are sensitive to handling, but a lot of them, after the board dries out, it might work.

I certainly tried a few times, the power button did nothing.

*******

Yes, the mini PC would work, but on occasion it might be lacking on speed. This is a typical choice for the processor in those.

Processor Number N150

That is the one it has.

4C 4T
Max Turbo 3.6 GHz
Cache 6MB Cache
Processor Base Power 6 W
Launch Date Q1'25
Max Memory Size 16 GB
Memory Types DDR4-3200, DDR5-4800 (only the one socket type selected per board)
Memory Channels 1 (not dual channel, could be two sockets on one channel)

The "ZIP - English" package here, will give a portable EXE for displaying details
on the hardware on the mini-PC.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

It's not high-end, but I like it, and I could afford it.
--
Joel W. Crump
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 8/27/2025 9:28 AM, Jack wrote:

So, I decided to keep it.-a And thus I am making a return to this NG.
Hello! Efya

Joel, you are warmly welcomed. Windows has always aimed to be as stable
and user-friendly as possible. It's people who need something to
complain about :).

I don't know much about Linux, though I have booted up a live flash
drive once or twice to see what it's all about. I couldn't do much on
it, as I spend most of my time working on Visual Studio 2022 with SSIS
and Oracle SQL for a large bank in London. VS Code doesn't offer much
for SSIS, so you need Visual Studio running on Windows 10/11. Oracle
does run on Linux, but I haven't tried doing anything meaningful on it.

You need to adjust the line width of your posts in your newsreader
because they're too long for my liking. 72 characters is the maximum you should set.

I don't see a setting to set the line width, I'm using Thunderbird
because I've gotten used to it recently with Linux, instead of using
Forte Agent, though I do also have it but it doesn't work with my NSP,
only Eternal September, which I don't prefer to use.
--
Joel W. Crump
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Jack wrote:

You need to adjust the line width of your posts

If you dislike the way format=flowed shows, you could turn off
displaying it with

mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support=true

in your config editor settings



--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Wed, 27 Aug 2025 09:54:53 -0400, "Joel W. Crump"
<joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm using Thunderbird
because I've gotten used to it recently with Linux, instead of using
Forte Agent, though I do also have it but it doesn't work with my NSP,
only Eternal September, which I don't prefer to use.

Agent should work with every NNTP-based NSP. I use it with Newshosting.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Wed, 27 Aug 2025 09:54:53 -0400, Joel W. Crump wrote:

I don't see a setting to set the line width, I'm using Thunderbird
because I've gotten used to it recently with Linux, instead of using
Forte Agent, though I do also have it but it doesn't work with my NSP,
only Eternal September, which I don't prefer to use.

Just FYI you could have run Agent through Wine.
--
s|b
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 8/27/2025 1:16 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

I'm using Thunderbird
because I've gotten used to it recently with Linux, instead of using
Forte Agent, though I do also have it but it doesn't work with my NSP,
only Eternal September, which I don't prefer to use.

Agent should work with every NNTP-based NSP. I use it with Newshosting.

I did use it previously, don't ask me, I have Agent 8 not 6, but
recently with Agent under Wine and under Win11 it hangs when trying to
connect to Newshosting, I tried to mess with the settings. Eternal
September works fine.
--
Joel W. Crump
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 8/27/2025 3:48 PM, s|b wrote:

I don't see a setting to set the line width, I'm using Thunderbird
because I've gotten used to it recently with Linux, instead of using
Forte Agent, though I do also have it but it doesn't work with my NSP,
only Eternal September, which I don't prefer to use.

Just FYI you could have run Agent through Wine.

I have, yeah. I did regularly not long ago.
--
Joel W. Crump
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Wed, 8/27/2025 9:49 AM, Joel W. Crump wrote:

On 8/27/2025 3:07 AM, Paul wrote:

On Tue, 8/26/2025 8:41 PM, Joel W. Crump wrote:

This never happened, because when I booted the media, 24H2's installer had forgotten
my motherboard and needed additional media to discover it and install 24H2 on my hardware,
and I just said screw it and made the new drive a second Linux drive.-a Historically (at the core of the install process), mostly what is

required, is that a storage driver work, so that the installer
can write to the disk.

Windows has common (and standard) driver items.

mshdc IDE hard drives (this might be the PCI driver, not the I/O space driver of W98)
msahci SATA drive with AHCI enabled <=== a common choice, all machines in room do this
iastorv Intel AHCI/RAID driver (supports both for RAID-ready migration)

The install.wim has around 132 lines in the folder, related to storage.

stornvme \___ Implies two layers to the driver sandwich, will discover one at a time
nvmedisk / BIOS code must support such devices too, for this to be bootable.

Some more specific ones.

percsas2i
percsas3i

Those would be Dell PERC controller cards with SAS drives off them. This are bought
used by home users who feel the need for such stuff. The OS has support for some PERCs.

But the top five I've listed above, is enough to bring up a lot of desktop systems.
And I am referring to "core" requirements, not arcane "we made these requirements up"
requirements.

*******

I try to install Windows 11 on my Optiplex 780 (E8400 processor, Q45 chipset, PCIe slots yes).

On there, it will tell me "your CPU does not support the POPCNT instruction". Let us execute the POPCNT instruction on some immediate data.

POPCNT(0000000000011111) ==> "5"
POPCNT(0111111111111111) ==> "15"

Now, this is a perfectly silly instruction, and nobody actually needs this.
It might have been used historically, for some forms of AI or neural networks. Why in the name of all that is reasonable, would we be running that instruction at
3GHz and waiting eons for the calculation to conclude, would you use that ? Only
Microsoft know for sure. However, Windows 11 is designed to *crash* if you move a
working Win11 install, over to my E8400, plug in, and try and boot. Most subsystems
in windows like that, are "sniff and shut off", but that is not one of them. That
one is "sniff and promptly crash".

You can, in fact, attempt to move the NVMe stick from the mini-PC, to another (non-compliant) computer and run it. The OS has some amount of "hard" RAM requirement.
This has changed recently. I would guess at the moment, where ever you move a W11 boot
disk, it should have 4GB of RAM to avoid trouble. Moving the stick, will make changes
to the stick contents, so such a move is not without side effects. I have done this
by accident, more than once, plugged a disk into the wrong computer, it... boots.
It discovers hardware, it automatically installs drivers, what a mess.

*******

What other things does W11 insist on, which it does not need. It currently
only supports UEFI/GPT, whereas it may have supported MBR boot on the first release (supported two boot methods like W10 did and W10 likely still does).

This means your BIOS on the machine you try to install W11, should be a motherboard that could have

CSM MSDOS partition, legacy BIOS boot support <=== W11, unlikely to like this
UEFI+NotSecureBoot Doesn't need TPM <=== Booted this way (5700G), right now.
UEFI+SecureBoot Needs TPM for Attestation (measures boot files, for security reasons)
The Big Machine across from me, boots this way. I made that one of the
jobs Big Machine would carry out, is testing Secure Boot for me.

When you boot the DVD to do the install, you should select the UEFI boot for that as well.
As the DVD keys off the boot mode of the DVD, as a hint as to what mode the user wants for their disk to have. And W11 supports UEFI at the moment.

*******

The DVD has the "Upgrade Advisor", as an early analysis of your hardware.
It does not work from a "CPU List", as the Microsoft site does for W10 and W11. The web site has a list of processors known to be fully supported on the OS release.

The Upgrade Advisor, it does tests. It tried to run the POPCNT() instruction, while wrapping the instruction execution in an exception handler. If the instruction
does not run, the Upgrade Advisor makes a note.

It notices whether you have a TPM, whether you have 4GB of memory (or whatever),
it verified that the UEFI BIOS has "attestation support" for the TPM. (My Optiplex
has a TPM, but, it has no code to run it!!!)

The Upgrade Advisor then, does the "early analysis" of whether your board
is a candidate for installation. Any board made in the last three years,
not only does it have UEFI support, it has fTPM support such that a physical TPM module is not needed, and so the boot security requirements are met.

*******

OK, let's take my HEDT 4930K eleven year old computer. The part number
there, the "4" digit, tells you it is fourth generation (it is about four generations too old for Windows 11 partial support even). It does not
support MBEC (hardware support for some memory feature). Yet, it is running
W11 on the screen to my right, right now. It's a non-compliant computer.
It doesn't have secure boot, but it does have UEFI boot capability.
I would not have got this far, if it didn't UEFI boot.

msinfo32.exe (running this on compliant Zen3 processor, this is the readout)

Virtualization-based security Running Virtualization-based security Required Security Properties
Virtualization-based security Available Security Properties Base Virtualization Support,
DMA Protection, UEFI Code Readonly,
SMM Security Mitigations 1.0,
Mode Based Execution Control <=== has it
Virtualization-based security Services Configured
Virtualization-based security Services Running

msinfo32.exe (running this on non-compliant 4930K, this is the readout)

Virtualization-based security Not enabled

Windows 11 has turned it off, because of the lacking of the hardware.
None of the protections are working on the 4930K.

*******

How did I get Windows 11 on the 4930K ?

There is a tool that converts an ISO, to an 8GB or larger USB stick. The W11 ISO
is pretty big, but it might fit within the confines of 8GB. Typical sticks these
days might be 32GB (a common size for fully functional TLC NAND flash chips).

Please step carefully around the adverts. If Google Vignette appears, click the reload button on your browser, then find the link table below.

https://rufus.ie/en

Link Type Platform Size Date
rufus-4.9.exe Standard Windows x64 2 MB 2025.06.15
rufus-4.9p.exe Portable Windows x64 2 MB 2025.06.15 <=== Intel, for W11 x64, portable
rufus-4.9_x86.exe Standard Windows x86 1.9 MB 2025.06.15
rufus-4.9_arm64.exe Standard Windows ARM64 6 MB 2025.06.15

That program has a two page setup dialog. The first page is pretty
ordinary stuff. The second (options page just before writing to the stick), contains "defeats" for common hardware shortcomings. I used the Rufus stick
to get Windows 11 onto the 4930K. The 4930K had licensed W7 SP1, licensed W8.1, free upgrade W10, free upgrade W11 (via defeating hardware checks). Rufus
can reduce the requirements enough, most machines that run W10 can then
run W11, with Rufus to "modify" the installer.

*******

The basic hardware install process, it only needs storage. 132 lines on my content search window, attest to a good (but not complete!) selection of drivers for bringup. On a desktop system on a home build, you would select
AHCI rather than RAID, even though Intel RAID is supported, it's just not
a good idea to use RAID Ready mode, because you have to keep changing that every time the CMOS battery is replaced, or, your machine has an "overclocking failure" caused by pushing the power button on the front of the machine, while the OS is running.

However, the "picket fence" of hardware compatibility issues ("Advisor"), is extensive,
and appropriate messages should appear in the Advisor, as to what is missing and why they think they should not install.

Is your storage driver not in the list of 132 things ? I don't think so.
Maybe the NVMe just wasn't seated in the socket, which happened to me.

*******

You *can* do some basic forensics, using the W11 installer DVD.

While Install is the main path, there is a link on the screen that
leads to Troubleshooting. In the Troubleshooting section is a Command Prompt button.

diskpart.exe

list disk
select disk 0
detail disk
list partition
select partition 3
detail partition
exit
exit

That's an example of doing some very basic display of storage the
DVD has detected. I use that all the time. I even use that in the
Macrium Rescue CD, when cleaning a disk of content.

diskpart.exe

list disk
select disk 1
clean # MBR and GPT partition tables removed, clusters NOT sanitized
clean all # This take HOURS, and it zeroes everything. Don't do this unless you mean to.
exit

HTH,
Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 27/08/2025 11:54 pm, Joel W. Crump wrote:

On 8/27/2025 9:28 AM, Jack wrote:

So, I decided to keep it.-a And thus I am making a return to this NG.
Hello! Efya

Joel, you are warmly welcomed. Windows has always aimed to be as stable
and user-friendly as possible. It's people who need something to
complain about :).

I don't know much about Linux, though I have booted up a live flash
drive once or twice to see what it's all about. I couldn't do much on
it, as I spend most of my time working on Visual Studio 2022 with SSIS
and Oracle SQL for a large bank in London. VS Code doesn't offer much
for SSIS, so you need Visual Studio running on Windows 10/11. Oracle
does run on Linux, but I haven't tried doing anything meaningful on it.

You need to adjust the line width of your posts in your newsreader
because they're too long for my liking. 72 characters is the maximum you
should set.

I don't see a setting to set the line width, I'm using Thunderbird
because I've gotten used to it recently with Linux, instead of using
Forte Agent, though I do also have it but it doesn't work with my NSP,
only Eternal September, which I don't prefer to use.

Joel, in my SeaMonkey Suite (think Firefox plus Thunderbird plus ....),
if I look at Edit -> Preferences -> Mail & Newsgroups -> Composition, I
can set my word "Wrap plain text messages at" 72 "characters".

I think you will find your Thunderbird Preferences on your Thunderbird "Options" drop-down. Might be worth a look.

HTH
--
Daniel70
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2