Windows 11: Good lord, what is that company doing to its OS

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Windows 11: Good lord, what is that company doing to its OS

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Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I've seen people google "stream the avengers" or whatever and just click any random thing that just may ask to install an addon or fake media player. I don't know if we're past the point that any malicious ad can just gently caress you up without interaction; that was a thing some time ago.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2022 16:28

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 13:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Might be like demonstrated here, that the labels next to the sliders in the focus assist settings are actually buttons that being you further options. Poorly discoverable.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 22:07

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

There are third party tools like audioswitch or whatever. There was a need for this before the native widget could do it.

# ¿ May 27, 2022 20:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Quaint Quail Quilt posted:

They even messed up my windows key, up, enter enter to shut down thing.

I suppose I can learn another way, like alt-f4 when no windows are active.

Win+x, u, u

# ¿ May 30, 2022 21:39

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

In windows 10 your primary taskbar (the one with all the poo poo) doesn't need to be on your primary monitor. Unless that would happen to be one of the things they stripped out in 11 idk.

Oddly, the start menu stays on the primary monitor unless you disable the taskbars on all monitors setting. I have a start menu replacement software installed that does stick with the primary taskbar start button though.

All this definitely hasn't been thought through properly for a long time, I'll agree with that.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2022 19:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I think early Vista the search indexer was borked and would never stop making your drives rattle like machine guns or something.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2022 19:30

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Say you're into music production software, you might well have to deal with a hundred installers for plugins, each initiated through some nasty proprietary piece of middleware that the developer hopes prevents piracy, that you're sure to have to log into their website for and have to download a downloader stub for to even be allowed to download the actual software with. Forget cleanly transferring presets you might have made in the past, asset folders, projects. Forget getting that set up in even a week and you're bound to lose some thing or another in the process, through no fault of your own. It's an absolute nightmare and I just gave up on a Windows 8 computer that I couldn't get upgraded to 10.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2022 22:30

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Yeah, I'm just saying there are atypical cases where I sympathize with digging through whatever options available to get the upgrade to go through. I'm not disputing that a clean install is the best option for most.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2022 23:16

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

Possibly, but in that case I'd just set a generic pin like 1234.

There are actually complexity requirements for pins, believe it or not.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2022 18:19

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

That's a bug that has existed since windows 8. All you can do is install the language if it really isn't already, set your preferred order and uninstall the language you don't want again, then pray it stays that way for a while.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2023 02:16

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

They mentioned plugins for audio recording, which is like the poster child of delicate and obtuse bespoke setups which are difficult to replicate. It's entirely justified to have an image with all that installed.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2023 15:07

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Thanks Ants posted:

I can get on board with removing drive letters if that means moving to a Linux/Mac style mount by name where the names persist, but this is MS so the drive letters will still be there under the surface causing things to break when you run out of them, except with the bonus that you now can't see them.

I think the "Show drive letters" option comes enabled out of the box? I can't remember this being a thing I ever had to enable at least.

In which case they're probably just taking away the easy option to hide them. In which case, who the gently caress cares.

Un-hide protected OS files is the annoying one. If you need it, you need it.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2023 23:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I still have my surface pro 4 where the passively cooled igpu cooks itself using a web browser for more than two hours, so never again may be exactly what they had in mind too lol

# ¿ Jul 24, 2023 21:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I think sometimes you can trick the mechanism by constantly playing a completely silent sound file in the background, but that's not elegant.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2023 19:54

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I'm wondering if I've got this right for in place (keeps programs and user files) upgrading from windows 10 to 11 on a computer that doesn't meet on paper requirements like tpm.

1. Download iso
2. Use rufus to strip requirements while putting it on a usb stick
3. Boot from stick
4. Pick option to upgrade
5. Profit

Or does that rufus trick only apply to fresh installs?

# ¿ Aug 26, 2023 16:39

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Klyith posted:

Works for both, but if upgrading to 11 from an existing 10 install there's an even easier way: AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU

Oh that looks pretty good, I'll give it a shot.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2023 16:56

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

So, setting that tpm bypass registry key doesn't do anything at all. First the media creation tool failed to create the media with an obscure error code. The workaround was copying the media creation tool exe to the usb drive where I wanted it to create the install media and running it from there for some stupid reason. Then the upgrade failed due to lack of tpm, despite the registry key. Rufus created media fails with "the install has failed". Booting from it tells me the upgrade option is only available from within windows. Back to the media creation tool created media, it finally at least seems to pretend to be doing something thanks to "AveYo's Media Creation Tool workaround script" mentioned here lower on the page.

Honorable mention for 'you need to run this as administrator' and, 'no, actually we mean actually logged in as administrator' as well as all the more inscrutable error messages only appearing after several minutes of checking for updates, disk space and god knows what else each loving time.

Well, fingers crossed it doesn't invent a last minute excuse to roll back at the end of this. This is a thinkpad with an ssd that was powerful in 2015 and I'm now half an hour into the actual install process at 31%, where it has been for 15 minutes. I'm kinda sick of it.

E: Scratch that, 31% is all I get and canceling out seems to hang. Computer's cursed. Windows 10 it is then.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 27, 2023

# ¿ Aug 26, 2023 20:47

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Shaocaholica posted:

Thanks.

Also is it ok to install software from a limited user account and just putting in admin credentials when prompted? As opposed to logging out and doing it under the local admin account.

Yeah.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2023 00:12

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

If you've got a windows license that's based on upgrading from a windows 7 or 8 key, you can transfer that to a new device through an ms account. Not super compelling as long as you can probably still just do a fresh 10 or 11 install using that key if you've still got it anyway or acquire a new one of those for a modest price.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2023 20:25

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Wasn't the free storage you got more like 15GB in the past? I then managed to double that through free bonuses because I was using a Windows phone and for using the account to log into a computer and things like that. You know, actual motivators to use it.

5GB is so goddamn miserable unless, yeah, just a few documents, save games and bitlocker keys.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2023 21:56

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

There used to be a few ways to get more storage, but none of it was that substantial, and there were a few deals that were temporary - you could put 10GB on the drive, then a year later they would hold that poo poo hostage for $70 / year.

I mean I'm reasoning backwards from still having 30GB available right now without ever paying them a cent. Might have been called Skydrive at the time.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2023 22:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Internet Explorer posted:

And yes, the free version has version control.

I just checked and it turns out to be true. I didn't know. That makes all the difference to be honest.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2023 16:56

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The times someone wants that to happen have got to be exceedingly rare, right? Why is it even possible.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2023 14:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Windows 10 will stop getting security updates towards the end of 2025 as far as anyone knows.

E: peace of mind comes from adequate backups

# ¿ Oct 6, 2023 22:26

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

zachol posted:

It makes sense but I hate it. When I open the start menu and start typing, I want to find the system setting or utility that I'm typing in ("update," "security," "sleep"), or a program I've installed, or maybe the name of a file. I want this to happen super fast and for obvious choices to be selected first.
This doesn't make Microsoft money, it'll never make Microsoft money. Instead, they want me to to open the start menu when I'm searching for something else, like if I want to buy a new gamer chair or tickets to a concert. They want me to think of the start menu first when searching for anything and everything, that it'll open those results in Edge, and that they can sell ads against those searches.
In order to support those searches for everything on the web, the start menu needs to interact with the web, with Microsoft's servers, instead of just having to worry about my computer. That inevitably is going to make it dramatically slower, especially when I don't have a reliable and snappy internet connection.

And again, it makes sense. In my ideal goddamn world I'd run Windows XP with some magic security fairy dust keeping it taped together. That's not worth any money, barely anybody wants it, they couldn't monetize it, they couldn't charge the few of us who do want it enough to actually support it. It sucks. They should just open source XP and leave it up to the loving weirdos to make it airtight.

I've been using Open-Shell since Windows 8 to replace the start menu and the search finds me program/app names and those config items, even the descriptive alts, and nothing else. Consistently quickly. I like the windows 95 styling, but you can set it to look like XP if you want. If I'm looking for file names, I'll use Everything. Every so often I'll think it's a ridiculous situation that shouldn't be and try to raw dog the OS as it is, but that never lasts.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2023 13:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

It's just that my concept of the start menu ossified early on. It's a list of programs you want to start and start menu search should be in function of that. Results should be 100% predictable. Calculator should show up from when I type c and not only from cal and then disappear when that becomes calc or whatever sort of lovely fuzzy logic is in the native search. Made up example, but the sort of thing that kept happening.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2023 16:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Utterly baffled by this windows 11 install that won't let me set a desktop background. Or to be more precise, it doesn't stop me at all, it then just... doesn't actually do it. Desktop stays black. Lock screen doesn't seem to be a problem. Fully activated, I checked. What's weird is that under personalize, the option to just pick a custom image isn't there. Just some preset themes. Right click an image does have the set as desktop background option though.

Basically came fresh out of the box yesterday from Lenovo with a windows 11 pro license with downgrade rights and windows 10 installed. I did absolutely nothing to it but create a local user account and then run the upgrade to 11 :shrug:

# ¿ Nov 3, 2023 20:20

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

astral posted:

Hopefully you're already doing a clean install.

I will. If I could be sure it was going to be the only issue, I wouldn't. Kinda was hoping to find out if any of the preinstalled software would be of use to me wrt battery management or what the fn+F keys do, things like that. Good thing I'm under no time pressure to get this going proper.

This dumb downgrade poo poo means that the recovery image is windows 10 as well. Which, you know, fine, except that the seller simply advertised it as coming with windows 11, no more no less. I think that's a dick move on their part.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2023 21:16

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

West SAAB Story posted:

I just ordered a handful of 11 Pro laptops for work. Imagine my delight when I powered the first one on and it demanded to be setup with either a domain, or a microsoft outlook/hotmail account. With 10, this only happened with Home. Is this normal, or did Dell possibly image these wrong?

They arrived minutes before we left for Thanksgiving, so I haven't even seen the desktop yet; I'm hoping I wasn't sent home by mistake.

Microsoft downgraded the Pro tier with that poo poo. This says Windows 11 Pro since 22H2.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2023 20:46

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

On Pro, maybe the group policy editor looks less scary?

code:

Removing Bing Search from Windows 11 and 10 Using Group Policy:

1. Press the Windows key and search for "group policy." Then, open "Edit group policy."

2. Go to "User Configuration" and navigate to Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Search.

3. Double-click on "Search" to open it. Look for "Do not allow web search" and "Don't search the web or display web results in Search."

4. Open each setting and enable them.

5. Finally, restart your Windows 11/10 PC. Bing Search will be removed from all search elements, including the Start menu, Taskbar, and File Explorer.

E: Actually I can only find these in Computer Configuration, not User Configuration on my computer

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Nov 30, 2023

# ¿ Nov 30, 2023 19:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I have just the faintest memory of having to clean out stored network share credentials on a computer because of that error. It's not a time-out. It's like something trying to claim a drive letter that's already in use.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2023 14:02

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

NFX posted:

Got it

I don't remember what the alternatives were, but this is one of the expressions that Microsoft thinks are important to change between US, UK and international English OS language settings. It might well say "Ok" or "Understood" or loving "Let's go" in one of the others or something like that. I wish I made a screenshot.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2023 10:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I might be misunderstanding, but in details view you can generally add the column with modified date back and sort by clicking its header. Just right click any column header, select which column to add, then click the header for alternating between ascending/descending.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2023 02:17

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

NotNut posted:

This is the Pictures folder, which uses a Large icons view. But I was able to change the view to detailed, then sort by that column, then change it back to icons and it's sorted correctly. Weird workaround, but I'll take it, thanks.

Looking at it now instead of going by memory, and it seems to add sort by date modified to the right click menu when you've done that even if you go back to large icons and also it seems to store this somewhere per application. Like I can cancel out of the save modal, close paint, open it back up, select save as and it remembers that I added the column to the pictures folder previously? I've not found yet if it resets at some point. Could actually be workable if it doesn't reset too often.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2023 13:24

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

ctrl + insert and shift + insert are copy and paste from before Windows existed or something and work to this day.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2024 00:00

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I hate that you can only get a clean monochrome tray icon for defender by enabling high contrast themes. Regular dark mode is stuck with a Windows 7 era blue thing that sticks out. Like, it's there, but you can't have it unless you go goth hotdog stand.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2024 00:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

astral posted:

Why not hide the useless thing? (or is it a windows 11 thing that you can't?)

Every so often a status indicator on the icon will tell me it has failed to restart its service, or that it's been too long since a quick scan, or that it doesn't like me having a setting for submitting samples to Microsoft disabled. Things that maybe will resolve themselves over time or will maybe eventually result in a notification, probably. I don't mind knowing as and when it happens.

Anyway, no, you can hide it in the overflow menu. It's in fact the show all tray icons all the time setting that is kind of broken. If you enable that, every program with a tray icon that you install after that, you'll have to manually enable the icon in task bar settings, because it defaults to permanently, completely hidden.

Don't get me wrong, these are super minor gripes, barely worth mentioning.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2024 12:47

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

sinky posted:

It's less effort to format and reinstall from an iso that skips all that poo poo.

Granted all information I've found on this seems to be five years old, but it all says just a clean install won't get your device out of s mode.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2024 13:01

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Keyboard language selection has been bugged since Windows 8 and there's a whole dance with uninstalling and reinstalling the language it tends to switch to, to fix it temporarily.

Making the computer go into hibernation will stop it from waking itself, if an automatic reboot is your problem. If you're on a computer that lets you disable modern sleep in favor of S3 sleep in the bios, that should work too.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2024 14:55

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 13:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Rexxed posted:

Most keys aren't in the BIOS since windows 7. Windows 10 and 11 activate your hardware ID on a server and will reactivate the same hardware as long as there haven't been too many changes to the hardware.

Key in bios was only a thing since Windows 8 and is still common practice in laptops. It's basically the replacement for the sticker with the OEM provided key, and it functions pretty much the same in that it can't be changed, moved or removed from the machine, and also it doesn't even need to be the key that is used to activate the install on the machine. It is a separate thing from the activation status. Activation status can be carried over from one install to the next on the same hardware solely based on a remotely stored hardware id since Windows 10.

I don't have a clue though what's going to take precedence when you do a fresh install on a machine that came with a home key in the bios that you upgraded to pro in the past. You can always do the in place upgrade like what Klyith posted and neither key will disappear or be invalidated for future use.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2024 15:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Windows 11: Good lord, what is that company doing to its OS

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