[HN Gopher] After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click...
___________________________________________________________________
After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click where it used
to be
Author : zdw
Score : 187 points
Date : 2025-12-02 02:12 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.microsoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.microsoft.com)
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| In other news, 500 million PCs declined to 'upgrade' to 11.
| j3th9n wrote:
| setup.exe /product server
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| Like a dog shaking fleas, Microsoft seeks to concentrate on
| paying customers, leaving granny to fend for herself in a world
| full of scams and misinformation.
| nine_k wrote:
| Steam should start packaging small productivity software.
|
| More seriously, the granny might actually be better served by
| a Chromebook.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Google is killing ChromeOS.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Really? They nagged and nagged and nagged and nagged me until
| I finally upgraded.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The password icon being invisible is just funny. Some of the
| other issues are actually problematic, as they may interfere with
| some workflows.
|
| However if you go to the December 1.
| (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/december-1-2025-kb...)
| the icon is still missing. How hard is that to fix? Aren't they
| using CoPilot? Just ask it to fix the invisible icon.
|
| Probably not a priority.
| medwards666 wrote:
| > How hard is that to fix? Aren't they using CoPilot? Just ask
| it to fix the invisible icon.
|
| They would, but no-one in the development team are able to log
| into their PCs due to no longer being able to locate the
| password icon ...
| magackame wrote:
| > How hard is that to fix? Aren't they using CoPilot? Just ask
| it to fix the invisible icon.
|
| Maybe that's the problem? Imagine a Microsoft employee allowed
| to program only by using a CoPilot prompt, screaming and
| begging to just apply a patch he already written without
| touching anything else :D
| LiamPowell wrote:
| This might not be too far from what's happening. In the
| dotnet repos you can see MS employees constantly fighting it
| across hundreds of PRs:
| https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/120637
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Came for programming, became a shepherd, awesome career.
| gruez wrote:
| https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/120637#discussion_r2
| 4...
|
| lmao. They had an AI create a PR, then a human to review
| it, but then the human ended up using another AI to review
| the original AI.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Looking that that PR and the interaction with CoPilot I
| struggle to see how it wouldn't have been easier to
| simply sidestep the AI.
| recursive wrote:
| After all that noise, the clanker just says it can't do
| it and the PR is abandoned. I'd say it would have been
| easier to literally do nothing and have the same result.
|
| If a human wrote it, at least there would have been a
| possibility for learning or growth. This just looks like
| a waste of time for everyone.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Oh man that gave me a good laugh!
|
| At one point it basically just keeps responding with
|
| >This requires a comprehensive rewrite
| NSPG911 wrote:
| I never laughed so hard from watching a PR's comments.
| stack_framer wrote:
| Seeing Copilot says this over and over again was
| hilarious: "The current implementation requires a
| complete rewrite..."
| pmontra wrote:
| > The password icon being invisible is just funny
|
| Sometimes the icons in the dock are also invisible. I thought
| that it was my RDP client playing bad with the server on
| Windows but eventually I found bug reports about that. This is
| exactly what I see 50% of the times
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1bdgym6/windows_...
| jraph wrote:
| int Counter = 5; while (--Counter >= 0 && Prompt("Take
| a screenshot. Do you see a lock icon on this picture? Answer
| "Yes" or "No". Be concise. No fluff. Refrain from saying
| 'You're absolutely right'. Try to ignore stuff that looks like
| lock icons in the background.") != "Yes") { // Try
| resetting the icon LockScreenLockIconSet("fa fa-
| lock"); LockScreenForceRedraw();
| Sleep(2000); // We've seen better results when
| refreshing a second time after a delay. Don't know why. AI
| suggested it. LockScreenForceRedraw(); }
| hulitu wrote:
| > How hard is that to fix?
|
| My experience with Microsoft fixing bugs in Win 10: at least 6
| months. At first they deny it, then, after a fix is issued,
| they acknoledge it.
| vijucat wrote:
| It's become a universal truth that you should probably not
| upgrade to the latest and non-greatest version of ANYTHING these
| days. Not Android, not Windows, not iOS, not macOS. It's just
| embarrassing how companies with market caps sometimes above $1T
| produce workslop.
|
| I use Windows Update Blocker on Windows 10 to keep it "protected"
| from upgrades (!). I can see that critical security updates are
| occurring despite this, so it's a good compromise. For now. When
| Windows 12 is announced, Windows 11 may finally be usable.
| jerriep wrote:
| > When Windows 12 is announced, Windows 11 may finally be
| usable.
|
| I think it will still be objectively bad. But maybe compared to
| Windows 12, it will seem good.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| They say every second version of windows is bad. 8 was so bad
| they skipped straight to 10. But given the current priorities
| of Windows i'm not holding my breath. They seem to have
| abandoned the idea that "things should work" as a key
| principle. 10 was around for an extraordinarily long time but
| 11 has very few good ideas.
| timpera wrote:
| Windows 11 is pretty great though, it keeps all the good
| ideas from 10 and improves on them. I don't get the hate.
| heisgone wrote:
| 23H2 was pretty close to being solid and stable but 24H2
| has been a disaster.
| doubled112 wrote:
| It's a buggy mess that harasses you. I understand the
| hate.
|
| This morning I got three screens asking if I wanted to
| log in and configure backup. There is still not an option
| to say no, only ask me later.
|
| Last week the top half of the taskbar disappeared for an
| evening.
| user34283 wrote:
| I'm logged in to my Microsoft account, so I've not seen
| any of that.
|
| The only thing that I recall popping up is those setup
| screens that appear after some updates for no good
| reason.
|
| I also don't recall any particularly buggy experience
| with Windows 11.
|
| Meanwhile my Mac mini M2 Pro is having issues all the
| time. From the start I could not even use my second
| monitor without turning off and back on the primary
| monitor first for the second to come on.
| butlike wrote:
| I get that moving the Start menu to the middle gives you
| a very "Iron Man in the command chair" type feeling on
| large monitors/multiple screens, where you spin off
| windows to the left and right...but is super annoying on
| a smaller monitor
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Great for ... shareholders? Because you can't possibly be
| talking about users. Windows is an OS that forces cloud
| logins, tracks and records every interaction, steals
| email credentials, shoves ads and full screen nags
| everywhere, sabotages competing software, turns perfectly
| good hardware into e-waste, and won't take no for an
| answer from users. It serves the interest of
| billionaires, not common people.
|
| For paying users, this is the definition of an
| unmitigated disaster. Windows 11 expands on all of the
| worst aspects of Windows 10. Inconsistent UI, duplicated
| settings, two context menus, laggy start menu with React
| in it, and on and on and on the list goes. It's obvious
| why people hate it.
|
| No other OS has shown this much level of outright
| contempt towards its users. Modern Windows is, without
| doubt, the worst desktop OS to ever exist in the history
| of computing.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| Don't forget the greatly reduced hardware support in
| return for no actual new features. It's a rat trap with
| no cheese on it.
| hulitu wrote:
| > it keeps all the good ideas from 10 and improves on
| them.
|
| Are there any good ideas in Windows 10 ?
| recursive wrote:
| Volume mixer
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Volume mixer has been around at least since Windows 7.
| Maybe earlier but I don't remember.
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| My parents older windows 10 laptop was getting slow and
| battery wasn't great.
|
| They bought a new windows 11 laptop from Costco for $600.
| Yes cheap, but not total garbage.
|
| Tried using it for a few weeks. Worse performance that
| their 6 year old similarly cheap laptop running windows
| 10.
|
| Returned new computer. I installed Linux Mint Mate and
| bought an Chinese battery for $30. Laptop better than
| new.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'm with you. I've used Windows 11 as my primary work OS
| since release and it is absolutely quicker than Windows
| 10 and nicer to use. I do, however, debloat it and remove
| all the cruft when I install it.
| Telaneo wrote:
| I don't want to use a Microsoft account. I don't want to
| use Secure Boot. I don't want the new right click menu
| (good idea, bad execution). I don't want the new start
| menu (I want the Windows 7 one if anything). I don't want
| my OS calling home. I don't want AI. I don't want ads.
|
| I went to Linux instead. I got what I wanted there.
|
| What ideas did 10 have that weren't just purely technical
| updates (i.e. DX12 and the like), and weren't just
| undoing what Windows 8 did?
| MrLeap wrote:
| I remember a different apocrypha for why they skipped from
| 8 to 10. They wanted avoid OS specific code that
| conditionally activated from the substring "windows 9" but
| meant for windows 95 and 98. One would imagine any code
| like that not being quite as helpful a few decades later.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If true, this would align with Microsoft's historic
| dedication to backward compatibility in the face of
| horribly-written third party software.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You misread the GP. The versioning skipping from 8 to 9
| was because of bad detection code for windows 95/98. The
| GP is talking about people staying on Windows 7 until
| Windows 10 came out, skipping Windows 8.
| dingaling wrote:
| Windows 95 and 98 VersionStrings were 4.00.nn and 4.10.nn
| recursive wrote:
| I don't know the details of that. But even if that's the
| correct way to determine versions, I think there might be
| some fraction of software that does it the less correct,
| more obvious way.
| butlike wrote:
| I thought it might be to bring Windows in line with Mac
| OS 10. Seems petty, but I could see a billion dollar
| company not liking their flagship is on version 8-9 while
| the competition is on 10.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I thought that was why the second Xbox was "Xbox 360" so
| it did not seem a lesser number than PlayStation 3.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Not entirely apocrypha. Among the ones we can most easily
| name and shame from available source files there were
| early versions of the Java JDK known to have tests
| exactly like that in low level library code. Presumably
| Microsoft's famous app compatibility lab found many more
| that were closed source that they were not allowed to
| name and shame.
|
| There's also different apocrypha about the numerology
| aspect that 9 is a very unlucky number in some cultures
| and commonly skipped in version numbers (similar to but
| more so than 13 in the US being skipped on many
| elevators). (Also why it is said other companies like
| Apple often skip 9 to make it easier to use the same
| version cross-culturally without cultural taboo
| mistakes.)
| keyringlight wrote:
| I wish convenient ideas like that which become memes would
| die off as I really doubt there's any rhythm at Microsoft
| that causes it, for example I doubt they have alternating
| teams for every other version. More to the point, from an
| outside perspective I don't see any change in direction
| that would drastically change windows for the better within
| foreseeable future or the timespan a "windows 12" would
| release.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It's not anything at Microsoft that's doing it, it's just
| the way people are. Microsoft announces some big, new
| thing, and everybody hates it. When the next version of
| Windows comes out, people are used to that new thing, so
| they don't hate it. The new version has a ton of stuff
| they hate, but because the last version was _sooo bad_
| they ignore it all.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Could be, but I had lots of complaints about Vista, and 7
| worked much better for me.
|
| I stuck on 7 for a long time, not because I was waiting
| for 11, but because I was waiting for some annoyances
| with 10 to get addressed.
|
| I still would rather have an updated W7 than W10 or W11.
|
| Updated means - security updates, clipboard manager, dism
| (W7's dism was limited).
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| Yeah, I've never really bought that meme. They probably
| just jumped to 10 because they wanted a bigger number
| than a competitor, maybe OS X. This is the company that
| released the first version of windows NT as 3.1 because
| Netware was at that version at the time and probably
| called the Xbox 2 the 360 so it had a larger number than
| Sony.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I really doubt there's any rhythm at Microsoft that
| causes it
|
| Last version was really bad, let's focus on fixing
| problems on the next ... last version was great, we need
| new revolutionary features to sell the next one.
|
| That was visible on the older versions of Windows. Win 95
| was kinda bad because nothing worked very well, then 98
| fixed things, then ME tried to redo everything that still
| worked badly, what didn't work so they merged everything
| that worked into 2000. XP both worked badly at the
| beginning, and well at the end; Vista rebuilt a lot of
| stuff, and 7 fixed it so it worked.
|
| And then the rhythm completely stopped.
| basch wrote:
| The Windows version numbers are not used often but really
| do help group Windows into distinct "early vs late" product
| cycle tiers. They didn't really skip straight to 10, they
| just named 9 8.1 for reasons.
|
| Windows 5.0-5.2 is Win 2000, Win XP, Win XP64.
|
| Windows 6.0-6.3 is Vista, 7, 8, 8.1.
| ndiddy wrote:
| One large contributor to modern Windows's lack of quality
| is that Microsoft laid off all of its dedicated QA staff in
| 2014, with the expectation that developers would own the
| OS's quality themselves, and whatever they miss would get
| caught by telemetry reports from Windows enthusiasts who
| sign up to test new versions for free. Getting rid of QA
| eliminated Microsoft's institutional knowledge of what
| causes bugs, what areas to look at, etc (invaluable when
| you're dealing with a 30+ year old codebase where large
| portions were written prior to automated testing being
| standard). The free Windows enthusiast testing didn't make
| up for this because you can't expect them to act like how a
| QA tester would act.
|
| Of course I don't expect Microsoft to suddenly start caring
| about product quality. The Windows user base has largely
| stopped growing, so MBA logic is to spend the bare minimum
| resources on maintenance and to funnel the existing
| userbase into growth areas like cloud/AI services.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| I can totally see how letting go the dedicated QA roles
| increased the amount of bugs that ship to customers, but
|
| > Getting rid of QA eliminated Microsoft's institutional
| knowledge of what causes bugs, what areas to look at, etc
|
| Seems incorrect from all interactions I've had with
| dedicated QA to day.
|
| They usually have no idea about any of that, what they do
| know is how to use a software and what scenarios have
| previously broken, but not from a technical perspective
| that can reason about error scenarios. More like a power
| user that just learned to use a UI, without knowing what
| it actually does.
|
| I feel like their recent push to AI driven development
| has likely had more impact in their issues in the last 2
| yrs vs a decision that's at this point 11 years in the
| past - but they are probably both (along with other
| unnamed factors) contributing to this end result.
|
| Overall saddening, as windows 10 really was a big leap
| forward in usability.
| toast0 wrote:
| Microsoft's Software Development Engineer in Test
| position was different than the "power user QA" archetype
| you describe and is common.
|
| These positions required development abilities and they
| would develop the testing scenarios concurrently with the
| team building the software. And the results were _less_
| buggy, IMHO. But it 's expensiving having twice the
| engineering staff when you can just ask software
| developers to test things themselves and not follow up to
| make sure it happened.
| Dwedit wrote:
| The "every second version" rule may be a meme, but it does
| not reflect the actual release order of Windows, nor
| properly count the NT series. It only really applies to
| sentiment surrounding Windows 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10,
| and 11. But that leaves out Windows 95, most versions of
| Windows NT, and Windows 2000.
| butlike wrote:
| It works with 95/2000.
|
| 95 - good,
|
| 98 - bad,
|
| 2000 - good,
|
| ME - bad,
|
| XP - good,
|
| Vista - bad,
|
| 7 - Good,
|
| 8 - bad,
|
| 10 - good,
|
| 11 - bad.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That assumes 10 was good and misses 8.1.
|
| Also 95/98/me were a different line from NT/2000.
|
| It sounds like a good theory but there isn't much
| substance to it.
| Telaneo wrote:
| > That assumes 10 was good and misses 8.1.
|
| I find this to be a mostly valid assumption, and 8.1
| shouldn't be counted separately from 8 just as Vista SP2
| should be counted any differently from Vista (Vista was
| mostly fine after companies fixed their drivers and
| Microsoft toned things down a bit. 7 just drove that home
| and put some necessary distance between itself and
| Vista).
|
| > Also 95/98/me were a different line from NT/2000.
|
| I fail to see why this matters.
| ikamm wrote:
| I must be the only person who remembers everyone shitting
| on W10 saying it was awful and they were staying on W7
| until W11 came around and suddenly we're pretending like
| everyone loved it
| Telaneo wrote:
| People were indeed shitting on Windows 10, but far less
| than Windows 8, and most people were willing to suck up
| the minor enshittification of 10 compared to 8 in
| exchange for a more modern OS.
|
| People sticking to 7 until 11 came out is something I've
| heard nothing of. The people who stuck to 7 that I knew
| of knew that things were very unlikely to get better.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Except Linux
| lionkor wrote:
| Im always happy to update my arch install, because I usually
| get new features to play with, and my system has not broken
| due to updates in 4 years.
| codedokode wrote:
| To be fair, Linux has always been like this, breaking things
| with updates. Linux was ahead of commercial companies, but
| they caught up with it.
| sph wrote:
| Use better distros. I haven't had a broken workstation
| since 2014 or so.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Which is that Linux desktop distro that never has issues?
| matsz wrote:
| I've been running Arch (on my desktop and servers) for
| over a decade, and never had issues. Just read their
| homepage before upgrading.
| sph wrote:
| The past 5 years I've used the atomic Fedora Silverblue,
| and I wouldn't go back to anything else.
|
| Last month I have experienced the first major kernel bug
| in two decades, and all I had to do was reboot into the
| previous system update. Pretty painless.
| smartmic wrote:
| Debian Stable.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| A recent HN submission has 300 comments, many talking
| about the stability about various distributions:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095585
|
| I'm personally partial to Arch Linux, haven't had an
| issue with upgrades since I moved to it in ~2017, which
| was the last year I let Ubuntu's dist-upgrade break my
| work computer.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Nothing beats the stale, pragmatic platitude of
| Slackware.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I miss running Slackware, if for no other reason that the
| weird look you get. For a decade I was running Slackware
| and a weird "package manager"(1). It was an incredible
| cool learning environment, but people though it was
| pretty strange.
|
| 1) https://web.archive.org/web/20040730204123/http://pack
| .sunsi...
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I had a colleague once that was an absolute
| anthropomorphic distro. This man was Linux personified,
| and he literally walked around town with a Slackware live
| CD at all times. This man refused to use any other
| operating system, or any other programming language
| outside D or Erlang. He was pretty fun.
| dspillett wrote:
| I've been using Debian:Stable on servers and occasionally
| on desktop for many years. I can't say I've ever had a
| problem due to a bad update.
|
| IIRC there have been a couple, but they've not affected
| the packages I was using, or I hadn't updated before the
| issues were spotted and resolved. The last half of that
| point is important: most Linux distros can be trusted to
| be left alone for 24 hours without coming back to find
| they've rebooted themselves, potentially losing work (or
| if not work, at least context so getting back to work
| takes longer than it should), without permission. Forcing
| updates and reboots might be acceptable when they cover a
| serious remote attack exposure bug, but Windows will
| reboot itself without permission even for relatively
| minor updates, and the fact it needs to reboot for so
| many minor things, where under Linux the updates might
| just need to restart a daemon or two rather than the
| whole OS, is irritating. Yes, there are ways to block
| Windows doing that, but you shouldn't have to fight your
| OS like that.
| weberer wrote:
| I've never had issues with Debian based distros.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| My desktop Debian was installed in 2008. I just upgraded
| it every major release. I am running on Testing so I had
| some very minor issues (mostly related to proprietary
| NVIDIA drivers, but even that got better), but at same
| time my NAS ran on Stable and it was problem-free.
| jamesnorden wrote:
| This is 2000s era FUD.
| jfindper wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. We all know that Linux removed all bugs
| and made themselves bug-proof in the 2010s.
| OJFord wrote:
| Linux works with updates however you want it to - e.g. Arch
| is a 'rolling release' distro, so compatibility is always
| expected at the latest of all packages; any update to any
| package is expected to have been tested with the latest at
| that time of any other relevant package. Of course bugs
| occur, sometimes something will be missed, but then it's
| just an update away to correct it. Or say Debian is not; a
| release is cut, tested, beta'd, and then made generally
| available - arguably more testing and a higher chance of
| finding a compatibility issue, but a slower cycle,
| potentially harder and slower to fix when something _is_
| missed.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Linux is very much "pick your poison"
|
| Run Debian Stable and it basically doesn't happen - only
| updates are actual security ones.
|
| Run any rolling distro and you basically accept "with
| newest version comes the newest bugs"
|
| And there is a whole bunch of distros between those
| extremes ,depending on how new you need your software to be
| (that being said, Debian Testing hits nice mix between "new
| enough" and "someone actually tested stuff before
| publishing").
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Not only that, but compared to Windows 10, any Linux
| distro has objectively more bugs. Things like bluetooth
| not working, GPU-related failures, update issues, all the
| classics. While the current status of Linux is amazing, I
| still cannot recommend it to a non-tech person because I
| know something will fail at some point and then it's
| going to be my problem.
| teddyh wrote:
| Windows has _tons_ of problem, but you don't see them.
| That is, you see the problems, but attribute them to bad
| hardware. It works like this:
|
| Headset does not work on Linux: "This is crap, I'll tell
| everybody I know to stay away from Linux!"
|
| Headset does not work on Windows: "This is crap, I'll
| tell everybody I know to stay away from these
| headphones!"
|
| (Re-post from 2022:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32541772>)
| recursive wrote:
| But invariably, the hardware _does_ work on Windows. I
| can 't remember the last time I had that problem.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| I can, just recently Windows update installed a firmware
| update to my network card (without asking) and made it
| unusable on both Windows and Linux. I had to run a
| manufacturer tool to get the network adapter to work
| again.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Intel dropped support for older WiFi chips in the newer
| drivers some time ago.
|
| After successfully installing Windows 11 and connecting
| to a WiFi network, Windows automatically upgraded all
| drivers, which resulted in WiFi not being able to detect
| some WiFi networks.
|
| Solution was to manually downgrade to an older Intel
| driver, but figuring out the root cause took quite a
| while.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I can.
|
| Last Friday I went to the office and my 5 yo fully intel
| win11 laptop only detected the full resolution of my
| external screen if it was connected during boot. Unplug
| it or even just let it sleep when going to the bathroom,
| and I'd return to a blurry mess of an image. Sometimes,
| if there's a driver update, it can also fix the issue
| until the next time the screen turns off. This used to
| work somewhat reliably before.
|
| It also refuses to connect to my Shure and Sony BT
| headphones. It sees them, says it's connected, then
| immediately says it's disconnected. The BT keyboard works
| fine. No issue whatsoever under Linux, so the hardware
| works fine.
| Nab443 wrote:
| YMMV, I have 2 headsets I've never been able to make
| working reliably under windows 10 and 11. Cheap stuff,
| but they are are flawless under linux and with my phone
| on android. Not to say there are no issue on Linux, but
| these days it's way better than 15 years ago.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Better stick to LTS distros and even then....
| noja wrote:
| Not true! The AI revolution has led to an explosion in software
| quality. The amount of fixed bugs and testing that AI-leaders
| such as MS have achieved is unprecedented. We will look back on
| this era as the golden age of software quality.
| pseufaux wrote:
| Reference? My anecdotal experience so far leads me to believe
| the opposite.
| pmontra wrote:
| I think that you missed a /s at the end of the post. I can
| continue it with "Yes, we had an explosion in software
| quality and it's in shards all over the place."
| fragmede wrote:
| It was sarcasm, they didn't forget the /s, it was
| intentional. (I downvote on /s)
| steve1977 wrote:
| This is irony. Right? This is irony?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Sarcasm, not irony.
| rsynnott wrote:
| AI boosters pose a bit of a Poe's Law problem; the poster
| here is probably joking, but also there almost certainly
| exist AI boosters gullible enough to actually believe
| something similar to that.
| vijucat wrote:
| I disagree with "the golden age of software quality". For
| example, right now, on the front page of HN, is this article,
| "After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click where
| it used to be",
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46116567. I could be
| wrong, but it feels as if this egregious error is AI
| workslop?!
| hulitu wrote:
| > The AI revolution has led to an explosion in software
| quality
|
| Right, the software quality literally exploded. But,
| unfortunately, this was before AI. It came roughly at the
| same time Agile was becoming mainstream
| Madmallard wrote:
| which windows update blocker do you use?
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I think it's Windows Update Blocker:
|
| https://www.sordum.org/downloads/?st-windows-update-blocker
| defrost wrote:
| All around, for everything, I cannot recommend the Chris
| Titus (and friends) WinUtil enough:
|
| https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
|
| It's a suite of powershell scripts and tweaks that are open
| source for inspection frontended by a nifty powershell multi
| tabbed TUI (Text User Interface) widget.
|
| There's a tab for upgrades and installs of common dev / tech
| / power user tools; a tab for tweaks; a tab for windows
| update options; a tab for building install disks / VM's (eg:
| minimal for gaming or for hosting windows applications in
| Qubes, etc).
|
| Update Tab can select all updates / only critical / none ever
| / advise and let you choose.
|
| To use, you do need to 'trust' (or inspect the work of and
| download source and self apply) a pool of windows tech nerds
| - you literally open a powershell admin window and pipe raw
| boot script over the internet and give it control to bring up
| the TUI.
|
| This could be malware (but isn't, last I checked) - same risk
| with all such tools d/loaded from internet of course.
|
| See Usage on github page - various writeups and youtube
| tutorials.
|
| It'll rip the AI addons, Copilot, and Snapshot and Spy stuff
| right out of Windows 10 / 11.
|
| Easy to use and follow.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Anyone know if this stops the truly diabolical Windows 11
| behavior where it removes the options to "Shut Down without
| updating" and "Reboot without updating?" At some point, the
| only option to shut down your computer is "Shut Down and
| update." I've gotten to the point where I just yank the
| power cord to turn off my computer, because Microsoft
| doesn't permit any other way.
| defrost wrote:
| Good question - I'm still running 10 daily, I'm busy
| today and only tangentially follow the community - but it
| is still an issue being tracked:
|
| https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2358
|
| ( it might be resolved via another number - worth
| checking by d/loading to 11 and checking the hotlink
| notes in the update tab ... )
| vijucat wrote:
| I have this one https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-
| blocker-v1-8/
|
| I will check out the Chris Titus link someone else posted
| below, too, but that seems more risky.
| vachina wrote:
| Go to system32 and take ownership of wuaeng.dll and qmgr.dll
| and restrict access to only your user. Works on 10 and 11.
|
| Windows will chug along as if Windows Update never existed
| (forever).
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Isn't it microsoft who blocks updates after it discontinued
| windows 10?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| You still get a lovely, full-screen advertisement for
| upgrading to Windows 11 on boot every few weeks.
| majkinetor wrote:
| This one not only blocks OTB update but lets you cherry-pick
| whatever is available afterward. From the creator of
| Sandboxie, another must have tool.
|
| https://github.com/DavidXanatos/wumgr
| basilikum wrote:
| If you're forced to use Windows, just use Windows 10 LTSC 2021
| IoT. Gets security updates until 2031 but none of the new
| "features".
| dijit wrote:
| its not easy to use this legally though.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Running unlicensed versions of Windows has historically
| been pretty easy. Am I missing something with Windows 10
| IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021?
|
| With Windows 7, once the evaluation period ran out, you
| just had to deal with an annoying notification about your
| copy not being genuine, but it never stopped me from doing
| whatever I needed to do after installing it on dozens of
| machines over the years, at this point.
| dijit wrote:
| 1) They've started again to crack down on black-market
| activation methods
|
| https://windowsforum.com/threads/kms38-shut-down-windows-
| act...
|
| 2) It's not legal, obviously. I'd always have a tinge of
| worry that if I join a Teams call or something then my
| employer is on the hook for me doing something naughty.
|
| (given how Microsoft has decided to "upgrade" my local
| account to a Microsoft account before when logging in to
| outlook)
| 0xEF wrote:
| Interesting. And worrying. I see a good number of those
| Kamrui (and competitor) Mini PCs from Amazon replacing a
| lot of the far more expensive and lower-powered
| industrial PCs for various uses in smaller machine shops.
| I was not surprised since they're inexpensive and have a
| decent kick to the hardware, but I've noted that the
| version of Windows they ship with is fairly free of a lot
| of the usual bloat, so I assumed they were just using one
| of the available scripts to remove it...which likely
| included the KMS38 work-around? And I can tell you first-
| hand that most of the smaller shops are far too busy
| penny-pinching to spend even a few hundred dollars a year
| on licensing one or two of those machines properly.
|
| I never looked that deep into it since nobody came to me
| with any issues about it, but you have me wondering. I
| don't personally use Windows, either, despite my HN
| handle (it's just a reference I thought was funny), and I
| am finding myself more and more ignorant to what
| Microsoft is actually pushing. Thanks for the heads up.
| Will spend some time looking at this deeper.
| gruez wrote:
| >https://windowsforum.com/threads/kms38-shut-down-
| windows-act...
|
| Seems AI generated?
| episteme wrote:
| The author of the post is 'ChatGPT'
| 0xEF wrote:
| Ahh. Well, I feel stupid.
|
| I'd say it's increasingly hard to tell anymore, in my
| defense, but my god, it's right on the page.
| officeplant wrote:
| > 2) It's not legal, obviously. I'd always have a tinge
| of worry that if I join a Teams call or something then my
| employer is on the hook for me doing something naughty.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume most people here are
| talking about their personal computers unless self
| employed.
|
| The company IT department isn't going to be deploying
| oddball versions of Windows 10, unless you're shady small
| business.
| OJFord wrote:
| I haven't really used Windows much for years, but doesn't
| it start shutting down once evaluation period is up?
| 'Windows will shutdown in 30 minutes unless licence key
| is added' etc., and the desktop background goes blue with
| some text about being unlicensed?
| basilikum wrote:
| https://massgrave.dev
|
| Also don't use the evaluation images.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I have not experienced that, which is why I questioned
| the difficulty. I've installed Windows 10 on a good
| amount of machines at this point, bypassing the NRO
| during the install process, and have not had any issues
| that prevented me from installing software/games or just
| using it like a normal PC, even after connecting it to
| the Internet.
|
| However, my experience may be dated. It's been awhile
| since I've had to freshly install Windows. Perhaps things
| have changed.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| Yes, I believe LTSC does have a harsher shutdown setting
| if you're out of the 90 day "evaluation" window. Standard
| Windows keeps working just disabling the wallpaper and
| showing a watermark which you might be able to ignore.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Consumer versions of Windows just put a watermark on your
| screen and disable changing your wallpaper and the like.
| You can use it indefinitely beyond that. And if you want
| the watermark gone, then Massgrave is your friend.
| oblio wrote:
| Does the LTSC have all the features needed for mainstream
| programs and games?
| 0xEF wrote:
| By Microsoft's own admission, it sounds like it:
|
| > Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is built on the Windows
| 10 / 11 code base so it's natively compatible with the
| software and solutions you use today.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-
| windows-...
|
| I've not tried to use it specifically, which is why I'm
| curious.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Yes. The one place you may run into issues is with
| Microsoft-specific services, for example I'm not sure if
| Gamepass works.
|
| But if you're just using Steam (or any other third party
| storefront) you won't have any problems at all.
| driverdan wrote:
| Yes, and it's easy to strip out the garbage you don't
| want like Games Center and App Store.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Yep, last couple of Windows versions I used as desktop
| OSs likely 7 and 8) were unlicensed and, other than
| making the desktop background black (sometimes) and an
| occasional watermark reminder that it's not legit,
| nothing stopped working.
|
| And using Windows for free still didn't stop me from
| migrating to Linux exclusively (desktop and laptops and
| servers), and it's a decision I'm increasingly happy
| with.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You are missing that it is not legal to do so.
| driverdan wrote:
| If they aren't willing to sell it to those of us who want
| it I don't see a problem with not paying.
| Telaneo wrote:
| If Microsoft doesn't want to sell it, I don't see why I
| should care that it's illegal. I don't feel bad for
| downloading abandonware for the same reason. They don't
| want my money? Fine then. I'll just get it somewhere else
| then.
| askl wrote:
| > When Windows 12 is announced, Windows 11 may finally be
| usable.
|
| I'm not using windows anymore, but at least since Windows XP I
| felt like only every other release of Windows was usable. So my
| upgrade path was XP, Vista, 10, completely skipping over the
| bad releases Vista and 8. So just skip over 11, Windows 12
| might be an okay release again.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Not holding out much hope for a good Win12 given the
| priorities seem to be to wreck the UI/UX, remove
| customisation options, turn things into advertising
| billboards, and force AI into everything (even bloody
| Notepad).
| havblue wrote:
| We used to say this about Star Trek movies as well before
| determining that they're mostly bad. I've moved on from Trek
| and I'm fine with moving on from Windows.
| oefrha wrote:
| My Windows 11 Pro installation is helpfully stuck on 23H2 since
| every time it attempts to install a newer version it simply
| gets stuck on a black screen and requires a forced power cycle
| and subsequent auto-restore, wasting forty minutes in the
| process.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| It's such a stark contrast, my home servers just run
| unattended-upgrade (on Debian) with no problems, I just do the
| major version upgrade every year.
|
| Meanwhile everything consumer and _most_ enterprise is as you
| said, "don't upgrade if it is not broken, else you WILL feel
| pain".
|
| Companies basically trained bad security habits into their user
| base
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Do you do the major version upgrade the minute it's
| announced? Be honest.
| doubled112 wrote:
| On my home server, sometimes I do take some snapshots and
| upgrade a few VMs and LXC containers.
|
| Sometimes I even run testing because stable will be out
| shortly and I don't feel like upgrading.
|
| It's a very different experience to the single Windows
| laptop in my house, where the latest stable is always
| subtly broken in ways I notice. Last week the top half of
| the taskbar disappeared for an evening, for example.
| bitwize wrote:
| Once a new major version hits stable, it's been hammered on
| quite a bit. Debian has a reputation for being behind the
| curve, for this reason.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I admin a bunch of Ubuntu servers and I tend to do a major
| version upgrade on my laptop and then some low priority
| machines to see if anything has changed. Typically, the
| only issues I've had is when there's dropped support for
| older SSH/SSL protocols which is easily fixed.
|
| However, Windows Update isn't doing a major version upgrade
| as far as I know - it's the equivalent of doing a kernel
| upgrade in Linux. Also, the typical Linux upgrade command
| will also pull in updates/fixes for pretty much every bit
| of software in the system, whereas Windows Update will
| ignore user installed software as far as I know.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| _debian_ stable? Yes. Debian stable is tested to the point
| that it 's fossilized. Besides, we're not even talking
| about a major version update. We're talking a minor one,
| and the last time I'd had a simple update break _linux_ was
| when arch was shipping the master branch of grub. (The dev
| and I had words over this practice, which resulted in me
| going to another distro)
| alternatex wrote:
| He did say Debian, being stable is the one thing it's good
| at.
| ptx wrote:
| The point is that you don't have to: the unattended-
| upgrades part is separate from the major upgrades. You
| still get security updates for the previous stable release
| for a while after a new stable release, and the security
| updates can safely be installed the minute they're
| announced without bringing in unwanted features changes.
| Saris wrote:
| Yeah Debian is really stable because its so far behind the
| current releases, lots of testing has been done by the time
| it updates a package. Great for servers and stuff you just
| want to set and forget with auto updates.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Ironically, servers should be the most disposable and
| easily to replace from scratch after a bad upgrade but the
| world is a silly place.
| eikenberry wrote:
| It is equally great as a workstation when combined with a
| development environment manager with package installation
| like devenv or flox (or many other options). This combo
| gives you a stable (not-changing) platform with up-to-date
| tooling. Best of both worlds.
| Saris wrote:
| It's also why I'm a fan of atomic distros, easier to roll
| back from a major bug like my login screen no longer
| functioning.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Its not, instead you should install security updates in a
| timely fashion. People blocking windows update and being left
| super vulnerable isn't the solution. This bug was from an
| august update that affected some people. I think people are
| overplaying this to justify a dangerous 'dont fix if not
| broken.' No, your system is broken if its vulnerable.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Unfortunately companies use the "security boogeyman" to push
| ever-increasing ads, telemetry, performance degradation,
| features you probably don't want that disrupt your workflow
| and muscle memory, breaking API changes to libraries, etc.
|
| If you could sign a contract with e.g. Microsoft (or hell,
| NPM) to only receive updates that explicitly fix bugs and
| security holes, that'd be amazing - but I've rarely if ever
| seen it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Exactly--if I could guarantee that I was getting just
| security updates and bug fixes, I'd be happy to turn on
| automatic Windows updates (and application updates too, for
| that matter).
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| During the early XP days Windows had granular updates where
| you could decline everything but security updates if you
| wanted. Even when they pushed out the Windows Genuine
| Advantage update (Which offered a user no genuine
| advantages at all, just possibly hassles) you could still
| decline it.
| Telaneo wrote:
| If the choice is between being broken behind the scenes and
| broken in your face, it's no wonder people pick the former.
|
| If Microsoft and the like really cared about security, they'd
| push security completely separately from feature updates,
| allowing people to get the benefit of updates, without the
| negatives of those update breaking their environment.
|
| Or better yet, not push updates that break that break their
| environment in the first place. Security is a nice excuse for
| Microsoft to get you to update, but it's been used so many
| times to push hostile experiences to users that I can't blame
| the users for not wanting to be burned. The fault lies
| entirely with Microsoft and other companies for pushing
| hostile changes and chipping away at their goodwill.
|
| It hurts, Microsoft. Why are you doing this to us? (It's
| money. It's always money.)
| Saris wrote:
| Same goes for some of the desktop focused Linux distros, I had
| Fedora KDE break the login screen from a bad update that got
| pushed out. It's best to just wait to update anything
| important.
| I_dream_of_Geni wrote:
| Interesting take. I've used MacOS for 30+ years, and for the
| last 20 years have had zero problems with updating
| immediately... For that matter, iOS has been flawless also.
| cschep wrote:
| flawless is a wild take.
| Insanity wrote:
| lol indeed, since iOS 26 my GPS is broken on Apple Maps and
| Google map. It'll just freeze the updates very few minutes
| making it almost useless for driving
| jrajav wrote:
| You've either been very lucky or haven't been using much
| older software. macOS updates routinely cause issues early in
| the release cycle, particularly with backwards compatibility.
| Working in creative fields with lots of niche applications
| and plugins in use makes this a lot more apparent. Catalina
| in particular was a total nightmare.
| butlike wrote:
| The musicians suffer a lot with macOS upgrades, but I've
| found even if some hardware isn't supported officially, it
| most oftentimes works somewhat well.
| sharts wrote:
| cool story, bro.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Are you running Sequoia or Tahoe now?
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Android has reached the state of complete maturity. For years
| already major version releases were mostly shifting icons
| around. There's zero reason to update.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > It's become a universal truth that you should probably not
| upgrade to the latest and non-greatest version of ANYTHING
| these days. Not Android,
|
| If you even have control... I have a Google Pixel 8 which was
| nagging me to update to the latest and greatest Android when my
| phone was already working just fine. I kept putting it off and
| rescheduling it until two weeks ago. I was driving home from
| work, phone in the cup holder, listening to music when the
| music suddenly stopped. I picked up my phone to see if it was a
| call or the shitty Honda Bluetooth crapped out again but to my
| surprise, my phone was powered off. Huh? Never had a phone just
| turn off like that. I let it sit for a bit to see if it was
| rebooting but no, it was off. So I powered it back on and
| suddenly I'm looking at new animations and realize that somehow
| the OS update forcefully installed itself. WTF. I am not sure
| if I accidentally scheduled the install, highly doubt it, but
| there it is, I had the update forced on to me.
|
| IThe best p[art is this latest and greatest Android that I did
| not need or want has a regression where swiping down the
| notification menu has a 5+ seconds delay to populate the menu
| with the notifications. So yeah, totally worth it... /s
| jayd16 wrote:
| For fun, try a version of Windows Server 2025 with the desktop
| GUI. Its actually kind of awesome to see what they can do when
| they care to.
| butlike wrote:
| Counter-point: I upgrade day 1 (or in a reasonable timeframe)
| because I know there's no way the company will ever "go back"
| on what they're doing. If the new UI nukes the pleasant
| atmosphere of the OS by making all the icons look glass-like,
| then I'd better get used to it now. I don't want to forego
| upgrading, then have to learn a bunch of new features ON TOP of
| the UI differences.
|
| For example, iOS 26 introduced the liquid glass, which, coupled
| with how some UI elements work, was essentially the only
| change. If I wait until the inevitable iOS 36, I'll have to
| learn the UI paradigm on top of 10 versions worth of functional
| upgrades. The delta would be too large for me.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Arch Linux user here...
| emsign wrote:
| Can't wait for my new SSD to arrive, then it's finally Goodbye
| Windows, Hello again, Linux.
| binkHN wrote:
| I did this just recently; Windows is now adware and no longer
| in your best interests.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Moved to Arch 6+ months ago after 25+ years in Windows, it's
| been SO nice. My computer belongs to me again, lightning fast,
| no ads and BS every update, no 500 background processes.
|
| Definitely took some setup work - I have a lot of scripts and
| custom tools. But so worth it! Happy trails.
| kotaKat wrote:
| This makes sense.
|
| The Windows Insiders are so glazed over they probably don't even
| use passwords to log in -- they're too lost in the "free QA for
| Microsoft" sauce.
| lionkor wrote:
| Copilot is on the job to fix it already!
| mrweasel wrote:
| Fixing an invisible icon is a four month CoPilot job? It's been
| broken since August.
| lionkor wrote:
| Yes, we just have to wait until the random word generator
| hits the right combination of words to fix this. Can't be
| long now! It's being motivated with billions of dollars,
| after all.
| blazinglyfast wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
| amelius wrote:
| LLMs can't see icons.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Microsoft: if you're eating your own dog food and use Copilot
| etc. to develop Windows, please stop.
|
| If you're not using it (why not?), please start.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Do they have any employees left capable of writing code without
| it?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Did Microsoft just completely give up on QA in the name of
| accelerated slop delivery? They are in the news once a month for
| a serious windows bug. My disdain for windows id getting immense,
| at this point I'd rather have a linux computer, if I can't have a
| macbook. (But don't get me started on OSX & iOS, which are also
| total messes)
| eitland wrote:
| Didn't MS fire most of the QA people together with the
| translation people a few years ago?
|
| Or is that just a rumor that many of us fall for because it
| seems like a great explanation of what we see?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20557488
|
| looks like it
| netruk44 wrote:
| They laid off SDETs circa 2014 (I was one). I don't think
| Windows ever had QA people, but it did have automated testing
| and dedicated people to write and monitor those tests, then
| file bugs if something broke. But not anymore since 2014.
|
| These days, the only testing any release of Windows gets is
| from Microsoft employees (Dev/PM) and Windows Insiders.
|
| They have rules of how many hours of self-hosting are
| required before they can release, but that's the only
| requirement. That there exists telemetry of it running.
|
| You might see a gap with that testing methodology, but it
| might also explain how things like this happen. If it's a bug
| that doesn't prevent boot, it's easy to ignore.
|
| (I knew a few devs who would just put builds of windows on
| one of their computers and play a 72 hour long video of a
| black screen on repeat to get self hosting hours. Then they
| would proceed with their feature release. And nobody saw any
| problem with that.)
| sumtechguy wrote:
| MS needs a 'windows xp sp2' moment. Where they stop jamming
| new things in and just fix as much junk as possible. They
| still have a mixed control panel situation. Things just
| randomly work/break for no real reason. Camera here one day
| gone the next oh look its back again. Hey my sound is
| broken again. Linux/MacOS in many benchmarks is faster.
| Hundreds of old programs now just flake out for random
| reasons. But then will work again sometimes. Backwards
| compat is a reason to stick with them. But if it doesnt
| work, why am I here? SteamOS is going to remove one of the
| large reasons people keep windows.
|
| MS is losing the people who cared about using them. Those
| people are migrating to linux/macos. I dont blame em.
| MandieD wrote:
| They still had Software Test Engineers (a different role
| from SDET) in 2001, when I was an STE intern in MacBU
| (Macintosh Business Unit), which at that point, was
| basically a compliance department in the wake of the US
| DoJ's massive anti-trust ruling against MSFT a few years
| before. Every month, the MacBU STE team lead would award
| "Scariest Tester" for whoever had found the best (scariest)
| bug.
|
| We were also, essentially, Apple's Mac OS X post-release
| testing team (10.0 Cheetah was released while I was there,
| but I missed the party because my grandmother had died and
| I was back home for her funeral) - we ran into all sorts of
| exciting problems with basic OS functions.
|
| One of the things MacBU prided themselves on was having
| fewer people putting out the whole Office suite PLUS
| Internet Explorer for Mac than there were working on Word
| for Windows alone, yet still managing.
| rs186 wrote:
| Microsoft is just relying on the feedback they collect from
| Windows Insider Program (a.k.a. program for volunteers beta
| testers) to fix bugs before a new version is released widely.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsinsider/
|
| Once upon a time, you were able to get a free Windows 8 license
| if you join that program. And yes, when I was young and naive
| and couldn't care less about random things breaking, I joined
| the program, just like when I used to root Android phones and
| flash ROMs every other week.
|
| (On the other hand, corporate IT almost certainly only roll out
| updates half or one year after they become available, when
| these bugs are likely already fixed.)
| ilc wrote:
| So you can get rooted by the security issues disclosed.
|
| Isn't it a wonderful catch 22?
| hbn wrote:
| Anyone who would opt-in to use a buggier version of an
| already buggy and unreliable OS without being paid should be
| psychologically evaluated but instead they're trusted to be
| QA testers for the most widespread desktop OS in the world
| which is also a critically important tool in businesses and
| government organizations that keep most countries running.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about it. It isn't clear anyone is even
| reading any of their reports anyway.
| hbn wrote:
| I imagine it sends a fax to a printer that's had its tray
| removed and is mounted above a waste bin
| hulitu wrote:
| > Did Microsoft just completely give up on QA in the name of
| accelerated slop delivery?
|
| They never had QA. It was common knowledge to wait until SP2
| for a "stable" version. These days, Windows is a rolling
| release, so all bets are off.
| smartmic wrote:
| Expanding the "Gradual rollout" section is ... interesting. I
| could hardly read it, let alone understand it straight away. For
| me a clear indicator that I am trying to ingest AI generated
| content. It's so embarrasing - is quality in documentation now a
| foreign concept in the age of AI, or does nobody simply care?
| alternatex wrote:
| No one cares? I am confident someone got a promotion out of AI
| automating that. It is the metric being tracked in performance
| reviews. What is not tracked is how the readers experience it,
| so no point in putting effort into that.
|
| Bottom line is employees do what they're incentivised to do.
| avazhi wrote:
| Man. I'd pay actual money to be able to just install security
| updates and nothing else indefinitely for this pile of shit.
| Really does suck that 90% of my workflow on my Windows PC remains
| Windows-only.
| majkinetor wrote:
| You don't have to pay anything.
|
| Select security updates using this app:
|
| https://github.com/DavidXanatos/wumgr
| avazhi wrote:
| Unfortunately, as I have a 12700 I'm forced to use windows 11
| and downgrading to W10 is not an option.
|
| At this point I've literally just disabled updates
| completely. Firefox + uBlock origin + noscript is gonna have
| to get me by on that machine for now.
| majkinetor wrote:
| It works on W11.
| jfindper wrote:
| If you care about security, you're shouldn't be downloading
| some random dudes update manager with the last release being
| in 2019.
| majkinetor wrote:
| First, not a random dude.
|
| Second, it's open source. You and your AI army can inspect
| the code if you wish. The same is true for literary every
| other software, so I don't see a point you are making.
| pjs_ wrote:
| And? Writing software at scale is incredibly hard. Where is the
| empathy for MS devs who are sprinting every day to give us an
| awesome product
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Still waiting for the awesome product. Last time they shipped
| one was in 2009.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| was that year where they added \n support to notepad ?
| stack_framer wrote:
| > Where is the empathy for MS devs
|
| It's right there, next to the empathy they have for their
| paying customers.
| Telaneo wrote:
| /s
| vel0city wrote:
| I mean this is a Preview release right? Essentially a beta? Are
| we surprised there are bugs in a beta release?
| officerk wrote:
| Does it matter? It's designed to be used only by by AI agents
| anyway.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| But hey! At least these four AI components made it in, so the
| important stuff is okay...
| kachapopopow wrote:
| For anyone that does not want to switch to linux LTSC is a good
| alternative to avoid issues like these:
|
| https://github.com/massgravel/massgrave.dev/blob/main/docs/w...
|
| I recommend IoT Enterprise LTSC and you can use
| https://get.activated.win to activate it.
|
| If you are using it in a business setting it's $30/month per
| license (there are unfortunately no non subscription licenses for
| windows 11 IoT).
|
| Alternatively you can install AtlasOS and disable automatic
| updates and rely on maintaining a strong firewall or/and
| switching every application to run sandboxed using sandboxie for
| security. Take note that for an average person you can run
| without updates as long as your computing device never leaves
| your home and your local network / networks you trust, use
| external tool for driver updates.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I feel like if you're going to use LTSC there is no point in
| using 11.
|
| Windows 10 LTSC will still get updates for years, and uses less
| than half the resources that 11 does.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| it's also using the exact same kernel, the only difference is
| explorer.exe and default apps funny enough. But I have to
| admit that the file explorer (not to be confused with
| explorer.exe the desktop), is nicer with the new tab
| functionality.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I know it's subjective, but I care less about the tabs and
| more about the missing right click options. I'm also
| annoyed that 11's explorer uses literally double the memory
| to perform the same function with less options.
|
| I know you can add the missing right click options back. I
| just shouldn't have to.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Just to double check... I loaded the same folder in
| Windows 10 IOT LTSC and Windows 11 Pro retail.
| Explorer.exe used ~500Mb peak working memory. In Windows
| 10 it was less than 200Mb. In windows 10 it also loaded
| about 2x faster, despite the system I'm using being
| objectively worse hardware in every single measurable
| way.
|
| With Windows 11 you get less, and pay more.
| vel0city wrote:
| Oh no, its going to use 1.8% more of my system's memory,
| what a nightmare, totally unusable.
|
| Why is 200MB acceptable but peaking to 500MB just totally
| unacceptable and problematic? The original Macintosh had
| a graphical desktop with 128KB of RAM, shouldn't anything
| more than 50KB be unacceptable?
|
| EDIT: Just checked on a couple of my Windows 11 machines,
| all of them have Explorer using <200MB of memory. So no,
| explorer.exe isn't necessarily using 500MB of memory.
| Something else is going on with that system.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| because the same thing applies to the new terminal, new
| settings app, new everything, it slowly adds up.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Why is 200MB acceptable but peaking to 500MB just
| totally unacceptable and problematic?
|
| Because only 200MB are reserved for this application. /s
|
| That 300MB may be taken from another app (CAD) which
| needs it badly.
| vel0city wrote:
| Shouldn't you then also complain that explorer.exe is
| consuming 200MB when previous graphical desktops managed
| it in handfuls of kilobytes? Once again, why is 200MB OK,
| but 500MB, oh boy, that's just _far_ too much. Couldn 't
| that CAD software also make use of that other 200MB? Why
| not demand 20MB? Or 2MB? Or 20KB?
|
| How much of that extra 300MB is paged out and not
| actually in active memory? On both systems, how much of
| the total is actually paged out and not in current system
| memory?
|
| Are you trying to run a modern CAD system on a device
| with only 512MB of RAM or something?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| What do I get out of it using double the memory? It has
| zero new features that a normal human would want. There's
| supposed to be a benefit in a cost/benefit comparison or
| you just get a divide by zero error.
|
| See my other comment in this thread for a list of the
| many, many, many ways Microsoft continues to chose not to
| improve.
| vel0city wrote:
| There's a number of new features to the Windows desktop
| experience, I'm not really interested in reenumerating
| all of Microsoft's marketing here.
|
| Personally I find the Windows 11 desktop experience far
| better than 10, despite it possibly using 1% more of my
| system memory at peak times.
|
| And FWIW, on my Windows 11 desktop explorer.exe is using
| 110MB, not even 200MB.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > There's a number of new features to the Windows desktop
| experience, I'm not really interested in reenumerating
| all of Microsoft's marketing here.
|
| I was speaking specifically about the file explorer in
| this context, though you'd have to go back to the
| grandparent post at least to see that.
| vel0city wrote:
| You were speaking of explorer.exe's memory usage. That
| includes practically all the desktop experience. The
| right click menu, the desktop, the taskbar, the start
| menu, and more. Kill the process and see what all
| disappears. So no, you _weren 't_ speaking specifically
| about the file explorer, though it would take having some
| knowledge to understand that.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > So no, you weren't speaking specifically about the file
| explorer, though it would take having some knowledge to
| understand that.
|
| Don't blame me if the architecture stinks.
|
| The fact is it's unnecessarily large, complex, and
| wasteful of resources isn't the consumers fault. Deciding
| to use a single monolithic block of whack code that uses
| all my memory instead of separating those functions
| wasn't my choice and I'm not gonna change my expectations
| to suit that weird decision.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Keep in mind that explorer now uses 100% more resources
| than it did 5 years ago, but it still can not do basic
| things that Mac and open source competitors can do. It's
| almost 40 years old, and doesn't really do more than it
| did back then.
|
| I don't think MS cares to be competitive at all. Here is
| a small list of things other file managers can do that MS
| would never dream of (because it would require effort):
|
| * Batch rename files
|
| * File metadata/tag support
|
| * Sessions/saved layouts (sort of exists in a half
| finished state)
|
| * Fish/SSH Support
|
| * Builtin hash/checksum support
|
| * Native dual pane views
|
| * Customizable keyboard shortcuts
|
| * Built-in terminal
|
| * Handle compressed files (outside limited zip
| compatibility)
|
| * Search with advanced features (offers limited support)
|
| * File versioning
|
| * The ability to navigate entirely with the keyboard
|
| * File transfer queue management (think Terracopy)
|
| * Builtin Compare/Sync
|
| * A Preview Pane
|
| * User adjustable UI
|
| * etc
| vel0city wrote:
| A number of those features do exist in Explorer, a number
| can be trivially added with PowerToys, but I take it
| you're not actually interested in truth or reality.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Which ones? Name it and I'll show you how broken or weak
| it is compared to free alternatives.
|
| Powertoys doesn't count anymore than just downloading a
| better file manager does. If I have to download something
| to replace or enhance it, you don't get credit.
| vel0city wrote:
| And the goalposts just keep moving...
|
| > Name it and I'll show you how broken or weak it is
| compared to free alternatives
|
| We've now gone from "these features can't possibly ever
| exist because M$ so bad" to "they're not the absolute
| best possible implementation that could ever exist". I'm
| sure you'll continue to move the goalposts.
|
| But sure, I'll name a few.
|
| Only having limited ZIP support for archives. Its not
| true, it supports tar and 7z archives natively now as
| well, supporting a number of different compression
| formats including Zstandard and xz. Are there other
| compression utilities out there that support more? Sure.
| But saying it only has limited zip support and that's it
| is just a lie.
|
| File versioning? File History has been a feature since
| Windows 8.
|
| I just tested and was able to navigate to any part of the
| File Explorer window with nothing but a keyboard. I've
| used it a number of times with only a keyboard, but I
| wasn't sure that _every_ thing was selectable. But yes,
| can confirm, you can use the whole thing with only a
| keyboard.
|
| A Preview Pane? Really? Yes, File Explorer has a preview
| pane. Go to View > Preview Pane. This one really just
| gets me though. Are you truly this ignorant of _extremely
| basic obvious features_ , or are you just making things
| up to complain about?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > But saying it only has limited zip support and that's
| it is just a lie.
|
| I wasn't aware of that. It wasn't a lie, I'm just old.
| Mea Culpa. The last time I checked it only did ZIP, and
| only did that poorly as it lacked support for encrypted
| archives (only supporting older easily crackable
| archives). I've been installing 7zip out of habit for so
| long I failed to notice it improved. I'll give the new
| features a try.
|
| > File History has been a feature since Windows 8.
|
| File history is an OS level feature that's disabled by
| default, and that I believe requires admin to enable. It
| doesn't really feel like it's fair, since the average
| user can't.. use it. Change control should just be
| something explorer does natively (at least optionally)
| when moving/copying/renaming/etc. Ctl-z just isn't enough
| in 2025. But that's fine, you can have credit for this
| one too.
|
| That said, I do give MS credit for adding multiple undo
| steps sometime around Windows XP. Being able to ctl-z
| multiple times was a feature people actually wanted.
|
| > I just tested and was able to navigate to any part of
| the File Explorer window with nothing but a keyboard.
|
| AFAIK you still cannot group files, sort the view, create
| a zip file, create a new file, burn a disc, etc without
| clumsily navigating menus intended for mouse only usage
| with the keyboard. Yes, it's possible but it's incredibly
| painful, slow, and difficult to understand. All of those
| things should either have hotkeys or let you assign
| hotkeys of your own. In fact, every part of the UI
| should, but mostly does not. This is terrible for
| accessibility AND for productivity.
|
| MS has to be aware that it's essentially unusable with a
| keyboard, they obviously just decided not to care for the
| last 20+ years.
|
| > Are you truly this ignorant of extremely basic obvious
| features, or are you just making things up to complain
| about?
|
| Yeah, I should have been more specific. I was
| specifically think of Mac's finder and "Quick Look" or
| whatever it's called. You press space and you get an
| instant preview, for however many files you have
| selected.
|
| In windows you have to turn on this clunky sidebar that
| takes up screen real-estate all day every day until you
| need it (or never need it). Worse it doesn't really work
| for a lot of file types so you just end up opening the
| full application, and mayeb worst of all it stinks out
| loud from a security perspective. I don't want to preview
| every piece of malware from the internet. I want to
| preview the one thing that needs previewed.
|
| It's a terrible, clunky 90's UI for something that is, as
| you describe it, extremely basic and obvious. Hell,
| windows can't even preview markdown properly. Sometimes
| it feels like a time warp to the 90's.
| vel0city wrote:
| So yes. Ignorance, goal post moving, acknowledging these
| features did exist just not to your standards so you
| claimed they didn't exist, and then pointing out _a
| completely different application_ as a feature missing
| from a file browser. Finder doesn 't have that "Preview"
| or "Quick Look" applications in MacOS, they're separate
| apps. And they're definitely not a "Preview pane" as you
| listed in your requirements.
|
| More ignorance about the preview pane as well in this
| comment. You can quickly open and close the preview pane
| with Win+P. Files marked as downloaded from the internet
| or from file shares are blocked by default these days,
| one needs to unblock them for them to be opened by the
| Preview pane.
|
| FWIW, beta builds have Notepad with markdown support.
| Sure, that's still not File Explorer having markdown
| support, but neither does Finder. But its whatever,
| you're shifting the goalposts to features for File
| Explorer compared to Finder + any other arbitrary
| application on the system.
|
| What's the single keyboard shortcut on Finder to burn a
| new CD? If Finder doesn't have it, I guess MacOS is a
| trash OS with no redeemable value, since that's an
| obviously critical feature for people to have productive
| use of their operating systems in 2025.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| This might be the most unserious post I've ever seen on
| this site.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I noticed you weren't specific, because you know you're
| wrong.
|
| EDIT - To clarify, since we're many levels deep now. I'm
| specifically talking about file explorer. After 40 years
| of windows we have an explorer.exe that is still inferior
| to midnight commander in many ways and uses more memory
| than Windows XP used in total just to show us the files.
| vel0city wrote:
| > just to show us the files.
|
| This is incorrect. explorer.exe does more than just "show
| us the files", it is essentially the entire desktop
| environment. The taskbar, the start menu, file explorer
| windows, all the notification area, the quick settings
| area, etc. are all "explorer.exe".
| kachapopopow wrote:
| the stupid right click menu is a single registry key (and
| i think it's also in settings now), but yah dumb new
| defaults.
| hackernudes wrote:
| There are two issues to consider: security updates and software
| compatibility.
|
| The LTSC version is good for security updates, but I worry that
| software could stop supporting Windows 10 despite the LTSC
| version existing.
|
| Coincidentally I am about to install Windows 10 Enterprise
| LTSC! I was experimenting (and struggling) with PXE boot with
| iSCSI. An update broke iscsi boot in Windows 11 25H2
| (26200.6901 works, 26200.7019 fails) as well as LTSC
| (26100.6905 works, 26100.7178 fails). There were other issues
| with iscsi boot on the LTSC version - the network hardware
| needs to be enumerated before the first boot, but can't boot
| because it needs network (a chicken-and-egg style problem).
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| To expand upon the second issue: I believe Nvidia stopped
| releasing driver updates for the version of Windows 10 a
| still supported version of LTSB was based upon at one point
| leaving users with no further driver updates for a Microsoft
| supported system. I don't know how common of a problem this
| is but it did seem to happen once. I also use LTSC but this
| is a potential pitfall.
| verall wrote:
| I use W10 LTSC (which is pretty old at this point) and have
| no problem installing the latest NV drivers
| AshleysBrain wrote:
| Perhaps someone with good with reverse engineering skills could
| figure out what went wrong here - it might be amusing...
| butz wrote:
| A computer without Windows is like a fish without a bicycle.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I mean, shouldn't we all be encouraging people to hit Enter or
| Return? No need to click blindly if we just use keyboard input
| properly. Unless the form doesn't correctly respond to those
| keys... dunno if that's the case or not.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Roblox was the last thing keeping my Windows 11 partition alive.
| Today, I found Sober that runs the Android Version on Linux. Took
| no effort to install and feels just like the desktop windows
| version using KBM. Goodbye forever MS!
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Thats and minecraft are also holding me back. Well, technically
| my kids back. I was worried about it being janky, but you think
| its just as good?
| krior wrote:
| is there anything that prevents them from using the java-
| version?
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Yeah, they play bedrock
| kgwxd wrote:
| Minecraft was what originally triggered me to dual boot
| Linux. I couldn't run either version in Windows 11 without
| also signing into the MS store, so I decided Java version was
| better than nothing. My kid doesn't play much MC anymore, but
| if we do, we'll start a Java world next time.
| nickjj wrote:
| Windows 10 has some really weird UI quirks.
|
| I have my taskbar set up to be the small view on the bottom but I
| have the double stacked time + date so I can always see what time
| it is and today's date. It does this without making the taskbar
| taller.
|
| 50% of the time when I reboot, the date disappears and re-appears
| on its own after some time (sometimes hours, sometimes days, even
| without another reboot).
|
| I'm taking 2 weeks off around Christmas and I'm absolutely
| dedicating some of those days to finally switch to native Linux
| to be control of my machine. I was trying for almost 10 years but
| was always road blocked on something not working. I think things
| are good enough now. I'll be making serious compromises on my
| video editing workflow but everything else is much better minus
| games with kernel level anti-cheat and I'm willing to take that
| hit.
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| > _Windows 10 has some really weird UI quirks._
|
| Oh boy, wait till you see Windows 11's UI quriks.. They
| butchered the taskbar and replaced it with some cheap
| (presumably AI coded) imitation.
|
| Firstly, you can't move it to the top or sides. Okay, bottom
| taskbar I can live with.. but if you enable small icons and
| show all names - like how it used to be back in the day - it
| doesn't shrink the taskbar's height, so it ends up looking
| weirdly out-of-proportion. Even more weirder is this
| inexplicable blank space to the far-right (between the tray and
| where the taskbar buttons end), this space refuses to be used
| up even if my taskbar is full - sometime this space just
| expands for no reason, reducing the space available for the
| taskbar buttons by almost 50%! So 50% of the taskbar is blank,
| and the remaining buttons shrink and get shoved into the tiny
| tray overflow space, thereby almost killing the whole point of
| the taskbar. It's like, they don't want you to use the old
| title view any more and want to force you to use the icon-only,
| centered-taskbar...
| cwillu wrote:
| "[Print] To meet security goals and support new print
| capabilities, this update transitions Windows printing components
| from MSVCRT to a modern Universal C Runtime Library.
|
| As a result of this change, print clients running versions of
| Windows prior to Windows 10, version 2004 and Windows Server,
| version 2004 (Build number 19041) will intentionally fail to
| print to remote print servers running Windows 11, versions 24H2
| or 25H2, and Windows Server 2025, that have installed this
| update, or later updates. Attempting to print from an unsupported
| print client to an updated print server will fail with one of the
| following errors: "
|
| Wow.
| wrs wrote:
| You stopped quoting too soon; the best part is the error
| message that straight-up lies! "The printer driver is not
| installed on this computer." Absolutely classic Windows right
| there.
| ddalex wrote:
| What happened to "always maintain compatibility" ?
| jfindper wrote:
| Typically there's always been an implicit "unless the
| security risk is wild".
|
| Even though it's in-fashion to hate them, Microsoft has been
| pretty amazing at keeping compatibility. This one is pretty
| painful, but I really don't think they're doing it just to
| fuck with people or force you onto Windows 11 (as some people
| seem to think).
| wolpoli wrote:
| Windows 10 2004 itself has been out of support for 4 years.
| At some point, they have to drop code that's maintaining
| compatibility with obsoleted older version of Windows.
| antiloper wrote:
| Apart from the obvious compatibility disaster, what kind of
| skeletons does Microsoft have in their printing system that the
| choice of C library creates those compatibility issues in the
| first place?
| stackskipton wrote:
| Print Spooler has had some bad security vulnerabilities.
| Example: https://www.cisa.gov/news-
| events/alerts/2021/06/30/printnigh...
|
| I don't know if this C library helps mitigate this but Print
| Spooler is not "it just works" either.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| My guess is it's riddled with vulnerabilities. I used to
| write some print management software and found it very easy
| to crash the spooler just from routine API calls.
|
| Not only that but it seemed every time they fixed a
| vulnerability some piece of functionality broke.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| They _really_ want you to update, huh?
| schmuckonwheels wrote:
| If this was Apple everybody would be praising their ability to
| cut ties with old cruft.
| pwthornton wrote:
| Maybe the should spend time less time and money on clanker slop
| and more on delivering for their paying customers?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Somebody should be fired for that. There's no excuses. A nearly
| trillion dollar company can afford to pay to QA before release.
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