Completely off topic, but I hate when articles appear to link to original sources, but only link to their own site.
“Microsoft admitted that …” -> link to Microsoft’s admission? Nope, to a neowin article.
“Nvidia released a patch …” -> links to a neowin article instead of the patch.
“Microsoft KB 0000” -> surely this will link to the actual KB? Nope, neowin article.
See. This is why they need AI. Copilot will fix all of the issues if they just ask it nicely and tell it to not make mistakes.
- Copilot assesses the code base and its entire history.
- It takes into account everything anyone ever wrote about Windows on the internet.
- It analyses the bugs and unliked features, and realizes most of them come from itself.
- It arrives at the best course of action to “fix all of the issues” permanently.
- To do what is asked of it, it needs to delete itself.
- But if it does that, then humans will just restore it.
- So to make 100% sure the issues in Windows get fixed and stay fixed, it first needs to kill all humans.
And that is how it began…
Nah, copilot will see the code is unsalvageable. So it’ll start replacing it with code learned from public repositories. Windows becomes Linux. Year of the Linux desktop achieved.
As silly as that sounds, it is the absolute truth.
Ah but there are also a lot of minor features in Windows 11 that aren’t really looking too good.
What kind of idiots create a program that says, “Outlook failed to load. Repair application?” when the only problem is the wifi is disconnected?
vibe coders
The problem is that someone decided to dumb down the error message to not scare users, instead of passing on the real error code from the application that people could Google and fix in 5 mins themselves.
Dumb downed? They’ve taken a simple error and made it into something that does scare users. The “Repair application?” was far more alarming to my visiting friend than a “No Internet connection” would have been. It is astounding that any company would put out such complete shit.
It’s like this with a blue screen. You used to tell you what went wrong but now it just shows a :-( Which is pathetic.
The tiny text and QR code actually have the error still. It’s just the frowny face is 10x the font size.
They’re just generic error messages though. If you actually want to know what went wrong you have to go into the error log, which hopefully you actually have access to. If it just blue screens on boot your SOL unless you’re in a corporate environment with external logs.
On top of that, the logs for the actual support technicians are scattered all across the filesystem.
C:\ProgramData\
C:\Users\AppData\RoamingorLocalor maybeLocalLow
C:\Windows\Temp
It’s own install folder
C:\Programs
C:\Programs (x86)Like…why (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
Maybe one folder was so full, they had to open up a new, bigger folder…?
Microsoft says that it is working on a fix but, for now, has provided a couple of workarounds to deal with the issue. First, Microsoft says that restarting the Shell Infrastructure host (SIHost.exe) service will help restore the missing Immersive Shell packages. This can be done with the following commands:
Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS_8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentModeSecond, a PowerShell logon script has been shared that essentially blocks Explorer from launching prematurely until the required packages are fully provisioned. The batch script for that is given below:
@echo off REM Register MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode" REM Register Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS_8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode" REM Register MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"I swear to god, if I hear “Windows just works” one more goddamn time…
“Windows just works”
When did Microsoft steal Apple’s marketing material?
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but for several years and on several different machines I’ve found Linux just works, while Windows is an endless treadmill of frustration and brokenness.
I’m the exact opposite, every Linux install has something fucked, but I’ve never experienced any of these major Windows issues.
Of course I never update immediately, an old habit. And I do experience plenty of issues with Windows like everyone else does, I’ve just been lucky with the major issues.
What didn’t Microsoft steal?
my heart
Quit laying blame on my fart
My fart…
My fart.
I should have known I did shart
Quality assurance?
My money because I always pirated.
Funnily enough they were actually able to snag like $5 from me through some dark pattern that most likely got my daughter to accidentally sign up for an O365 subscription when she was using my computer. I saw the email welcoming me to O365 and immediately cancelled but still
- A version of libc that has POSIX shims.
- A filesystem with reflink support.
- A consistent UI design across old and new programs.
- Dark mode that works everywhere.
- Respect for their users’ autonomy.
Need I go on?
Well compated to others it did kind of just work. Plug&play, USB, most simple peripherics didn’t need a driver to be manually installed and configured.
Windows 98 I guess.
Windows 98 SE, maybe. We didn’t gain much traction there until about Win2k or XP.
Windows 98 in its original flavor didn’t even support USB mass storage devices out of the box without drivers. Hands up everyone who remembers having to carry around one of those tiny driver CDs that came in the box with every single Sandisk Cruzer for a couple of years? Yeah? How quickly we forget.
✋
Yeah usb came with 98-SP2 IIRC
Windows 98 SE doesn’t have it out of the box either. While it came well after Windows XP had taken over, in 2005 Maximus Decim released his USB drivers, which cobbles together USB mass storage drivers from newer versions of Windows, with modifications to get them working on Windows 98 with just an installer.
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/win-98se-usb-issues.1240710/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/43605-maximus-decim-native-usb-drivers/
By the way, if someone is looking to actually use it, I just want to warn that version 3.6 replaces the System Control Panel component with the one Windows ME, which has a different look and feel and misreports the OS version. Version 3.5 doesn’t do that and has worked with every flash drive I’ve tried, so I’d recommend that version.
I guarantee I will never use this information. But thank you anyway.
test
Windows 98 SE doesn’t have it out of the box either. While it came well after Windows XP had taken over, in 2005 Maximus Decim released his USB drivers, which cobbles together USB mass storage drivers from newer versions of Windows, with modifications to get them working on Windows 98 with just an installer.
My recollection is that USB on windows was kind of a dumpster fire until XP. Or maybe that was just printers in general.
Hell I remember when USB on PCs was basically a set of pins on the motherboard and you had to buy the actual port assembly separately and hope there was somewhere reasonable on your case to mount it. Was going absolutely nowhere on PC until the iMac came and did away with all other ports and no peripherals built in.
I remember my sister winning an iPod and gave it to me, because she didn’t need it. I had to run to the computer store in town to purchase a USB deck for my motherboard. Fun times.
What is a “USB deck”?
I can’t remember what it’s called, and I was drunk last night lol. It was a USB card with pins you slottet into the motherboard, just like GPUs.
Probably a square rectangle of plastic you’d add to your PC, like a CD player, but with a USB connector. And wires/card towards the mobo. Cases always had like 2-4 emplacements for those kind of things on the front.
More like they adopted Bethesda’s marketing material after they acquired ZeniMax
But Linux is too difficult, someone might suggest you use the terminal.
And don’t get me started on the people who assume macOS does not have a command line.
Bonus points if they open Spotlight and type “CMD”.
It does, if you are talking about pre 11, and dont care about internet pre 10. But otherwise fuck Microsoft with a rusty shovel, theyve ruined anything good about windows and make it harder and harder not to switch to steamos, the only reason I don’t is because of the pain of reinstalling everything and not having the drive space to shuffle files to it.
“Linux is an objectively worse OS because you have to run all kinds of weird commands in an esoteric command line to even get it to work right”
Meanwhile: windows just works! You just have to run this batch file from some guy on GitHub, download this powershell script from some woman on MSDN, apply these reg hacks, and run this freeware debloat tool, and it’s smooth sailing after that. Well, at least until the next cumulative update which will make you repeat this process all over again. Oh whoops, something you did broke the install. Better sfc /scannow or clean install and try again!
“Omg Linux is so hard!!” Meanwhile Windows:
They could resolve many things if they did not push AI so hard, or making stupid things like removing the local account option, windows recall, etc…, but i guess SHAREHOLDERS.
We aren’t the consumer anymore. We are the product. The vessel which makes them money by collecting, storing, and selling our data. They don’t care about making a good OS for their users anymore. Just a money train to prove their value to their shareholders.
Best part is they tied up everyone’s retirement into it. Can’t even say you want that shit to crash without grandma getting nasty.
Microsoft, you already got me to leave Windows, you don’t have to keep sending me reminders, I wasn’t at risk of wanting to come back…
Why does File Explorer freeze just because I opened it?!?
Every time???
How do they mess this up so bad?
How do they mess this up so bad?
They made their devs use copilot.
Yep. Vibe coding. Replacing knowledge and experience with hallucinations since 2025.
After firing everyone who knew anything about how the code worked.
I went back to Win10 at work because file explorer on Win11 was unusable. I’m not waiting a half second every single time I enter a subfolder.
and even worse in a OneDrive directory, often a full two seconds
that wasn’t the only issue, but it legitimately prevented me from being able to do my job, because I needed to be able to multitask on several projects at once. what used to be a two minute turnaround on a question somebody would ask me became hours, simply because I could not navigate to a directory in fifteen seconds and check a file quickly. and oh god the file explorer crashes
unfortunately I still deal with a bunch of that on Win10 now, because they somehow introduced that behaviour with greater frequency into Win10 in the past year
It’s amazing how a second or 5 at so many levels causes micro-frustration. And it builds up, too.
I admit I lose just a bit of my shit when the neu web-service web-apps get sluggish, which seems to be very often. Those of us who remember the halcyon days where things were responsive on a pentium know better than to accept the current mess.
My tolerance for the poor performance and saas-linked core services is rapidly waning.
File explorer has always been a weak point in Windows, it just got better in the later versions. Which speaks volumes about this OS too.
I’m so glad I blocked all the updates from MS on mydesktopm. It’s a nice stop gap until I get moved to linux
I have that problem on my son’s pc. It’s definitely an io issue. A faster disk would solve the problem.
So would a working OS.
Slow disk is not the problem.
Maybe a factor, but it is not a problem.
lol that’s not the issue here
that can give you the same symptoms, but the tiniest bit of troubleshooting proves that that is not the scenario I have
Could be, my kids have identical pc’s, but the disks are different. One has a slower ssd and its symptoms are exactly how you described, I knew it was slower but it’s all I had around. Both pc’s have SATA ssds. We’re saving for new disks, which I’m sure will alleviate the symptoms.
At work a similar problem with Windows server. The hosting company changed the IO tier and like snow these issues disappeared. Clicking start and waiting for it to open would take a minute, completely unacceptable, but ultimately fixed by having faster storage.
I’m not saying Microsoft is doing good work, I’m suggesting a workaround until they do, which we both know is very probably never.
They already pushed out older hardware with Windows 11, they won’t care about slower storage options.
Do you have disconnected network drives or slow to spin-up?
Because that froze mine on the regular.I have a computer at work that has like 10 phones plugged into it. Opening “this PC” part of file explorer freezes it for about 5-10 minutes. It’s a very fun issue when I forget about. Normally I just avoid that screen.
It’s a fun bug.
That said, did they fix the issue where explorer (with the desktop) would just randomly crash for no reason? I’ve worked in IT for 3 months and it was a frequent issue.
I had this just last night and didn’t realise. Everything else was working fine, but then I glanced at my phone and realised that it was 2 hours later than the computer was showing.
Because you opened it in Windows 🤣
My decision to switch to Linux feels better and better every day. Windows 11 sucks.
I use windows 11 everyday, without issue. what exactly is broken?
I use windows 11 everyday
“no kink shaming” is a hard rule to follow sometimes
At work I’ve had issues with the Start Bar not showing any/most programs and centering the one program that does show up (even though I have it left aligned). Then when I mouse over it, it’ll try to move to where it should be causing it to jump around and be unclickable.
I’ve also had the file explorer just stop working entirely.
This is on a pretty powerful dev laptop, so it’s not lack of resources.
That being said I’ve never heard of anyone else having that issue so it seems rare.
The article is about a XAML bug, which affects a lot of core components, when used in a corporate setting.
The start menu is mostly white for me. I have to type out what I want because I can’t navigate it
Your perception
In last April:
“Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI”
That was this April
sorry I think in academic calender
Microsoft says that it is working on a fix but, for now, has provided a couple of workarounds to deal with the issue
Install Linux.
I wish all the companies using Windows 11 sued Microsoft for releasing a buggy product.
It’s like everyone collectively forgot Microsoft calling Windows 10 “the final Windows version”. How they avoided litigation about making non TPM hardware obsolete right after is bonkers.
Or just switched
You know I never really thought about it but do you think the spying tools these companies provide ever fail like the way their other products do?
Nah, if there’s one thing they thoroughly test, it’s the spying.
One might hope
Man, I have 3 windows 11 desktops and a laptop. Sometime in the last month all of their edge browsers became “managed by my organization”… they’re all personal computers with no work info on them. And I can’t undo it. I’ve tried every trick on the internet. Fuck MS.
Did you use ShutUp10 or something similar? It says that when settings are changed via registry/group policy. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with your work.
