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Windows 11 is now used by 400 million devices, leaked Microsoft data shows
All eyes are now on a potential Windows 12 launch in 2024.
www.theverge.com
Windows 11 [2021]
- Thread starter eastmen
- Start date
www.theverge.com
Nope as far as i can see it cant be changed. its much worse than 10Well if you can make the Start menu icons smaller on Win11 I can't figure out how
Also: on Win10 I can drag the Start menu to use nearly my entire 4k screen or as small as only 10 app lines, whatever I want/need, its up to me & its great.
I got to work on a Win7 computer the other day and it was glorious. In the right-click menu it actually says "Copy", "Paste" etc. instead of some unknown icons that you must hover over to see what they do. Not to mention the start menu is actually a start menu. I'd almost forgetten what it looked like. Many of the changes made in Win11 are what I call "reverse innovation".
I just clicked my start menu on my Win11 PC and about half the usable space in there is called "Recommended" and it's just random screenshots I took when I was trying to remember something
. Most of the remaining space outside of "Recommended" is occupied by things I have never and will never use. ESPN, Instagram, WhatsApp, Prime Video, Clipchamp, TikTok, Messenger, and some others. What in the fuck.
I just clicked my start menu on my Win11 PC and about half the usable space in there is called "Recommended" and it's just random screenshots I took when I was trying to remember something
. Most of the remaining space outside of "Recommended" is occupied by things I have never and will never use. ESPN, Instagram, WhatsApp, Prime Video, Clipchamp, TikTok, Messenger, and some others. What in the fuck.
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try this for old right click menuI got to work on a Win7 computer the other day and it was glorious. In the right-click menu it actually says "Copy", "Paste" etc. instead of some unknown icons that you must hover over to see what they do. Not to mention the start menu is actually a start menu. I'd almost forgetten what it looked like. Many of the changes made in Win11 are what I call "reverse innovation".
I just clicked my start menu on my Win11 PC and about half the usable space in there is called "Recommended" and it's just random screenshots I took when I was trying to remember something
How to bring back classic context menu on Windows 11 - Pureinfotech
On Windows 11, to bring back the classic right-click context menu with all the options, you can edit this key in the Registry or through CMD.
pureinfotech.com
I've actually already done this on my personal computer, and my laptop runs Win10 and I will never update it to 11. But I don't want to make registry changes on clients' computers because it's a PITA and I don't want to get a bazillion support calls if it ever goes wrong in an update or something.try this for old right click menu
How to bring back classic context menu on Windows 11 - Pureinfotech
On Windows 11, to bring back the classic right-click context menu with all the options, you can edit this key in the Registry or through CMD.
On another note I ran into something odd the other day. Someone had bought a "new" computer on Amazon. I logged into it to install some software and it was Win11. I went to computer properties and saw that the CPU was i7-4675T. I don't know how but someone managed to install Win11 on a refurb Haswell and pass it off as a new computer in 2023.
Amazon is a scary place.
It's easy to install Win11 on almost anything. You just need to do a few tweaks to the install ISO. I think Rufus can do it all automatically. I have it on my old monster 4860HQ 980M ASUS gamer notebook with no TPM. It runs as well as ever.
By the way it's nice that MS has finally brought forth the taskbar labels. Gigabytes of updates later and we again have the power of the Win95 shell at our fingertips. The label width behavior is a bit strange however.
It's easy to install Win11 on almost anything. You just need to do a few tweaks to the install ISO. I think Rufus can do it all automatically. I have it on my old monster 4860HQ 980M ASUS gamer notebook with no TPM. It runs as well as ever.
By the way it's nice that MS has finally brought forth the taskbar labels. Gigabytes of updates later and we again have the power of the Win95 shell at our fingertips. The label width behavior is a bit strange however.
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As the saying goes "It's a jungle out there"
cheapchips
Veteran
I'm using Win 11 on my own PC for the first time, since unexpectedly I now have a wizzy gaming PC. I quite like it so far, mainly since the split windows options are helpful. I use the 2/3,1/3 split all the time.
What was annoying is that I couldn't get Gsync working on my shiny new monitor. That arrive a few days after the PC. Turns out that Windows display settings were still set to the 60Hz of my old monitor, causing tearing since games were running above that.
Took me a while to work that out. Oh, PC gaming, never change!
What was annoying is that I couldn't get Gsync working on my shiny new monitor. That arrive a few days after the PC. Turns out that Windows display settings were still set to the 60Hz of my old monitor, causing tearing since games were running above that.
Took me a while to work that out. Oh, PC gaming, never change!
cheapchips
Veteran
I had to swap my new monitor out as it had a small mark on it, just where the broswer address bar sits. Look me a few days to notice. Anyway, have a replacement screen, booted up a game to play and immediately notice tearing. Windows had defaulted back to 60Hz, even though it's showing as the same model of monitor.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I've been using Windows 11 on two gaming PCs since last year and it's not bad as some might make you believe as you're not put off by the tracking and advertising.
If either of those things bother you then get used to being in an endless war of attrition where Microsoft seemingly give the option to disable various tracking and data collection "features", but which will often reenable themselves on software updates. Likewise, the endless battle with Windows 11 if you chose not to use Microsoft software options (like EDGE), or Bing in any browser.
There are free anti spy tools for windows, like
O&O ShutUp10++
www.oo-software.com
O&O ShutUp10++
O&O ShutUp10++ – Free antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11
With the freeware O&O ShutUp10++, unwanted Windows 10 and 11 features can be disabled and the transfer of sensitive personal data onto Microsoft prevented.
www.oo-software.com
Microsoft will give Europeans the option to remove Edge and Bing from Windows
Microsoft is giving users of Windows 10 and Windows 11 living in the European Economic Area (EEA) greater control over their software. The company will soon be making it possible to extricate Microsoft Edge and Bing from the operating system.
betanews.com
If you're a Pihole user or have a modern firewall for your home network, you can choke out most (if not all) of the Microsoft tracking and any extraneous advertising nonsense.
I've been using Windows 11 since it came out to the "slow ring" on their OS Insider Beta update channel, and I've never received a single advertisement in my start menu or any other part of the OS. I do run Pihole at home, and I also have a pretty nifty Fortigate 61F UTM appliance with most of the UTM goodies turned on. It works very well for me, for whatever that's worth.
If I were to swap out my gaming rig Windows install for Linux tomorrow, I'd probably start by trying to use SteamOS...
I've been using Windows 11 since it came out to the "slow ring" on their OS Insider Beta update channel, and I've never received a single advertisement in my start menu or any other part of the OS. I do run Pihole at home, and I also have a pretty nifty Fortigate 61F UTM appliance with most of the UTM goodies turned on. It works very well for me, for whatever that's worth.
If I were to swap out my gaming rig Windows install for Linux tomorrow, I'd probably start by trying to use SteamOS...
hoom
Veteran
I got around to checking with our sysadmin on why my laptop is stuck on 22h1 and turns out not any policy he's aware of, spent the afternoon coaxing it into letting me upgrade:
Finally got 23H2 and blessed ungrouped taskbar icons
- Disconnect from the WSUS, found a bunch of updates
- One stuck erroring because the system recovery volume was too small -> fixed
- But still no sign of newer releases coming, PC healthcheck confirmed no issues but still nada.
- Downloaded the media creation tool & run from there -> errored
- Downloaded the ISO & run from that -> same error
- Turns out the EFI partition is too small but can't resize that because the system drive is beside it
- MS themselves say to mount it by cmd line & delete fonts to free up some space, tried that but still not working
- Had to also delete the non-en language files to free up enough.
Finally got 23H2 and blessed ungrouped taskbar icons
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can you provide some details on "system recovery volume too small" and "efi partition too small"I got around to checking with our sysadmin on why my laptop is stuck on 22h1 and turns out not any policy he's aware of, spent the afternoon coaxing it into letting me upgrade:
- Disconnect from the WSUS, found a bunch of updates
- One stuck erroring because the system recovery volume was too small -> fixed
- But still no sign of newer releases coming, PC healthcheck confirmed no issues but still nada.
- Downloaded the media creation tool & run from there -> errored
- Downloaded the ISO & run from that -> same error
- Turns out the EFI partition is too small but can't resize that because the system drive is beside it
- MS themselves say to mount it by cmd line & delete fonts to free up some space, tried that but still not working
- Had to also delete the non-en language files to free up enough.
Finally got 23H2 and blessed ungrouped taskbar icons
what is too small for each?
Yeah, modern machines built for Windows 10 would default-enable bitlocker for the user partition(s). The problem becomes, you need the whole windows bootloader chain to unlock those partitions.
That default EFI partition is how the machine is actually bootable, which then has just enough bootloader to validate the TPM contents and unlock the actual C:\ drive. The challenge then becomes, for things like a manufacturer's recovery or diagnostics stuff, they need to load it into an un-bitlocked drive. So rather than building another reserved, unencrypted partition, most of them just loaded it into the default EFI partition. They really shouldn't do that, or at the very least they should've made it substantially larger...
Ultimately this is a failure on the manufacturer's part. I'm actually a little surprised MS didn't make some Windows certification / qualification rules around junking up that partition.
That default EFI partition is how the machine is actually bootable, which then has just enough bootloader to validate the TPM contents and unlock the actual C:\ drive. The challenge then becomes, for things like a manufacturer's recovery or diagnostics stuff, they need to load it into an un-bitlocked drive. So rather than building another reserved, unencrypted partition, most of them just loaded it into the default EFI partition. They really shouldn't do that, or at the very least they should've made it substantially larger...
Ultimately this is a failure on the manufacturer's part. I'm actually a little surprised MS didn't make some Windows certification / qualification rules around junking up that partition.
hoom
Veteran
Indeed.
Maybe a tool that enables users to fix it without going to some pretty frigging obscure cli stuff.
At least having the Health checker check that there is sufficient space in EFI -> throw a warning 'hey you only have xxxMB free in your EFI, need to have at least yyyMB, here's how to fix that'
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