Gonna run System Restore in Windows 11? Microsoft says some of its apps won't

Users running the latest versions of Windows 11 are losing some Microsoft apps after running System Restore. The bug affects Windows applications that use the MSIX app package format running on Windows 11 version 22H2, according to a Redmond advisory. The MSIX packaging format was introduced in 2018 in Windows 10 as a way to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee Wiz, this OS totally seems ready for primetime

Gonna be a long painful march for 11 for the foreseeable future. Still getting regular doses of pain for for upgrading a still partially baked operating system.

Still waiting for even one "must have" feature.

[ThatOne]

Re: Gee Wiz, this OS totally seems ready for primetime

In this case "must have" = "no alternative", also known as "My way or the highway".

It's not like they allow you to keep using older, more user-friendly versions.

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ borked system restore a number of years ago

At some point in the past, it was very reliable and dare I say, dependable.

Not anymore

The last and FINAL time I used system restore, I created a restore point before doing some action that I percieved as being risky, after that action failed, I went to restore from the earlier restore point I created

The message "no restore points found" is enough to make your blood boil

Why do businesses insist on using this joke companies products in recent years is, beyond my understanding

[yetanotheraoc]

no restore points found

"At some point in the past, it was very reliable and dare I say, dependable."

Maybe it was, I never trusted them enough to try it out. Way back in the days of DOS I was burned by MSBACKUP that could not restore _any_ of my files. Mea culpa, a more rigorous disaster simulation on my part would have turned up this wee flaw well before time. To this day I'm still not sure what the point of that program was, maybe it was to get people to call them and desperately pay for support. Since then I have always rolled my own backups -- copy, xcopy, robocopy on Windows, lately rsync on Linux. I will admit to both using and recommending Apple's Time Machine, that's some well done software. To me, system restore means fresh image, reinstall apps, restore data from backup. Yes, it's tedious, but at least it's guaranteed to work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do businesses insist on using this joke companies products in recent years is, beyond my understanding

They still haven't worked out that it's only good for gaming..

[Kev99]

I use a simple system restore product. It's called Aomei Backupper.

[MrDamage]

> Why do businesses insist on using this joke companies products in recent years is, beyond my understanding

Because Linus doesn't have the budget to schmooze every IT manager on the planet. Microsoft does.

[Updraft102]

I never found System Restore to be all that reliable in my Windows days. I used their EFS, encrypting file system, and it gave system restore all kinds of fits.

If you want to see an example of a reliable system restore utility, try Timeshift in Linux. It is a frontend for rsync or btrfs, modeled after Apple Time Machine, and it just works fantastically well... the way I had wished System Restore worked back in the dark ages of MS.

[BenDwire]

+1 for Timeshift. It just works.

During my win7 to Linux transition phase I managed to bork my system with a PEBCAK issue, yet Timeshift happily reversed an entire system upgrade. No doubt there were other ways to get off the bleeding edge, but none so convenient.

[Richard 12]

Well, that's just great

Pretty much the entire selling point of MSIX packaging was that it'd integrate with OS features like System Restore better than MSI, NSIS or InstallShield that came before.

[Snapper]

Re: Well, that's just great

But...but...it was Microsoft saying that!

And you believed them?!

[Totally not a Cylon]

wtf Microsoft?

How the hell do you break command prompt?

I can kinda understand how windows can get its internals twisted over restoring apps and the registry but command prompt?

Just how do you screw up so badly the underlying code?

Elon, you finished with the Orbital LART?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of god MS, sort out a package manager that can also integrate with enterprise licensing.

This is not rocket science. Other vendors have been doing this for you for decades. Buy one of them if you have to!

[James O'Shea]

Do not use

I stay as far away from MS ‘backup’ and ‘restore’ tools as possible. Instead I use tools like Acronis and Macrium. On Macs I use Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. Note that that’s two different tools, making two different backups, for each OS. If something breaks, it’s unlikely to break the same way with both, and at least one backup will restore properly. And yes, I am willing to spend money for backups.

Business level backups usually involve tape. Yes, tape. I’ve been using tape for literally decades, it works. I typically use dedicated backup software for tape.

The first and last time that I used MS tools was back in the 1990s. A test restore had problems. A second attempt at a test restore failed, in a different way this time. I got 3rd party backup software and never used MS tools again. This is why you test your backup by restoring it to a test system. If you can’t get it to restore, you have a waste of storage, not a backup. I still test backups every ever so often. Just in case.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Do not use

Of course, WGA (or whatever it is now) ensures that a restore to a test system won't actually work.

[James O'Shea]

Re: Do not use

There are ways to bypass that nonsense, most of which being methods that MS doesn’t like. I don’t actually give a damn about what MS likes or dislikes.

[ThatOne]

"Remaining Redmondites told they need to ‘raise the bar’"

> did not say whether it was working on a formal fix for the problem

Why would they? They successfully managed to raise the bar (for their clients).

[Kev99]

Looks like those ten thousand layoffs were all in mictosoft's quality control sections.

[John Brown (no body)]

No, those people where laid off years ago. This is probably the remnants of the engineering teams.

[davcefai]

Apps and Programs - off topic but.....

When did "programs" become "apps"?

Was it when they became flakey enough to compare with Android apps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Apps and Programs - off topic but.....

App as in short for Application has been used since at least the early 90s. Probably before then but I wasn't using computers before then to confirm.

I'm just scrolling though the Borland Windows 3.1 API documentation published in 1992 and there are over 1,800 instances of the word "Application", 12 instances of "App" by itself and only 34 instances of the word "Program."