Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

Windows boss Mikhail Parakhin has admitted that the Start menu needs a bit of work. Posting on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a plea to "just fix the start menu" so all apps could be scrolled, Parakhin agreed, saying it "annoys the hell out of me too" and promised to "make Start menu great again." X does seem to be the …

[Lee D]

Just stop making Open-Shell's life difficult so they can just write it for you.

Then you can buy them up (like Sysinternals) or even just incorporate their code if you want.

My start menu isn't going to become that Windows 11 junk, ever.

While we're at it, get rid of the myriad dependencies it has for indexing and searching everything on your disk and online in case you type it into the search box... pointless waste of resources.

[elDog]

Please don't let them buy up Open-Shell!

We all know they'll wreck it and then extinguish it.

Open-Shell (or Classic Shell) has been a godsend for me since Windows 7. Along with Ram Michaels 7-Taskbar Tweaker.

[mikus]

At some point Russinovich has to retire, he's spent 30 years wiping microsoft's arse, he needs a break.

Maybe they can hire someone for a better idea than fix what isn't broken, ie the task bar and start menu, making them the advertisement bazaar that the start menu became when people got lazy under Ballmer. Anyone with an advertisement background should be summarily excluded.

I use windoze anything only as a hypervisor for visio, quick launches saves me most of the frustration, but think of the children.

[Apocalypto]

Or summarily executed as I read it, enough damage has been done to technological progress in the name of advertising and marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late ..... much too late !!!!

'make Start menu great again'

Too late Windows 11 already 'grates' and has done from day one !!!

Windows 11 needs to be hit, repeatably, with a large UI stick ... to remove the 'Fischer-Price' interface and focus on usability.

This means get rid of the 15 levels of indirection to hide menus and settings ....Control-shift left mouse click while scrolling right and squinting with your right eye *only* is not intuitive or logical !!!

Instead of throwing in an 'AI' interface (don't get me started on this one !!!), how about fixing once and for all the UI to be consistent 'everywhere' and stop the unhelpful hiding of menus/settings etc

BTW: Does putting in an 'AI' interface not highlight that the UI is so bad that you need an 'Intelligent [cough spit] Search engine' to find what you are looking for as it so non-intuitive.

And breath again .... calmly ... in and out .... in and out ....

:)

[codejunky]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

@AC

"Windows 11 needs to be hit, repeatably, with a large UI stick ... to remove the 'Fischer-Price' interface and focus on usability."

I havnt seen it and so far avoided win 11, but your comment reminded me of the XP teletubbies design and how nice it was to have an option for 'classic' mode. Maybe windows needs an option for 'normal' and their 'new and amazing' interfaces in every version.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Maybe windows needs an option for 'normal' and their 'new and amazing' interfaces in every version.

And for that I would even welcome telemetry (limited to this part) so the Windows Manglement can be beaten into submission with the figures about what the majority really wants and uses.

[Someone Else]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Maybe windows needs an option for 'normal''' 'useful' and their 'new and amazing' 'brain-dead millennial-infested UI surrogate' interfaces in every version.

There, FTFY.

_{Although one could effectively argue that there has never been a 'useful' version of Micros~1's interfaces (plural), but I digress...}

[CountCadaver]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

how old do you think "millenials" are exactly? Supply an age range or is it just more "good old days nostalgia"?

[darkrookie28]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Well I am 36

[phuzz]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

I suspect they meant it unthinkingly as 'those damn kids', but now that most millennials are in their late 30's/early 40's, chances are that it's managers around that age who are in charge of pushing new 'features' at Microsoft, so it might not be that far off.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Let the Revolution begin and have Boomers at the helm again!

[sarusa]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Yeah, this 'randomly change all the UIs all the time and cram in AI' ADHD stuff is GenZ/Gen Alpha, not 'those darn millenials'.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Gen Z???

Guess what Jodie Foster has to say...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview

[hoola]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

Windows 11 (and many other interfaces) are all designed by arty farty types where the appearance is everything. Why do we have to have all this dynamic shite?

Scroll bars that only appear when you over over a line that is a pixel wide.

White frames on windows so you cannot distinguish what is on top of what.

Menu items that expand when you hover at the exact spot.

Menus that keep changing because you have not used something for a week.

Completely crazy colour schemes & font sizes (The last drive me insane)

The last can sometimes be fixed with some sorts of customisation but you should not have to. An interface of any kind should be usable by all average & normal people.

The trouble is that usability testing is also done by the same brain-dead numpties that design it. Often on huge monitors with funky keyboards and mice.

[Dave K]

Re: Too late ..... much too late !!!!

XP (and Vista if I'm honest) also had options to revert to the classic Start Menu. It's one of the reasons XP was well liked. Yes, they'd gone a bit Teletubby with the default theme, but you could pick several others, or boot it down to classic mode - same with many other elements of it. So much was tweakable without having to resort to 3rd party utilities, so if you didn't like the default look, you could usually tweak it to suit your needs.

Recently, MS are increasingly stripping out customisation and resorting to a very rigid OS with very few options to tweak it. This will inevitably polarise a lot of people against the OS who do not (for whatever reason) like the "Microsoft default".

[Ramis101]

Do what you like but give options

"Windows boss Mikhail Parakhin has admitted that the Start menu needs a bit of work"

Do what you like with it, but give us the Win 7 one back and also Win 2000 mode as an option.

Linux is an OS where we can choose a desktop that fits our purpose, Windows used to give choices. Now its their way of the highway.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Do what you like but give options

Now its their way of the highway.

And more and more users take the highway to Linux. One of these days the wall will turn the ship.

[druck]

Re: Do what you like but give options

Linux Mint is waiting with open arms. The start menu in Mate or Cinnamon is instantly familiar to any former XP or 7 user.

[hoola]

Re: Do what you like but give options

Whilst that is true, for most people now XP is in deep history or they have never even used it.

[jezza99]

Re: Do what you like but give options

2024 is the year of Linux on the desktop!

[Dagg]

Re: Do what you like but give options

The one big issue with all versions of Linux is getting all the 3rd party windows apps to run on it. Yes, I know there is this fantastic thing called WINE. But this is not something that an every man in the street can use. Also little things like getting the various scanners, printers, screen cards etc working properly.

I know that I am going to have to make the move from W10 to some form of Linux as there is no way that I will use W11. But I am not looking forward to the pain of transitioning. And I know it will be painful no matter what all the members of the Church of Linux say.

There is also one thing I will not be doing. I will no longer support friends and families computers.

Now let slip the downvotes of war...

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: Do what you like but give options

Keep taking test drives...

[James Anderson]

Re: Do what you like but give options

It's years since I even had to look for a device driver to get a printer, scanner, sound card etc. working on Ubuntu or mint. Most device drivers are just there.

Compered with the special hell of installing an HP device on windows Linux is s doddle.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Do what you like but give options

> HP device on windows

Probably THE main reasons MS wants to lock 3rd party out of their printing system.

It depends on WHICH HP device you choose though, never take the home-user stuff, which started hard locked in Internet requirement a while ago. You don't get the driver, you get a Install-tool which only works with an HP account. Even sharing on a network does not work due to the design decision of HP. And you cannot talk to the, here printer as example, as PCL5 or PCL6 or postscript or any other well known language. Take the corporate stuff, and it works normal.

Though Linux cheats a bit on that: It just talks PCL5/PCL6/Postscript, and since most printers are fine with that it "just works". Include a long with with workarounds for some printer bugs like text fine, images upside down as famous example. But you may not get all capabilities, be it either color fine-tuning, automatic puncher, or automatic stapler and so on. But that only matters if you print for professional, and if you are there you will have a different Linux approach to get those things too :D.

[jezza99]

Re: Do what you like but give options

I just use AirPrint, which is well supported by both my old Canon and current HP all-in-one printers. I used the HP iPhone app to get the printer connected to the home WiFi, but after that no special software is required.

All printer and scanner functions work correctly (duplex, scan quality, etc).

Anyone on the home network can print, and it's wireless (except the power cable)!

[Dagg]

Re: Do what you like but give options

I haven't used any HP devices for a couple of decades.

But I use my W10 computer for photo processing and have a monitor calibration device with W10 software. From what I've been able to find out there is NO viable Linux support for it.

[Evil Scot]

Re: Do what you like but give options

Is Office available for Linux?

Can I have it for BSD on ARM.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Do what you like but give options

"2024 is the year of Linux on the desktop!"

Again........

[david1024]

Re: Do what you like but give options

KDE is my choice, I run windows in a VM when I must have MS office.

In the winVM, I do what I have to do to get desktop shortcuts to everything I use and search the start menu for the rest. It seems I've manually rolled back to win3.0-like interface. Those guys in the 70's were on to something, I guess.

KDE is not without hazards itself though, for example keeping baloo from going nuts on external drives has been an intermittent problem.

[unaware]

Re: Do what you like but give options

Have not touched office since 2009. Libreoffice for documents and evolution for mail, yes with oauth authentication, and also very easy to import old PST files from the 00's.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Do what you like but give options

I remember the very first betas of Windows 10. As the Win8 code for the start button was unusable, they had just recompiled the Win7 start menu! It looked fugly, but it worked.

Then they were "super exited" to announce the new XAML-coded version, and here we are.

[tracker1]

Typing in the start menu

My usage has generally been to press the start/super let in the keyboard and type the first few characters of what I'm looking to run.

Of course I also ran insiders builds for years. A couple years ago I saw an ad in the results. Since then my personal desktop has been booted on my Linux drive. I've booted into Windows twice since, once for Windows updates and then to run a firmware update for my hardware.

While but perfect, the old programs structure was better than the approaches since windows 8. I think the windows 7 start menu was probably the best they've done.

[FIA]

Re: Typing in the start menu

My usage has generally been to press the start/super let in the keyboard and type the first few characters of what I'm looking to run.

I recently installed NT4, the start menu not doing this confused the hell out of me for a while. :)

[K.o.R]

Re: Typing in the start menu

For me it was going to a Windows 7 machine and the Windows key+X menu not being there.

[ragnar]

Re: Typing in the start menu

Mind blown

[Stuart Castle]

Re: Typing in the start menu

Agreed. I do, generally, type the first few letters of what I want in the start menu. If you have a lot of applications installed (as I do, sometimes), it can help even if your start menu is well organised. Mine would be, but MS insist on adding extra crap on the first screen.

Generally, I like Windows 11 (controversial, I know), but this annoys me. It's my computer. I built the damn thing. I have Windows 11 through a free entitlement from work, so while I didn't pay for it, it has been paid for, yet I have to put up with adverts in the start menu, and the increasing requirment to have a Microsoft account to use it. There are some things I do on my PC that don't play nicely if I'm signed in with a Microsoft account, so while I do make full use of my Microsoft account, I cannot use it to log in to the machine, but I still get regular reminders that I should be signing in with that account. I've chosen not to with good reason, It's not just I forgot to set it up.

Before you suggest Linux is an option. While I love using Linux, it isn't an option. I need some software that doesn't work well..

[Someone Else]

Re: Typing in the start menu

I think the windows 7 start menu was probably the best they've done.

Well, that explains it, then; why they trashed it and are so unwilling to bring it back.

Micros~1 is to best of class, as fish is to bicycle.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Typing in the start menu

Bicycle and fish?

Reminds me of a screen saver that was downloadable on an Irish web site at a time...

(we need a stouter beer icon)

[The commentard formerly known as Mister_C]

Re: Typing in the start menu

"(we need a stouter beer icon)"

or Dark Theme icons

[Hawkeye Pierce]

Re: Typing in the start menu

For those who are using the Start Menu and typing a few characters in, can I recommend the "PowerToys Run" module from the Microsoft PowerToys.

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/run

(If anyone used to use Launchy then this is a more-or-less direct replacement/upgrade).

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Typing in the start menu

and type the first few characters of what I'm looking to run.

That is all fine if this works. My Windows 10 won't find most of the programs I have installed, even if they appear in the Start Menu.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Typing in the start menu

MS search on anything is totally fucking useless

it either finds a loads of irrelevant shit and hides what your looking for, or pretends it can't find anything

[Martin an gof]

Re: Typing in the start menu

pretends it can't find anything

I find search in Outlook (desktop app) like this. Search for a word or a phrase in the subject line of an email, if it finds anything at all, guaranteed it will only find one or two randoms from a whole thread, meaning you then have to do a manual search around the dates it did find to get the email you actually wanted.

Hateful thing.

M.

[Richard 12]

Re: Typing in the start menu

It doesn't work at all if you have multiple versions of a given thing installed.

Or if you don't remember the actual executable name or link text, just the name of the application suite.

There's a lot of line-of-business applications where one or both of the above are the case.

[FIA]

Re: Typing in the start menu

It may not help, but from an admin command prompt:

chkdsk c: /f

answer 'y' when it asks if you want to check on next boot, then reboot.

It's amazing how many little things this can fix. :)

If it does a reboot step after the checkdisk has run then it found and fixed errors.

[unaware]

Re: Typing in the start menu

It should be called startbrowser instead of startbutton. but a browser where you cannot find apps wyou need. And then pinning something to the taskbar .. those pins often disappear as well. So neither works. W11 is a pin in the .... W11 is the marketing gimmick of windows history. ... 1. TPM security, 2. copilot, 3. Advertstart button..

[CorwinX]

Both my main PC and laptop...

... have Win 10 on them. First thing I installed after the OS was Stardock's Start10 and WindowBlinds.

Since I skipped Win 8 I just wanted the familiar Win 7 UI - nothing wrong with it that needed "improving".

[CorwinX]

Re: Both my main PC and laptop...

Haven't come across Open-Shell until I saw the comments but from the screenshots I'd probably use it if I didn't have a Stardock licence.

[aerogems]

Honestly

If you invest the time and effort into learning to use the search function, it really does pay significant dividends. It sucked back in the Win95-7 days, so you could be forgiven for assuming it still was the same worthless function, but it actually started being useful around Win 8. The power toys version is even better and I need to train myself to start using that more. Let the computer do the work of keeping track of where things are, you just need to be able to remember a few letters of the name of whatever app you want to run. Think of it like a password manager, but for apps.

[CorwinX]

Re: Honestly

It isn't an either/or proposition.

I like an uncluttered UI (ie Stardock) without Microsoft's latest whizzy ideas - doesn't mean I dont use the Search function to open stuff up quickly when it's quicker. Often for admin tools.

[CorwinX]

Re: Honestly

Also, Microsoft missed a trick that Stardock Fences remedies - if you're working on a project that involves ed docs, speadsheets, presentations etc, it's great to be able to group them all together in a frame on the desktop.

Note, I'm not shilling for Stardock - I just love what they bring to the Win UI.

[Ramis101]

Re: Honestly

and when they change CONtrol Panel to SETtings

or WINdows update to MICrosoft update to UPDate & Security

ADD Remove Programs to APPs.

and that is just the first three that spring to mind!

Remembering the first few letters is okay i guess, up to the point MS decides to arbitrarily name it something different!

For that reason i have never used Search and prefer to know where the thing is i wish to use, then bitching about it now being behind yet another layer of BS but still the same graphically as it was in Win2000 eg network adapter settings

[aerogems]

Re: Honestly

Oh gnoes! You have to learn something new once a decade or so! The horror! It never ceases to amaze me how, even on a site devoted to news on highly complex and technical topics, some people seem unwilling to use even the tiniest bit of critical thinking. Is it annoying? Sure. Is it worth bitching about endlessly for years on end? Fuck no. I'll give you about a week to act like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. After that, I expect you to put on your big boy/girl pants and grow the fuck up and start acting like an adult again. I don't think that's in any way unreasonable for a group of grown ass adults.

Plus, free tip, you can actually search for individual settings within the settings/control panel. Press Win+S and type in "gpu" for example. Or, to use your examples, try searching for "app" or "update" and see what you get.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Honestly

> You have to learn something new once a decade or so! The horror!

If is not about the "new", it is about the loss of productivity. Lots of actions which are done similar in all operations systems now need more mouse clicks + more searching in case of combined explorer view since you have no oversight any more. Windows 11 UI does have a few good points, including tiny details in the file explorer, and it works. But quite a few things were done half-assed (or arsed, depending on your continent) again. Actions which took (or still take in case of Win10) less than a second now take three or more seconds. The taskbar is just the most prominent example of this wasting the users time.

Apart from that the Win+S searching often does not find, even though it is in the start menu when you click through it manually. Happens way more often than you think. A minute later and it works as it should have on the first try. Again loss of productivity.

Add the constant needy-pushy "We've improved XY, new feature Z here" upon start of many programs happening on a weekly base, which often block the MS-program (or APP) you try to use until you click it away. Again loss of productivity due tu rude behaviour on the GUI side of Windows 11.

The best features of Windows 11 up to now are: Nested-V for AMD and robocopy.exe /iorate. The other good improvements, including some UI things, are too tiny to mention and pale in comparison to the glaring time wasters.

[logicalextreme]

Re: Honestly

Aye as soon as this kind of stuff started I just learned that Win+R for Run… and learning the appropriate $whatever was significantly faster and in fact almost universal across a range of Windows versions.

control for Control Panel

Win + I for Updates

appwiz.cpl for Add/Remove Programs

ncpa.cpl for network

I'm constantly trying to get the things that I want done in PowersHell but it's such a broken mess of a language and Windows versions are just different enough that anything I write to get an environment "just so" won't be transferable to anothet system. Add to which the registry is still a thing.

[OhForF']

Re: Honestly

I gave up on the windows search when i seached for a file in a folder using the exact file name as a search term and was told it couldn't find anyhting (i think back with Win7); Windows helpfully suggested to search the WWW for my file ....

Recently i had to work with a locked down virtual desktop with Windows11 and searched for putty which i was assured was available. The search in the start menu didn't show the local executable but a number of links in to the WWW. A co-worker showed me where putty.exe was on the machine, it was working fine.

It is possible that this putty folder was simply copied from some other machine instead of running a proper msi installer but i still consider the search functionality unreliable und not useful if it doesn't find what's on the local machine.

[simonlb]

Re: Honestly

You shouldn't need to 'invest time and effort into learning to use the search function'. It should just fucking work!

[Dave K]

Re: Honestly

It used to, until they started renaming things and making it come back with results for files and websites to just clutter everything up.

If I open the Start Menu and search, I want to search the Start Menu. Nothing else!

[NiteDragon]

Re: Honestly

But then Microsoft couldn't add hits to Bing (so they can pretend people use it).

[aerogems]

Re: Honestly

Do you want your doctor to decide it's too much of a hassle to keep up to date on the latest medical advances and keep treating you the way things were done when they were in med school? You want your auto mechanic to only know how to fix engines from the days before the catalytic converter? How about the pilot on the next flight you take, they don't really need to keep training on new cockpit layouts and functions, do they? The police shouldn't have to learn about all the new ways criminals come up with to avoid being arrested; criminals should just keep doing the same thing ad infinitum, it's not fair!

I do not accept that weak ass excuse from anyone in any professional field. Part of your fucking job is to keep up with the latest changes/advancements. The moment you stop doing that, you become worthless and should retire or find a new career. I'll spot you maybe a week to bitch about things while you're ingraining new muscle memory routines, but after that I expect that you pull up your big boy/girl pants and get on with it. You might just find, <gasp>, that some of the changes are actually for the better.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Honestly

If you want to keep up with an ever-changing UI, when do you work?

Did you ever see a mechanic struggling to connect his laptop to your car because there was an automatic update that did change the UI layout without warning? (I did, and had to wait a full day before getting back my car)

Did you ever see a doctor's secretary struggling to print your release documents after a surgery because an automatic update changed the printing interface? (I did and I had to help her otherwise I would still be at the hospital)

Computers are there for helping users do their work, not hindering them because some stupid corporate drone decided to break things.

[David 132]

Re: Honestly

Or as somebody pithily put it back when Windows 8 plopped out: “Microsoft, we wanted familiar ways to do new things. Instead, you’ve forced us to learn new ways to do familiar things.”

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Honestly

Do you want your doctor to retrain in order to diagnose an ear infection? No, because it’s the same way as has always been, just might be a new drug. Do you want your mechanic to retrain to change the oil? No, because it’s the same as before. Pilots probably don’t retrain for every cockpit because the manufacturers probably put the instruments in generally the same place and don’t keep changing the labels. Some things don’t/shouldn’t need retraining.

There are some things that should not need to be relearned to do the same thing you’ve always done. Launching a program, finding something on a computer, changing the screen resolution/palette. If Windows, Word, Excel or anything else adds a new feature then yes, spend some time learning how to use the new feature to help with productivity. Changing the basics around with every release so you have to spend your time relearning where everything is, what it’s now called and how it works before you can actually do some work is stupid.

What about those who have disabilities and have trouble typing? They may not be able to use these shortcuts to bring up searches and type in. They may have a hard enough time using a computer with a mouse or similar device without Microsoft increasingly hiding these settings and options deep inside sub menus and behind buttons that don’t look like buttons.

I spend a lot of my time keeping up with the latest advances in technology, it’s part of my job (Cloud Operations Engineer / DevOps), I don’t have time to relearn how to use the OS with every update just so I can do my job. The Operating System is just a tool to let me run other programs to get my job done, if it prevents me finding or using those programs then it’s getting in the way of my job. If I go between Cloud platforms then I expect to have to learn the new terminology and operation of it. I don’t expect to have to relearn the same operating system I was using last week before I can do my job just because an update has changed how I access things, or for that matter reset my customisations back to defaults after an update.

| Part of your fucking job is to keep up with the latest changes/advancements

Is it part of Mary in Accounts job to keep up with the latest changes/advancements too? Does she need to retrain how to find her accounts package that she’s been using for the last 5 years before she can do her job? I guess she can always just put in call to the IT department for them to show her and waste more company time or maybe get the learning and development department to create a new course to bring employees up to speed with the new OS just so they can use the same old packages they were employed to use before. Yet more company time and money to do the same job as before.

You pull up your big boy/girl pants and realise these pointless changes cost companies real money, it could cost people their jobs because they “just can’t get the hang off this new system” and it results in loss of productivity and they get replaced by someone else.

[druck]

Re: Honestly

Pilots probably don’t retrain for every cockpit because the manufacturers probably put the instruments in generally the same place and don’t keep changing the labels.

Not a good analogy as Pilots do have to retrain for every aircraft type, but not just because of the instrument layout. The difference is the training is a mandatory part of their job, they don't just turn for work one morning and find the entire fleet has changed from Boeing to Airbus, and are expected to jump in and get on with it.

But the rest of your points still stand.

[Adrian 4]

Re: Honestly

And the 737 MAX debacle was because Boeing were so keen to avoid that retraining that they killed 346 people to pretend it wasn't necessary.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Honestly

Gimli Glider

"After taking a dripstick measurement, Pearson converted the reading from centimetres to litres to kilograms. However, he did his calculation with the density figure for jet fuel in pounds/litre from the Air Canada refueler's slip, used for all other aircraft in the fleet, instead of kilograms/litre for the all-metric 767 aircraft, which was new to the fleet."

"the cockpit warning system sounded again with the "all engines out" sound, a sharp "bong" that no one in the cockpit could recall having heard before"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

[elDog]

Wow - that's a scary event - the Gimli Glider.

I imagine a few choice words were heard in the cockpit before "landing".

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Honestly

"Do you want your doctor to decide it's too much of a hassle to keep up to date on the latest medical advances and keep treating you the way things were done when they were in med school?"

That line of argument presumes that the changes you are keeping up with are actual progress in the state of the art. What if the drug companies merely changed the names of every drug every few years? Would it be reasonable for your doctor to spend time learning the new names?

[Joey Potato]

Re: Honestly

@aerogemns, note that both medicine and aviation go out of their way to implement changes in terminology and symbology methodically and only with good reason. While most of the rest of the world uses meters and millimeters, medicine sticks to centimeters, and the fanciest glass cockpit's attitude indicator is remarkably similar in appearance to its mechanical predecessor from the 20th century. Change just for change's sake would almost certainly cost lives.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Honestly

MS search on anything is totally fucking useless

it either finds a loads of irrelevant shit and hides what your looking for, or pretends it can't find anything

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: Honestly

"MS search on anything is totally fucking useless"

True. The comedy is they have had decades to work on it, every iteration they claim "improved search", and yet never any improvement discernible to the end user. For now this still works reliably:

$ dir /s what-i-am-looking-for*.*

E.g. it would have easily found putty.exe which another commenter couldn't locate using search. Bonus when you find something for another user and they think cmd.exe equals leet skills.

[DJO]

Re: Honestly

It's "Microsoft being helpful" and that is always a pain.

To speed up and widen the search they stuff everything into a database and search that instead of the disc. Updating the database is not rapid so it's not done every day so the stupid search will often miss things that a simple recursive search would find in a second but it will find stuff on the net you are not interested in - Is it too hard for them to understand the difference between a local search and a WWW search, apparently it is.

Microsoft being helpful is the bane of my programming life. The way long numbers are helpfully converted to scientific notation or dashes (ASCII 45) magically become em-dashes (ASCII 8211) in one app and (ASCII 150) in another. The latest joy is Visual Studio 2022 truncates strings in the immediate pane so you have to extract long strings (like SQL queries) in substring chunks and rejoin them.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Honestly

It not only "still works", it's actually faster, even allowing for the time taken to open a command prompt. Explorer's inability to search a directory tree is something to behold.

[Roland6]

Re: Honestly

> If you invest the time and effort into learning to use the search function

It would be nice if the Windows Help actually gave relevant help rather than either nothing or some random MS webpage either telling you the resource you are looking for has moved etc. or trying to induce you to download the lastest version of Windows, buy M365 etc.

[Alistair]

I'm kinda wondering

If the Enlightenment folks would like to port to windows......................

Say,,,,,, $35 lifetime subscription fee for your windows 10/11 Enlightenment interface...............

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Mikhail Parakhin is the reason Windows is such a ad-festooned forced-junk-install mess these days. I wouldn't hold my breath.

[elsergiovolador]

Well, that's something Putin would like to happen to the rotten West's operating system.

[Chet Mannly]

Yeah what's his definition of 'great' is what I want to know.

Pretty sure it's AI driven that doesn't suggest what you actually want at all, but provides lots of sponsored/recommended links

[LBJsPNS]

Making the Start Menu great again

So, going back to the Win 7 design?

[Anonymous Coward]

I made my start menu great again a while ago - all it took was 3 words typed into a terminal:

winget install startallback

[Andrew Oakley]

It's TASKBAR that needs fixing more

In all honesty, the reason I'm avoiding switching to Win11 is that you can't vertically-align the taskbar. Not the Start menu, the taskbar. Almost all screens are wider than they are high. If you're going to run out of screen real estate, it'll happen from top-to-bottom, not side-to-side. There's always plenty of space on the side. So putting 24 or 32 or 48 pixels of taskbar on the bottom or top edge makes no sense. I thought maybe switching from 1080p to 1440p might make me think again, but no. You always run out of vertical pixels. You never run out of horizontal pixels.

I'm petty. I know.

[nightflier]

Re: It's TASKBAR that needs fixing more

Not petty. It makes sense. For the user. My panel (taskbar) went to the left edge as soon as I got a 16:9 display.

For Microsoft it makes sense to force you to keep it horizontally so they can use those pixels for their ads, their Bing search, their Copilot, and whatever comes next.

[Orv]

Re: It's TASKBAR that needs fixing more

Nah, it's not petty. I routinely do it that way on macOS, why can't Windows figure out this trick?

[BenMyers]

Re: It's TASKBAR that needs fixing more

Well, way back in Windows 10 days, one could move the task bar to any of the four margins, left, right, top and bottom. Some brilliant Microsoft genius decided to make the change. Or was it a committee of geniuses?

[Bowlers]

Re: It's TASKBAR that needs fixing more

"Some brilliant Microsoft genius decided to make the change. Or was it a committee of geniuses?"

No it was a committee of camels getting their own back.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Make the UI fast again

On top of all known start menu and taskbar complains: The UI is sluggish! Every mouse click takes longer for a response. The poor kernel guys can optimize what they want if the GUI guys produce such sluggish nonsense. You can test it by yourself: Right-click a folder in the explorer, then use the registry trick to get the "old" menu directly and try again. Explorer search is the same: I type and hit return, only to notice that my return has been ignored AGAIN and I have to hit it AGAIN. And this is not a slow machine here, and that behaviour is consistent whether the system is idle or under load.

[quxinot]

Re: Make the UI fast again

This. All of this.

[tiggity]

insider builds

"Windows Insider builds are due to resume shortly and will provide the first indicator of whether his attempt to deal with the complaints regarding the Windows 11 Start menu will bear fruit."

That assumes the people getting & giving feedback on insider builds have views / opinions representative of the wider pool of windows users...

Back in the days when I got windows insider builds, there seemed a huge amount of people who would just uncritically (even rabid fan style enthusiastically) accept whatever changes were made. One of the reasons I gave up on that program, the cheerleaders seemed to downvote any constructive criticism style feedback, and upvote any new thing, no matter how ill conceived.

[Tubz]

Re: insider builds

Rabid fanbois appear everywhere, look at Discord channels for companies or products and dare say anything against their gods and get flamed quicker than a Burger King slab of meat.

[Rick Deckard]

I just want a list, A-Z literally nothing else, that i can scroll up and down, nothing more nothing less,i dont need searcjh , recents etc etc or anything, just a simple list ...is that too much to ask for ?

[yetanotheraoc]

Implementation

Fine, here's your alphabetized list, hope you are happy now:

* Bing

* Copilot

* Edge

* Search

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Implementation

well that list won't work for me.

they don't appear on my machines, I removed them all with prejudice

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: Implementation

How could I forget?

* Teams

[Hogbert]

But surely you must want a Recommendation panel taking up some space there too!

[elsergiovolador]

Moscow

Windows boss Mikhail Parakhin

What could go wrong...

[aerogems]

Re: Moscow

Besides your xenophobic comment?

[hoverboy]

Explorer Patcher is a nice lightweight FOSS way to bypass the "All Apps" click.

[Ascy]

Agreed on Explorer Patcher

It also gives you back your old taskbar (which can be docked on any edge) and start menu.

One of my monitors is in portrait (great for programming, email, writing docs, reading web pages) with the taskbar at the top, whilst my other monitor, in landscape (great for viewing screen shares and watching cat videos), has the tasbar docked to the right. All in Windows 11.

Oh, and I use PowerToys' Run (same idea as Launchy) instead of the start menu most of the time.

[I like fruits]

What Windows?

There are still people who have to put up with Windows? Wow. I'm lucky not having to touch it in decades.

[aerogems]

Re: What Windows?

It never fails that someone has to make a comment like this. As always, it's a case of the lady doth protest too much.

[ldo]

“OS” = “GUI”?

This idea of tying the GUI layer inextricably into the OS kernel is one that should have been left behind in the 1990s. By making it so low-level, users’ attempts at customization also have to work at a low level, imperilling the stability of the entire house of cards. Bad design all round.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: “OS” = “GUI”?

The GUI layer is not as low-level as you want to tell us. You can test it:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

REG_SZ

"Shell"="c:\Windows\System32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe"

You can do that system wide too, and you can add ANYTHING there. Default is explorer.exe, and if the value is missing the default is used.

[ldo]

Re: “OS” = “GUI”?

So you can replace Explorer, which is just the file manager. How many things will break if you do? What about the rest of the GUI? Is all the taskbar and desktop and everything tied into Explorer, as well?

[Richard 12]

Re: “OS” = “GUI”?

Yes, explorer is the taskbar. There's an almost busybox level of shenanigans going on to use it as the file manager as well.

Embedded systems swap out the shell for their own custom thing, often using the kiosk application that does their main function directly, as Windows will automatically restart the "shell" if it dies without requesting system shutdown or restart.

[ldo]

Re: “OS” = “GUI”?

> There's an almost busybox level of shenanigans going on to use it as the file manager as well.

Not really what I wanted to hear ...

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: “OS” = “GUI”?

> So you can replace Explorer, which is just the file manager. How many things will break if you do? What about the rest of

> the GUI? Is all the taskbar and desktop and everything tied into Explorer, as well?

Try it. You can reverse it easily. My powershell example is just one of the most capable ones. You can use cmd.exe or total commander or taskmgr.exe and so on if you want. From that shell you can start your browser and other things. And if you save something you will get the Windows file dialogue. Taskbar and desktop are not needed.

I'd say: Time for you to dig in into the OS you complain about so much :D :D. If you want to go one step further install Server 2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 in "Core" mode, which is pure 64 bit and even works without the WoW64 component (depending in which you install you need to run Remove-WindowsFeature WoW64-Support). However, since a lot of programs are available as 64 bit, you can use many of them on such a server core without WoW64 installation. 1 GB RAM and a 15 GB volume is enough leaving 9 GB free for updates and your programs since the OS takes about 5.1 GB + 1.5 GB pagefile.sys after installation. Tough I recommend 4 GB RAM for your programs since Firefox is quite hungry.

You can try that in a VM to make yourself familiar with such an environment.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: “OS” = “GUI”?

the program I like to add there for people asking me too many stupid questions is "logoff.exe"

[Orv]

I think I'm the one person who liked the Window 8 start screen. I arranged the tiles I used most into groups on the first screen, and I could find them immediately just based on positional memory. Win11 doesn't let me pin more than handful.

My least-favorite design was Win95's nested Start menu. I have a slight tremor and it's was way too easy to accidentally side the mouse off the edge of a nested pop-out and collapse the whole thing. It was like one of those puzzles where you have to move the ring along a wire without touching it.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

maybe you could use the arow keys instead

[BenMyers]

Start menu a step back in time, almost to DOS days

In this wondrous GUI world, why is it easier and faster for me to type a program name, or even a task function, into the search bar, rather than click-click-click-click-click down the list of programs to find the one I want? Windows 10 has degraded muchly in this respect and it is now as bad and deficient as Window 11.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Start menu a step back in time, almost to DOS days

Because that will always be faster !

You can do it either way so what are you complaining about ?

I use the search , method , then pin the result to the start menu , I havent even looked at the rest of it since early w10 when i wrote off the idea of navigating it.

That and the WIN+R run run box often removes the need to even click start.

[phunksta]

Really, Microsoft have been making terrible UI decisions for decades now in all of their products.

Kinda tired of pretending otherwise.

Don't get me started on "start pages"

[thondwe]

Only me?

Is it only me who hardly ever uses the Start Menu then - pin most apps to taskbar (having killed widgets - I have a phone for that sort of junk) and use search for everything else?

So could ditch start completely - not sure what programs you have - look at add/remove programs - ideally enhance that to list the group Apps that an installer actually installed ????

Probably just me!

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Only me?

Thats exactly what i do .

and also use win+r for cmd.exe or appwiz.cpl and things like that

No need to even attempt to navigate whatever the latest fads are in the actual start menu.

[MJI]

Try it with vision issues

Just unusable, totally unusable, luckily that PC is locked back to 10 now, and that is bad enough.

I can just read this text I am typing on a 1920x1080 monitor.

7 is easy to use, 10 hard, 11 almost impossible.

Yet I am legal to drive. So not that bad vision, imagine if it was worse, or their issue was more retina than lens.

[Piro]

Windows 7 and Windows 2000

Those are the two ui appearance options people want.

Do it.

[petef]

Windows?

You would hope that a product called Windows would do a half decent job remembering where Joe user had positioned them. Windows 11 does a marginally better job than its predecessors but that is still rubbish. Worst is Teams which continues to select its own size and monitor regardless of where I last put it.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Windows?

I wrote a program once to slap those windows into behaving themselves position wise. This was because our "control room" had a pc with a lot of monitors and various dashboards and such carefully laid out , that would start doing their own thing at any excuse.

Turns out theres handles or hooks or whatever they're called within windows , maybe it was in the wmi system, but it was fairly easy to follow some youtube/stackexchange examples and make a C# console app the read a config file with the names of which windows were supposed to go where , and make then do it.

.. or fire them up if they werent present , or resize them .

I had picture viewer moving around bouncing pictures off the borders of the screen at one point .

excellent potential for mischievous hijinks .

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Windows?

You don't need to go the c# way. Autohotkey or nircmd or powershell (and quite a few others to just change window properties) are enough.

[Plest]

Just ask for one tiny thing....

STOP F**KING HIDING USEFUL STUFF 6 LAYERS DEEP IN DIALOGS!!!

I want to adjust the sound settings, stop making me remember of 176 convoluted commands I need to run, or make me wade through 5 dialogs to find stuff.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Windows 11

Microsoft's very own Liz Truss

[xyz123]

All MS needs to do is break the ENTIRE shell away from the OS and allow it to be replaced.

That way other people will create better interfaces and (best of all for Microsoft!) THEY WILL DO IT FOR FREE! Just look at how popular Doom / Minecraft / Skyrim etc still are because people as a labor of love can mod them and transform them beyond recognition!

Basically allow modding/skinning of the whole shell. Taskbar/menus/control panel..everything!

Microsoft has a BIG chance in Windows 12 to kill off 11 AND 10, leave them in the dust as fancy-new shells and menu systems get built.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

I think you can do that , just kill explorer.exe and launch your own version.

*there was a little debate elsewhere in the comments about would there be any side effects , i cant think what they would be though.

[kend1]

Boomers get onboard

MS just needs to present their 'vision' to the Boomers. My suggestion is getting Ozzy to endorse them by singing "Crazy Train".

[Lee D]

Remember when themes were a thing and the interface could be customised however you liked?

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

you dont need to use the start menu .

just click start , type what you're looking for , then pin that to the start.

You'll discover you only ever use half a dozen things

[xyz123]

Step 1. make ALL of windows 12 re-skinnable. Thousands of FREE programmers will work on interfaces for you!

Step 2. Make task manager the god among programs. A simple option "Immediate termination" which gives task manager the right to kill ANY process instantly with no waiting and no option for that process to say "wait whilst I save some stuff" etc.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

> Step 2. Make task manager the god among programs. A simple option "Immediate termination" which gives task manager the right to kill ANY

> process instantly with no waiting and no option for that process to say "wait whilst I save some stuff" etc.

It is already. Describe what you try to do so we can reproduce. You can always use taskkill, if your want.

A hint: You can copy the taskmanager executable from Server 2003 R2 last service pack, and it just works. The metrics on CPU load don't match reality to 100%, but close enough. Though I recommend the 2003 R2 x64 Service Pack 2 task manager, simply 'cause it is compiled as 64 bit - the only change is the added the *32 for 32 bit tasks, according to Dave Cutlers interview in Dave Plummers garage. I recommend the whole Dave Cutler and Raymond Chen interview.

BTW: This also shows how BAD XP was in the beginning. Service Pack 2 made it usable, before is was an unstable hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't happen, sus language

Too bad terminate and words like that are now considered too violent and won't be used

[navarac]

Usual laughs

I just love all the comments on these types of articles. Just glad I'm retired and don't have to use "the corporate OS", Windows, anymore - says he on his Linux box.