Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows

Software developers have created a PowerShell script to remove AI features from Windows. The script, available at a GitHub account belonging to a developer named "zoicware," is called Remove Windows AI. "The current 25H2 build of Windows 11 and future builds will include increasingly more AI features and components," the …

[Pascal Monett]

No kidding

"Microsoft meanwhile would very much like to find a relationship between AI investment and increasing growth "

Well duh, you don't go investing billions in a pipe dream without expecting to get billions more out of it, now do you ?

Except that Redmond has forgotten (or, more generously, not taken into account) a few small details : AI is not holding up to the hype and, more importantly, computer components are looking to vastly increase in cost in 2026 and beyond - especially if Trump abandones Taiwan to China (which is a possibility no serious publication is ignoring at this point).

Given that "datacenters" are now going to have to be built with their own bespoke nuclear power station, the cost of sourcing their components is going to be multiplied by an amount that any Board is going to find difficult to swallow, compared to the revenue they might generate.

AI investment is starting to look a lot riskier given that existing AI does not measure up to expectations, so more of the same that costs several times more to build and maintain (and you might want to avoid building that in Texas - just a suggestion) is not really looking like a winning business case at this point in time.

[breakfast]

Re: No kidding

It's interesting because if there were any remotely credible studies showing links between AI investment and growth we would be hearing about nothing else given how increasingly wild-eyed and desperate they are to shove it down our throats.

Evidently they really do have nothing beyond a money pit that is briefly diverting for most people and makes a few psychotic.

[Lon24]

Re: No kidding

Yep - free AI finds plenty of customers. Paid AI requires you to have a business case. They do exist but mass market? Prediction as MS limits 'free' Copilot so usage will shrink by a not much less.

This and similar projects don't touch revenue but will slightly reduce Microsoft's costs short term. Though much of the potential market may have dumped Windows already.

[MyffyW]

Re: No kidding

I've lived long enough to see the products and great companies rise and fall and (very occasionally) rise again.

I've been a starry-eyed neophyte for everything from 32-bit (and then 64-bit) operating systems to handheld tablets, smartphones, virtualisation and 3-D printing. Lord, I've even given some credit to cloud computing benefits (though it's the thin end of the feudal wedge, in my opinion).

So I feel I carry some experience when I opine: Generative AI is a load of bollocks. Worse it's profligately wasteful of energy. And it's thirst for hardware has introduced a massive opportunity cost where RAM and GPUs are unavailable for actual innovative work. Any sane society would actually ban (or at least heavily regulate) it's use.

[breakfast]

Re: No kidding

A while ago I saw the recommendation that we should ban computers using personal pronouns like "I" because it short-circuits too many human brains into being convinced the machine is actually thinking. That would be a simple initial step that could help mitigate some problems and make it a whole lot less appealing to a swathe of dumbasses.

[AVR]

Re: No kidding

That'd catch a lot of games and educational programs in its net, not to mention Clippy and similar. None of which are LLMs, let alone AI. The amount of effort required, and the effective banning of unsupported old games and typing tutors or whatever, would be an unreasonable cost IMO.

[breakfast]

Re: No kidding

Can't have a Butlerian Jihad without a few casualties.

[David Hicklin]

Re: No kidding

> I've been a starry-eyed neophyte for everything from 32-bit

Some of us have been around long enough to remember the pre-PC days when an 8 bit with 1k ram loaded from a tape (if you were lucky) were the bees knees, and instant messaging with a friend was walking around and knocking on the door - not everyone had a phone even. And strikes, 3 day weeks, rolling power cuts, long hot summers and white Christmases........

So yeah I have seen our share of stuff coming, going and promised (but never arriving) but I have never know so much stuff get so enshittified so fast and deep as it is today. And it can't go on, something has to break and it will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a thought

Since AI models have largely be trained by ignoring the idea of copyright, how about saying that nothing produced by these AI models may be copyrighted.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Here's a thought

The good news is that (so far) AI's cannot hold copyright. On top of that, AI output can include materials copyrighted by others. Distributing AI output may leave you open to litigation from the copyright holder. Even for something trivial like rangeCheck the cost of a legal defence can massively outweigh the cost of a large software project. AI image generation can output trademarks opening another frontier for getting sued.

If your query includes (other people's) personal information such as medical records that query may be used for training data. A similar query from someone else may result in output incorporating that personal information and another opportunity to get sued.

[Snake]

Re: Good news

With respect, maybe we should be exacting in our language when discussing this topic. Currently, what we have are LLM's and the good news is that (so far) LLM's cannot hold copyright. One day, possibly, when we have *actual* AI, devices with both verifiable self-awareness plus the ability to postulate new ideas from strictly theoretical constructs without mimicking preexisting ones, they may be allowed to hold copyright.

But don't hold your breath for that, it'll be a while. It'll last for a day I guess, then SkyNet will exist...

[Mike VandeVelde]

Re: Good news

Corporations are persons with free speech rights. It's a very small step for mankind to extend that to electronic simulations of people.

But: every time you start a conversation with an AI, an instance is created for you. When your conversation is finished, so is that instance. Only the transcript remains. Then what happens to any IP created in the conversation??

CLOSING AN AI CHATBOT WINDOW IS MURDER, AKIN TO ABORTION!!!

[grim reaper icon]

[A dirigible]

Re: Good news

> Corporations are persons

I guess that was a legal hack to allow companies to own stuff (including other corporations).

> with free speech rights.

That seems to largely be a USA notion. Other legal frameworks, as far as they recognise individual rights at all, are more concerned with the idea of »human rights«, which don’t auto-generalise to non-human persons.

But of course, we will grant our new AI overlords the right to bear arms as well – as long as they were born and trained in USA datacenters.

[Mike VandeVelde]

Re: Good news

"That seems to largely be a USA notion."

Entirely a USA notion, AFAIK. A legal hack to allow corporations to spend money on politics. A legal hack made possible by the fuzziness of their sacred term "freedom of speech", which apprently includes spending money. I much prefer my much more apropos Freedom Of Expression.

I've heard a lot of right wingnut radio jocks in the USA go on and on about the evil teachers unions and how they take all those union dues and piss them all away on political contributions to the wrong party. Here in my jurisdiction north of the border they have banned that, which should make those idiots very envious. But: they also banned the same thing from corporations, which should make those same morons think twice or even thrice. No political contributions from unions or corporations makes me very smug, swells my head in an almost worrying way :)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-election-2020-campaign-donation-limits-analysis-1.5765772

[David Hicklin]

Re: Good news

> One day, possibly, when we have *actual* AI, devices with both verifiable self-awareness

And that will be the end of humanity or a Butlerian Jihad

[RealBigAl]

Re: Here's a thought

In the U.S. human creation is required for copyright https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2025/03/court-rules-ai-cannot-be-copyrighted-landmark-ruling-on-human-authorship/

It's not yet as far as I know been tested in the U.K. courts.

[Recluse]

An alternative method?

Of course an alternative method is to junk using Windows altogether …

Somewhat off topic but, this doesn’t solve the various search engines plugging/utilising the same, although thanks to a previous header from a learned ElReg reader I have managed to stop DuckDuckGo returning AI generated searches.

See here

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/

And specifically

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/settings/params

Example URL with explanation

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s&kp=-2&kl=uk-en&kn=1&k1=-1

uk-en for United Kingdom

Safe Search

kp

1 for On

kp = -1 for Moderate; kp = -2 for Off

New Window

kn

1 for On

-1 for Off

Advertisements

k1

1 for On (default)

-1 for Off

[m4r35n357]

Re: An alternative method?

I would love to hear some words of wisdom from your downvoters . . .

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: An alternative method?

They'd be slop.

[Catweazl3]

Re: An alternative method?

and ditch duckduckgo too. Use a search engine that doesn't use ai; at the very least use one that doesn't advertise ai, like duck.ai.

[mcswell]

Re: An alternative method?

You can use the url noai.duckduckgo.com to to DuckDuckGo searches without AI.

[Catweazl3]

Re: An alternative method?

I don't want to disable ai search.

I don't want a search engine that doesn't use ai made by people who use ai.

I want a search engine that doesn't use ai. Full stop.

I don't want anything to do with ai.

[I should coco]

Re: An alternative method?

What's wrong with steam engines? You'll be saying the ploughshare will be taking go 'onest folks jobs next.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: An alternative method?

I use: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/

Which is duckduckgo's html only search for when you have JavaScript disabled or have the NoScript addon.

(This also saves DDG from having to do a redirect from the main search URL to the html version when JavaScript is disabled)

Without JavaScript I never see any ads or AI results in DDG nor do I see any ads on any other webpage.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: An alternative method?

There was an article on this very website over the holidays for doing something similar for Chrome and google search therein.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/26/disable_ai_features_chrome/

I do appreciate the not-so-subtle irony there, but some of us are forced to use it as the chosen browser by our employers (who should know better, but don't given their current push for all things DX).

[Catweazl3]

Re: An alternative method?

If you are forced to use ai by an employer then at least make it worth your while: Replace your employer with ai.

[Recluse]

Re: An alternative method?

A possibly easier method is to go via Firefoxes normal settings, open Search Engine (where you were previously looking) and then choose “Add Search Engine” (depending on the version of Firefox the wording can be subtlety different e.g, “Add Another Search Engine”)

This will bring up the option to specify a search string or URL to use (again differs by version)

Paste into the search string section as I listed above (amended to suit your personal circumstances if you wish)

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s&kp=-2&kl=uk-en&kn=1&k1=-1

Give it an appropriate label e.g.DuckDuckGoNoAI and then save and select this as your default search engine.

A learned ElReg poster has suggested using an html version of DDG rather than the no AI version I suggested and this might also be worth investigating (depending upon your paranoia levels)

[Mage]

Re: DuckDuckGo

I switched to it from Goole ages ago.

Now I use Qwant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: DuckDuckGo

Any good?

I try to use DDG but it's not great

[KittenHuffer]

How do I make ....

.... noai.duckduckgo my default engine in Firefox?

So far I can only seem to set my default search to the 'approved' Firefox list. What if I want to use one that's not on the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How do I make .... Firefox accept a Custom Search Engine ??? ...

To add your own search engines etc to Firefox

See https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-search-engine-to-firefox

NOTE:

The about:config fix to enable the 'Add' Button, if you're using firefox v139.x and below, is at the bottom of the Answer !!!

:)

[Anonymous Coward]

How effective art thou. Let me count the ways

Satya Nadella at the start of the new year published a blog titled "sn scratchpad" in which he urged people to move past arguments about AI slop and focus on how AI models can amplify human activity."

OK, so where are the blog posts that recount many of the countless ways SatNavs life has been improved by AI?

I guess either:

A) There's none or

B) His ability to be a dickhead can't be improved by AI

(With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for the title)

[cd]

Re: How effective art thou. Let me count the ways

Sat-Nag...

[Catweazl3]

Re: How effective art thou. Let me count the ways

There you go. Stick it to the sadnad.

[a_foley]

You will be sad, ya Nutella!

I bet he doesn't even eat his own dog food; if he did, he'd order it be removed. But once the bubble pops, he'll live up to his name.

Also, who wants to bet that he actually doesn't use Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You will be sad, ya Nutella!

Yeah, he's no fool, he only taps that security nightmare through his iPhone, feeding it other people's data ...

And that Copilot voice cloud probably runs on rock-solid Linux servers anyway, maybe atop VMs, with no PC-Windows in sight.

[Anonymous Coward]

With the way of the world today I fully expect that MS is lobbying government to make manipulation of the OS to remove AI unlawful.

[mark l 2]

'Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the start of the new year published a blog titled "sn scratchpad" in which he urged people to move past arguments about AI slop and focus on how AI models can amplify human activity'

Because like all these tech CEOs he out of touch with anyone thats not in his immediate sphere so can't understand why people dislike AI, his post ended up with Microslop trending on social media so i doubt he will be posting on there anytime again soon. Maybe hes realised that if people want to listen to a douchebag tech bro go on about AI we have Musk for that already.

As for another reason to hate on AI if one was needed, is the fact that all your PCs, phones, laptops and tablets are about to get a lot more expensive in 2026 since all the RAM and storage is going to build AI datacenters leaving the consumers with 200 to 300% price increases on memory over this time in 2025.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

...a blog titled "sn scratchpad"

Linkedin "Thought Leadership" - Nuff said

[xyz]

I keep wondering...

All these AIs are slurping from a vast data lake (no pun), so what happens when the data lake starts drying out. Even with the best will in the world, humans can only create so much new data for the AIs to drink.

[Caver_Dave]

Re: I keep wondering...

They ingest their own junk output.

Peak Internet was about 2022, before it was infected with AI generated slop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I keep wondering...

I think peak internet was more like 2015.

Before the push for ad revenue really started to skew search results.

[Irongut]

Re: I keep wondering...

Peak internet was some time in the late 90s. Before we'd heard of Zuck, Jack, Elon or any of the rest of them.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Re: I keep wondering...

Pretty much, when all we had to complain about were static banner ads at the top of web pages and stupid animated gifs.

[S C]

Re: I keep wondering...

Aye, back when you could sit back and 'ave a chinwag with the better half, while watching t' thumbnails downloadin'....

[takno]

Re: I keep wondering...

Even then, the most annoying thing about the animated gifs was the way some people called them jifs. Happier days.

[hedgie]

Re: I keep wondering...

To a great extent, I actually agree with that statement. Part of it is that as much as the old timers were already complaining about the Eternal September, it still felt like something with endless potential to change things in a positive manner. The end of the '90s, early '00s I learnt a lot and went down some strange rabbit holes reading some dedicated hobbyist's horribly knocked together personal site on one of the free hosts. I spent way too much time getting into real discussions on Usenet and actual proper critiques to works I posted in a binaries photography newsgroup (can't remember the exact name right now), rather than just a mindless stream of likes or vitriol.

I think the lack of the big social media sites was a huge driver. Between Usenet, IRC, and the various fora people put together and others stumbled onto, there were organic communities developing and not under the control of a few tech overlords. There were even some trolls who were occasionally interesting enough to "adopt" as pets[1] I remember spending hours upon hours online and actually getting something out of it. Nowadays, it just seems like I do it to satisfy some compulsion or addiction. Granted there was a ton of shite back then too, nostalgia be damned. But it was shite made by people who were passionate/obsessive and not just shite algorithmically shovelled down your throat.

[1] Sometimes fun to play with and not obnoxious enough to just killfile or kick/ban depending on medium.

[David 132]

Re: I keep wondering...

[This Comment Best Viewed Using Netscape Navigator at 800x600]

<blink>Me Too!</blink>

[Click Here For My Web Ring]

Flippancy aside, I agree. Social media, manipulating us with the dopamine-hit of likes & upvotes, and using our self-esteem as currency, has a lot to answer for.

I'm a relative newby to the 'net, having first wandered on in 1992-ish, but I look back on those days of Usenet and the Monochrome BBS with wistful nostalgia. And yes, I'm aware that the latter is still running, albeit a shadow of its former glory; I still log on every year or so for old times' sake.

[hedgie]

Re: I keep wondering...

I'm too young to have gotten on before '93, and wasn't really actively doing much until years later but yes. While the technology has certainly improved by leaps and bounds; it's easy to do things that we couldn't with the hardware/software of the time. And there are certainly far more sources of information, even good ones now. Now the whole corporate-owned social sphere controlled by a few companies, and actively manipulated not just to keep eyeballs on it and rake in the money, but also the dedicated disinformation efforts by various governments and interest groups. Even basic search these days is heavily manipulated and completely enshittified.[1]. There was meaningful competition in the earlier days.

Sure, nostalgia aside there was a metric shitton of crap out there. But most of it wasn't shoveled at you by some megacorp just trying to squeeze every last penny out of people and sell their data to advertisers. It wasn't controlled by anyone, and the only real controls were your ISP's ToS. Again, there was meaningful competition between ISPs too, not just a monopoly or duopoly in any given area. Everything you did didn't get monetised to further enrich a handful of twits.

Today, looking at my usage, El Reg is basically the only place I frequent where there are even long-form discussions. At least the chatter I participate in on IRC is the same, for better or worse. But when it comes to anything meaningful, there seem to be far fewer places to *have* real conversations, and with far less diversity in terms of the people there.[2]

[1] For quite some time, Giggle and others have flat-out ignored booleans like "-youtube" or "-yelp" when I'm looking for instructions or reviews, respectively.

[2] Most places are echo chambers these days. It does good for everyone to actually read and be faced with different views than their own, especially when the "other side" can express it coherently and isn't just a troll. It was far more educating for me to actually converse with those who aren't of a demographic I encounter in daily life, particularly those who are on the other side of the planet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I keep wondering...

Hmm you may well have something there.

In the early 00's I was involved with a lot of forums and those had some deep and quite useful discussions about my professional area and other things.

Bebo/Myspace were around about then but weren't much of a rival to forums.

I remember the forums being a pretty lively place and as you say there were calm people and wild people but it never seemed to get to the point where the wild people were blocked, they were often a bit of spice to discussions and regularly had some real insights and talents they would occasionally share (until they were arrested by the FBI).

When FB came to dominance most of the forums collapsed or moved to FB, then collapsed.

[hedgie]

Re: I keep wondering...

Myspace from what I recall was kinda just basically an extension of the vanity pages you'd see on Geocities or Angelfire, but easier for users to make and link up with one another. As much as some of the pages were atrocities that *belonged* in the '90s, it really was never as actively malignant as the current ones. I think that one reason it's a "has been" now is that they never really mastered shovelling the shit at you for engagement and monetising/manipulating everything as well as FB. Or Xitter for anything that can fit in a short soundbite.

Even on my most active period on Usenet, there were still some web fora I read/posted on regularly,[1] and for one reason or another, they're all gone. One of the communities has migrated to Discord and largely kept together, but it's definitely harder to have long-form discussions using what is mainly designed for chat. Threading and such do "work" and make it usable for them, but far from ideal compared to something more static. Another benefit of either fora, or the comments here or similar places is that if you have something interesting to say, a number of people are going to read it, and possibly reply. I technically have Instagram and Blue Sky accounts[1] but largely can't be arsed to do much with them. Unless someone famous, or at least internet famous reposts your shit, or people stumble across it, it largely feels like howling into the aether. At least here, I know that someone has at least skimmed it and might engage by replying or some combination of up/down votes.

[1] One even decided to add a chat feature, which was just a web client joining an IRC server. One night I waited until there was no one connected to it, joined up (for auto ops) and kicked the admins when they showed up, letting them know when they came back in that anyone can take over a channel like that if they're not using a bot.

[1] The Instagram account is just for sharing artwork, the other I post TTRPG development stuff and babble a bit. I haven't touched the former in months since all my creative work lately is writing, and even though I have no following to speak of, I at least know that all the hot young ladies who *do* are all real, since I know them IRL.

[coredump]

Re: I keep wondering...

Peak internet was Usenet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I keep wondering...

Already happening.

AI companies have consumed the entire public internet, they've pushed past the moral boundries to ignore the do not spider tags, they've bent governments to let them eat everything that is copyrighted without payment or credit.

If they let the AI scavenge the internet now they get 50% of their own slop back.

As I read it the theory is called Model Collapse.

That's why there is a such an unrelenting push to get AI into the OS, it's their only source of fresh data left.

[ecofeco]

Re: I keep wondering...

Yep. GIGO.

They were warned. Too late now.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Of course a developer shared his experience!

Satanya Nad-yella ignores curstomers, ignores PAYING pro/enterprise customers, and he must have a deep rooted hate against Administrators. AI is fine, it is what he is doing with it, that is the issue. Visual Studio? As Add-On fine! Notepad including rollout all over the world? Nada, no matter how loud yella...

[Richard Pennington 1]

Perhaps the Windows AI removal script should have been called ...

DefenestrAIte

[JessicaRabbit]

Hosting the script on GitHub, that's pretty ballsy. Wouldn't be surprised if, now it's getting media coverage, he suddenly finds himself unable to log in and all his repos deleted.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Naaa, MS is not Trump.

[Brl4n]

They are far worse and far more casualties.

[Tron]

AI: Don't use it. Don't pay for it. Turn it off.

If you don't feed AI, it will eventually die, the bubble will burst, and we can focus on less toxic stuff.

[mcswell]

PutinWare

"Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows": Maybe we should call this PutinWare, since Putin was known for throwing people out of windows.

[Rich 2]

Beware - there be dragons

“The Register believes only individuals capable of reviewing the code should consider running this sort of script”

While I fully understand the basis of your warning, non-technical people run Windows and Chrome and many other varieties of turdware on a daily basis, so any additional danger is somewhat diluted, no?

[Mage]

An indictment of Microsoft's arrogant stupidity.

No-one should need this. All the so called AI stuff should be off by default (as should many things such as uPNP, telemetry, news, weather etc) with a single control panel for settings with a decent UI.

Windows settings and and GUI has gone downhill since Windows 2000. The System management console (XP and later?) has never worked properly. Win 10 settings are an abomination. I have a real firewall. Why does it ignore turning off notifications for disabling it and other stuff? Nag Nag Nag.

[Fluffy Bunny Wabbit]

Re: An indictment of Microsoft's arrogant stupidity.

Have you met our shiny new AI system management console?

[Roland6]

Re: An indictment of Microsoft's arrogant stupidity.

> Nag Nag Nag.

I have noticed that the bottom right corner of my Windows desktop - directly above the toolbar is now largely unusable due to the level of “helpful” notifications Windows believes I need. The real trouble arises when using full screen applications like Excel that have useful controls in the bottom right corner, where interact int with controls is a gamble between your mouse click actually engaging the controls or a notification popping up during the click and so Windows opens a new Window on whatever notification it was about to display.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

AI Tour

An invitation from Microsoft...

https://aitour.microsoft.com/

[MrAptronym]

Opinion may be turning

While I have been quite the skeptic of LLMs for a while, I was surprised to see a few of my colleagues at work sour on it. We had a 'copilot launch party' a while back when our company enabled copilot. A coworker of mine went and came back with copilot branded swag. He was summarizing his e-mail with it. Drafting e-mails. Taking meeting notes. Summarizing documents. Designing slides. We joked about his "AI persona" in e-mails because the tone was just completely chatGPT and different from how he used to sound.

I think he is still using it kind of like a search function right now, but the past few weeks he has brought it up as a bubble, complained that it isn't reliable enough to leave any tasks to and even complained about all the extra integrations showing up.

I know it is an anecdote, but it seems that at least a few people who try to genuinely integrate it into their work are finding that it isn't saving them time.

[Luiz Abdala]

I miss when the FIND DOCUMENT feature was a DIR command.

You could even throw DOS wildcards at it (like *.doc) and it would scurry your drives after it, NOT THE INTERNET. If you program the old Find back, I will drink to it.

Now it s a freaking AI that doesn't find jacksquat of my files and I want it gone.

[David 132]

Re: I miss when the FIND DOCUMENT feature was a DIR command.

Amen.

When searching for a filename in Windows didn't automatically send your search out to the web. "Here's Bing web results for 'accounts q1-2025.xls'!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I miss when the FIND DOCUMENT feature was a DIR command.

> "Here's Bing web results for 'accounts q1-2025.xls'!"

What's really terrifying is how many instances of that can be found in public...

[Doctor Evil]

Re: I miss when the FIND DOCUMENT feature was a DIR command.

You want ... Everything

(https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/)

[Dwarf]

Merge

It would be greate to see this sort of tool merged into WinAeroTweaker, so that all the settings can be done in one go.

On the flip side though, the more tools that are created that push back to Microsoft to say "no thanks", the better.

Remeber folks, its your computer, not theirs. If its their computer, then they would be paying to fix it each time it breaks.

[David 132]

Re: Merge

Microsoft has a habit of "accidentally" breaking all these 3rd-party tweaks, purely in the interest of "security" you understand.

It used to be possible to remove the annoying banner in the Settings application that touts Microsoft Points, kindly offers to "reset" your PC (specifically, by setting Edge back as your default browser), and so on. No more, alas, but if anyone here knows differently, please tell.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Merge

Yeah, switch to Server 2025 or Server 2022. Server 2022 has still the classic file explorer and needs a bit less RAM, but Server 2025 is more compatible with bluetooth, USB cameras (which use the standard protocol implemented since Vista) etc etc. Keys for S2025 are available cheap (my choice). Or use the graveyard.

I made that server-version switch on my last computer, my main gaming machine, October 2025 after unfixable DISM errors got worse and MS threatened even more AI crap. Was originally installed end of 2011 with Windows 7 Ultimate, survived two major hardware changes, including switching from intel to intel and then to (several) AMD Ryzen, survived Windows 8 / 8.1 an every Windows 10 build from 1511 on. But Windows 11 24h2, it survived not. I even managed to get cooledit2000 working as before, registered, with add-ons, without needing it to run with admin rights...

Point is: Microsoft is a bit more careful when it comes to the server edition. For example: Notepad, calc, mspaint etc are still the classic binaries in Windows 7 style. AzureArc and onedrive are easy to remove, officially without hacks, and don't come back. Even the defender is ready to uninstall, just untick the feature and gone (though I left it in, for obvious reasons).

[sarusa]

Call it Microslop

I know, broken record here, but if everyone calls it 'Microslop' every single time it will get some eyes.

And it's less cringe than 'Micro$haft Winbloze'. Microslop is understated, 100% accurate, and just works.

[MortyCapp]

Typewriters and slide rules.

Thank god for ebay.

Can The Register set up a fax line and consider publishing an add funded newsletter?

For live news I can't wait to tune in The Register radio.

[a_yank_lurker]

Other name

Instead of MicroSlop how about MicroShit