Headline error!
"Microsoft fixes Microsoft account sign-ins in Windows 11 with latest update"
I call "unable to login into Microsoft cloud" a fix, not break.
Microsoft breaks Microsoft account sign-ins in Windows 11 with latest update
Microsoft has broken account sign-ins in Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 with a recent update, causing error messages in apps like OneDrive and Office. The glitch affects sign-in operations for Microsoft accounts. Businesses using Entra ID (previously known as Azure Active Directory) for application authentication are not affected. …
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Friday 20th March 2026 16:58 GMT I could be a dog really
Re: Can Microsoft just leave account signins broken?
Have an update even though you said Ubuntu. Ubuntu is, like the Debian it's based on, infected with malware which is trying to turn linux into a Windows mini-me - complex bug ridden software, check; developers who don't care what users want, check; attitude to bugs is "won't fix that", check; fix things that weren't broken, check; stated ambition to take over everything, check; and a few more that don't come to mind right now.
Better to choose a systemd free distro (such as Devuan) if your reason for switching to GNU/Linux is to escape the tangled mess of Windows. But even GNU/SystemD/Linux is better than sticking with Windows.
OK, let the downvotes begin ...
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Friday 20th March 2026 17:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can Microsoft just leave account signins broken?
> infected with malware
No. No matter how much $DISTRO might ignore certain design goals, all the popular distros are unambiguously working to be on the user's side, even if time/resource limitations get in the way.
Linux users have the luxury of arguing over choices like init systems, text editors, and Internet protocols. Don't like Ubuntu because of systemd? Install Devuan or Slackware.
Windows users have little-to-no escape from Microsoft's antifeatures. What Redmond is doing is explicitly hostile to the user and designed to prevent escape. That's malware. That's not the same as shipping a different set of FOSS packages than you like or blaming upstream for a WONTFIX.
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Friday 20th March 2026 20:30 GMT Deadly_NZ
Re: Can Microsoft just leave account signins broken?
And that boys n girls is Linux to a tee. plenty of potential options and yes even fun in just choosing what distro to use without having to install each one I load what I want to look at into ventoy and boot up and test within having to install anything. Try that with windows. It doesn't do live CD
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Friday 20th March 2026 20:26 GMT Deadly_NZ
Re: Can Microsoft just leave account signins broken?
Are you sure you are talking about Ubuntu? Sounds more like you have described winslop to a tee and mistakenly named it Ubuntu. Anyway as far as I can see if Ubuntu is what you described and it hasn't given me an error in 9 months of use. I'll take it. Now window blue screen of death was a common occurrence. To say nothing of the excellent update process in Ubuntu is night n day compared to windows.
I'm sure tho' miccyslop would give you a job as a propaganda writer for windows 12 they're gonna need them.
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Friday 20th March 2026 20:21 GMT Deadly_NZ
Re: Can Microsoft just leave account signins broken?
I picked the exact same way of repairing winslop installed Ubuntu and I wonder why I didn't do it earlier. Now I own my computer again I get daily updates and I still have not had to do the dreaded winblows reboot. I also saw a preview of window 12 that was the day I switched. Win12 is an AI powered wallet drainer.
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Friday 20th March 2026 23:19 GMT M.V. Lipvig
I see you are attempting to burn someone at the stake. Would you like me to make reservations at the *Golden Roach?
*Golden Corral actually, which is a high priced sewer tier "steak"house based buffet in the US. Named meats used to cost extra, but last I heard they eliminated the named meat option but kept the price. Nevertheless, the half tonners still waddle in every night for their money's worth. A shame really, as they were a pretty decent steakhouse about 30 years back, before jumping on the buffet bandwagon
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Friday 20th March 2026 20:37 GMT Deadly_NZ
Surprisingly I find it's easier to move my clients to Ubuntu as most like me around elderly. And only use computer for email and talking to family. I switched to Linux just before my 70th birthday I'm now making a CD up that will install Ubuntu already configured with the software they use with a windows like desktop and all needed icons where they can find them. I accidentally tested on an old lady who complements me on fixing her windows so it didn't play up then she saw her laptop in my hand. And told me to make hers like mine so I did. Now I'm reading documents learning terminal and other handy tips. So I'm proof You can teach an old dog new tricks. But the Dog must want to learn.
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Friday 20th March 2026 17:03 GMT I could be a dog really
Re: Daft.
Why would you need to sign in to use a word processor on a computer?
Because MS would prefer that you are stuck with an ecosystem that gives them a monthly "donation" from your wallet - it's all about the money. If you didn't have to sign into an MS account, you might be tempted to not use all the other "goodies" - and heaven forbid that you dare to not use Teams for everything, I'm just waiting for the "kitchen sink" module to arrive for that.
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Friday 20th March 2026 15:30 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
A while ago "use Windows Professional, less crappy, gives you more local control".
Now: "Use Windows Server, less crappy, gives you more local control, and is by default not cloud dependent".
I never had any "home" version on my devices ever... That constant teletubby-style color scheme XP home is bombarding you with... I know, 'cause I had to deal with them...
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Friday 20th March 2026 22:38 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
Regarding Server 2025 vs Windows 11 24h2: Server 2025 is clearly better. No cloud account and AI push crap. Notepad / mspaint / calc etc are the Win7 style, not even Windows 10 like. Needs less HDD space. Needs less RAM. More defender control, including clean uninstall - just remove the feature in the GUI. Deduplication ! Games run perfectly fine. Other server specific features: Not important for a Workstation, though some can come in handy regarding bandwith and quota-per-directory limits and so on - but those are REALLY edge cases compared to deduplication. My 2 Terabyte games SSD (1.61 Tebibyte volume), drive G: 1.37 TB on it, but only 1.08 taken, 303.84 GB saved.
Get-DedupStatus -Volume g:| flVolume : G:
Capacity : 1.61 TB
FreeSpace : 546.89 GB
UsedSpace : 1.08 TB
UnoptimizedSize : 1.37 TB
SavedSpace : 303.84 GB
SavingsRate : 21 %
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Friday 20th March 2026 16:18 GMT Blackjack
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
Windows 95 apparently.
And Windows 98 SE has a lot of retro fans cause games.
Windows XP had problems but people hated Vista so much XP was suddenly gold.
Windows 7 was the last Windows most people actually liked and part of it was Windows 8 being hated, the rest Windows 10 being bad and Windows 11 somehow being worse.
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Friday 20th March 2026 16:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
Windows 2000 was a pretty welcome release for everyone who had been suffering the instability, insecurity, and networking limitations of the Win95/Win98/WinME track. Shortly thereafter XP built on 2000. For all the hate we like to dump on Microsoft, 2000/XP did represent them paying attention to why customers found 95/98/ME so absolutely terrible. That same attitude of customer-centric focus was missing from 8/10/11.
I think the 2000/XP era was the last time when Windows users were overwhelmingly thrilled that the new release arrived. 7 made quite a few Windows users happy as an incremental upgrade from XP, but not really a desperately-awaited game changer. Since then, new Windows have been mostly about the latest thing rather than giving users something to look forward to.
Feel like that's the true test of OS innovation: whether users are looking forward to a warmly-received upgrade, versus moving away from the old thing which it goes EOL.
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Monday 23rd March 2026 12:54 GMT David Hicklin
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
win98SE, winxp SP3, win2000, and win 7 were fine for me, win10 once it had been thrashed within an inch of its life to tame it, the rest were turds.
worryingly for the windows slaves they seem to have broken the "get it right on the next release" cycle and it is all downhill from here.
Linux Mint for me now.
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Friday 20th March 2026 17:06 GMT I could be a dog really
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
Funnily enough, just yesterday I was watching an ATM reboot in Win 7. The guy who was trying to use it at the time was not very happy - it seemed to be stuck trying to do something, then it rebooted, no it didn't give him his card back. I went and did my shopping, when I came out he was on the phone to the ATM operator asking how he could get his card back.
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Saturday 21st March 2026 06:46 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
> Windows 7 was as good as it got. Downhill since.
TBO: UI yes, crash, a bit recovery, and crash again. But below the UI, at least until somewhere 2020, a lot of improvements, but practically invisible if you are a normal user. But well,
marketingpropaganda departments dictate wrong directions. Way too often.Maybe Windows should be split officially, OS and UI, like Linux.
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Sunday 22nd March 2026 10:32 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
"Maybe Windows should be split officially, OS and UI, like Linux."
That's not going to happen. It would lead to having a choice of UI then what would would it do to all those Windowsistas who claim the choice of UI is too confusing for them to use Linux? If they couldn't handle it they might go to Mac and if ther ever reconciled themselves to having a choice there they might suddenly realise they had a choice of OS.
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Sunday 22nd March 2026 16:33 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
While I agree with you to some point, it might have put pressure on MS to get the GUI customers want. The 8.x fuckup (though they missed just a few spots to make it acceptable, like not hierarchical full screen start menu - just tiny things...) and again the 11 fuckup might have not happened. All the advances below the UI were for moot. Albeit Windows 11, up to now, have only three: robocopy /iorate, compression and nested-v for AMD - the other non-UI enhancements are too minor to mention. Whatever they improved with faster kernel was outdone ten times but the slow UI.
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Friday 27th March 2026 11:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."
I'm assuming that either already or soon, testing will be passed over to MS's AI division.
What will they do when the recommendations all begin with "...you need a more stable software stack, please install <some version> of Linux now"?
More to the point, when will the world get paid back for all the time wasted (re-)installing this stuff over the last 40 years. Even at a 1$ an hour they don't have near enough cash, but I'd love to see it on "House of Games". The z-listers won't have enough space on their tablets for the zeroes.
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Friday 20th March 2026 16:26 GMT Lost in Cyberspace
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but...
Why do I expect the fix to not just log the user back in, but to also do stuff like making Edge the default, reinstating OneDrive as the default save location, converting local accounts to MS accounts, logging every app into said Microsoft account, starting Bitlocker encryption quietly, and probably deactivating perpetual versions of Office in favour of a 365 subscription... with a bonus auto-upgrade to New Outlook.
It will be an 'unintended consequence' of course.
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Friday 20th March 2026 18:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
I've actually had to use the Win10 laptop today. I will not be moving to W11 under any circumstances.
I'm equally pleased to say that some years ago I bought several stand alone Office Home & Student licenses. I still have a couple left just in case.
Thunderbird for a mail client and don't use Edge.
I had absolutely no issuies with doing my work today.
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Friday 20th March 2026 19:17 GMT David 132
Have an upvote. Same here, for the machine on my LAN that has to be Windows; I'm sticking with 10, with the Windows Update subsystem nuked from orbit and the stumps cauterised because, prior to that, it "helpfully" rebooted overnight to install updates and lost my work, just once too often (see my comments passim about how this caused an irrational red mist to descend upon me...).
And I'm sure many of you are now tut-tutting about how vulnerable my machine is and how I'm criminally irresponsible for leaving it in an unpatched state; you will marvel at how much I don't care. That said, if anyone feels the need to prove a point and hack me, it's at 192.168.1.35; go nuts :)
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Friday 20th March 2026 20:09 GMT Phil O'Sophical
POETS day
It's also, apparently, the International Day of Happiness, so get those cats herded.
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Sunday 22nd March 2026 18:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
> Not saving work is on you, don't blame an update restart for your lack of using ctrl + s
It's 2026. Autosave failures would have been a software problem a decade ago. Besides, leaving an office program open is better since it preserves the undo history, which isn't saved to files on disk.
And Ctrl + S won't save other things like concurrent browser tabs.
This is a nuts and bolts feature. It shouldn't be broken or overlooked if dev teams are busy chasing other things.
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Friday 20th March 2026 20:17 GMT Nematode
When will they break W10 as well....
I'm just waiting for them to fek Win 10, at which point I will regret that I ever went for the ESUs (but will not be extending for another year). Fortunately, SWMBO's wouldn't register for ESUs so apart from some nagware from the new anti-malware, she's been fine.
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Saturday 21st March 2026 08:40 GMT xyz123
About 12 weeks ago Microsoft fired pretty much all its ready-for-release QA staff and replaced them (and this isn't a joke) with copilot. Not a special copilot with extra training. Literally the copilot people are supposed to use every day!
Which gives a thumbs up to basically anything at all.
This is why the past EIGHTEEN Enterprise fixes have worse bugs or break the OS entirely requiring a full reinstall.
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Saturday 21st March 2026 14:07 GMT WolfFan
Fortunately…
I no longer use Win11 on my personal devices. I do have it on a laptop belonging to the Fine 3try Level Institution that I do some adjunct instruction for; I haven't started that device up since I was last on campus, on Thursday. I will probably start it up on Monday. Maybe. I have an ancient copy of WinServer on one machine; it is due to be retired Real Soon Now and is no longer (badly) supported by MS anyway.
MS Office is also gone from my devices, again except for the school laptop. Which is turned off. LibreOffice and Apple iWorks both work just fine.
OneDrive (from the school copy of MS Office) is available on my Apple systems (Mac, iPad) and seems to be working, no doubt because MS couldn't reach into macOS/iPadOS and fuck with it, and the school laptop is updated by the school admin, and only when turned on and connected. As the laptop is turned off and the school admin hadn't run any updates (still!) as of Thursday, there probably won't be a problem. And the school laptop is on the school Active Directory, not a MS account. (The school is a MS shop; the school admins take their time running updates, letting someone else be MS's QA. They would dearly love to scrap MS but can't, manglement wants MS.)
The office machines are almost all Ubuntu and macOS. And every time I see something like this article, I am very thankful.
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Saturday 21st March 2026 14:52 GMT RedGreen925
They deserve everything they get for using that trash OS. At this point in time if it is not perfectly clear to them that Microsoft has no clue about what they are doing that they continue to use that garbage, well sorry about their luck when they break it just about every damn month on/for those fools still using it.
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Saturday 21st March 2026 17:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
I, too, have lost all sympathy for anyone who is affected by this, especially businesses. If their leadership believes that running the business on the back of Microsoft infrastructure is a great decision then they deserve all they get.
From a business perspective, Microsoft does everything right. As a business, if you have your customers over a barrel mostly because of their own apathy, and those customers happily take every excrement you throw at them while begging for more, Microsoft would be stupid if they invested even one cent in quality control, security or product improvement.
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Sunday 22nd March 2026 06:23 GMT Brian Scott
You know, one day they'll get this Windows thing out of beta testing and it has the potential to be quite good.
Mind you, I've been waiting since 3.0 and it hasn't shown any sign of actually being fit-for-purpose yet. There may be a little wait.
Wait, what? you mean people have been paying to test it for them all these years? That's just stupid. At least wait until they have a release canditdate.
