Microsoft releases first big update after Nadella's vow to 'win back fans'

Microsoft is following through on its promise to prioritize Windows stability with its April 30 non-security update. Ahead of Patch Tuesday, yesterday's update was chock-full of fixes, including several for Windows Explorer. According to Microsoft: "This update improves the reliability of relevant explorer.exe processes so …

[Lee D]

Too little, too late

There are bugs, and obvious (but also complete and persistent) omissions in MS software that have been there for decades. They don't care.

They only care now because we all stopped buying into the AI nonsense they shoved down our throat, and got tired with the CONSTANT Windows Update nonsense.

They could have done this at any time in the last 25+ years and they'd have MORE customers now and it would actually be a harder argument to convince people to move off it. But they didn't.

Just before Christmas, I bought myself a Framework laptop. My house is now entirely Linux again. I used to run Slackware as a primary desktop for a decade in the past, but have always had some Windows somewhere ever since.

Honestly... I moved back because I'd had enough.

And having done so, how's it gone?

Microsoft claimed that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows ever... and they were right. It's my last version of Windows ever.

My computer operating system is just a nondescript part of the tool I use for HOURS every single day, again. It just makes things work, and gets out of my way. Updates are clean, simple, tested, and have so little impact that it's almost like I had false-memories of how a good OS could be in that regard. Absolute max is one (30 second) reboot on an important kernel update (like "copy fail" today) and straight back in. But 99% of updates just happen silently, take seconds, and even happen while you're using THAT SAME PROGRAM that's being updated.

Honestly, moving back to a sensible desktop OS again has shown me how much time I had acclimatised to spending on getting around MS's foibles. Everything from updates, to the start menu, to explorer weirdness, to all the cr*p associated with removing bits of programs that I don't want (desktop icons, taskbar always-running items, background services, etc.). It had become routine.

My computer is now boring. Absolutely boring. There's nothing left to tweak. Things just work.

And, yes, the last bastion of "I really need Windows for that" is dead. I go into my Steam account, I buy a Windows game (I don't even bother to check ProtonDB any more), it installs, it runs, I never think about it. That was the only reason I originally stayed on Windows back in the 98SE/XP eras, that's the only reason that the first line of Steam Machines failed all those years ago.

And that problem is now... solved. I even have Windows games that work perfectly on Linux which you absolutely CANNOT run on Windows any more. I know because I spent a long time trying over years.

Sorry but... I have no need of Windows any more. If you want me to deal with it professionally, then you need to pay me a salary. And most of that will revolve around "Microsoft says so, I have no choice" (as I've literally told my staff for things like Updates and the way Office looks/works/calls itself, AI features, etc.). MS put it in, they don't give me an option, you'll just have to live with it if you want to carry on using Windows.

But at home? It's gone. Dead. It's an ex-OS. Something I never quite managed before, even with a Slackware desktop and a Linux machine routing my home network, a bunch of Pi's running home automation, and all kinds of other stuff. I never got to the point where I had NO Windows at all. Until this year.

I can't say that I miss it at all.

Just to be clear, MS: You drove me away. It's literally your fault. The way you manage your OS is what drove me away. Not market pressure, or technical features, or a UI fad or, anything else. Just the way that you decided to shove your OS on me in ways that I never wanted.

All it would have taken would have been an option in a dialog, a choice to defer updates, a clear way to turn things off. But no. You would never give me that. So I pressed the big button that gave me my choice back. And, honestly, computing is boring and safe again.

[HandlesMessiah]

Re: Too little, too late

So the two downvotes are Nadella and Davuluri?

[billdehaan]

Re: Too little, too late

I'm largely the same. I ran Unix as far back as 1983. My personal desktop was DOS in 1980, DesqView (remember that?) in the late 1980s, OS/2 from 1992 to 1996 or so, and Windows NT 4 from 1996 onwards. I often used Solaris, or HP-UX, or some other Unix at work, and around 1997, many companies used Linux (Yggdrasil, Red Hat, Mandrake...). I was familiar with Linux, and it made a great OS for my secondary machines (firewalls, backup servers, FTP and NNTP machines, etc.), but my primary machine was always Windows.

Whether I was running NT4, or 2000, or XP, or Win7, or Win10, there simply wasn't any impetus to switch. Even if Linux was "as good" (and with software availability, it wasn't), there was no compelling reason. It was certainly better as a server OS, but the desktop was, at best, only as good as Windows, so why switch?

That was, until Windows 10. It became increasingly obnoxious and intrusive. Although the annoyances could be worked around, it was obvious that Microsoft's vision of the desktop and mine were not the same.

In my case, the straw that broke the camel's back came in 2023. The Win10 HTPC in the living room was unable to execute Windows updates. It was a 32GB MMC machine that was originally Windows 7, and while it could easily install security fixes, Windows Update's "everything or nothing" design demanded I download 104GB of nonsense in order to get 200MB of security updates.

The PC had a 1TB disk (since replaced with a 256GB SSD), so I could solve the problem by re-imaging the OS, but if I was going to do that, since the machine was not TPM 2.0 compliant, I'd just have to do it again in 2025 anyway. I played with a few distros (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Zorin, Debian, Pop!_OS, etc.), settled on Mint, and had my HTPC up and running within a day. It not only matched the Win10 performance and functionality, it exceeded it.

Since my primary machine was facing Win10 obsolescence in 18 months as well, I switched it, too.

I keep an air-gapped Windows 10 machine for the few apps (Gentibus) that won't run in Wine, or properly under VMs, but other than that, I see no need to dip my toes in the world of Windows any longer.

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Re: Too little, too late

I have a very similar experience, using Microsoft OS and products since DOS 6.x. They literally set me free, helped me build my professional career, micro businesses, personal stuff, hobbies, games. I stayed "loyal" through thick and thin. I even mocked the smug Apple / Mac / iPhone users and thought many were brainwashed by marketing and status.

That was until just before COVID hit and I dropped and smashed my Windows Phone (stay with me on this one), I loved it, but it was no longer possible to replace it with a Windows phone. For work I had already used a myriad of Android phones for years, always had some kind of issue, but they were affordable and I liked to tinker with settings in those days. Faced with the need to research 200+ Android phones to replace my broken Windows phones, I embarked upon spending / wasting a weekend in comparing dozens of Android phones. After losing Saturday to this task, and it dawning on me that my daily work rate was worth more than the phones I was researching, I turned off the PC for the night.

Sunday morning came and I happened to see an email from a Jurassic / Alpine equivalent of Currys / Dixons who had various phone offers. I happened to notice they had a clearout on unopened stock of iPhone XS for about £400. I though, WT* I might as well give one a try instead of spending another day researching and comparing Androids. So I did. Seven years later I haven't regretted my decision, the XS and subsequent phones, latest is the 16e, just work. No glitches, no running out of memory and slowing down to a grind, no X Y or Z...it all just works, even if my phone-tweaking days were now over. A totally reliable phone.

Then, earlier this year, after spending the past few years buying very powerful laptops with Windows 11 on them, yet experiencing horrendous slowdowns and freezes and hot CPUs and fans blasting, I thought WT* once more and decided to experiment again, this time with a discounted, older, but unopened Mac Mini 2 Pro. After a couple of months now, I haven't looked back, it just EFFING works how its supposed to! Total contrast to Windows 11. I've installed Office, Teams etc on it, and they just work as expected, despite my initial doubts.

Sidenote: I have tried many flavours of Linux over the years, but unfortunately I faced too many issues eventually, despite my love for Linux and open source. I will always support OO and Linux and indeed have Libreoffice running on the Mac. Returning to your point, what Apple have given me, is a fully polished and fully integrated version of Unix/BSD/Linux that just works out of the box, unlike all of my other experiences over the past 40 years.

...then I recently saw the Neo and was taken aback, it's got the potential to harm Windows 11 / MS massively. Good luck to them. Never thought I would think that about Apple, let alone say that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too little, too late

So what Distro you using. As I want to try again.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Too little, too late

Easily missed - I missed it 1st time round, but OP says Mint.

[ToothHurty]

Re: Too little, too late

There's also CachyOS if you like to game, it's arch based rather than debian but everything just works.

[PeeKay]

Re: Too little, too late

CachyOS also makes it easier to run Windows apps on Linux without too many issues (wine/proton/etc).

There are few apps that refuse to run - and there are always alternatives for those.

[retiredFool]

Re: Too little, too late

Someone should burn this statement into the door of every O/S writer in the world.

"My computer operating system is just a nondescript part of the tool I use for HOURS every single day, again. It just makes things work, and gets out of my way. "

The O/S should be out of the way of the applications that you actually want to run/use. I don't muck with my house's slab foundation either. It is just there.

[Lee D]

Re: Too little, too late

I always found their Desktop analogy to be very pertinent.

Stop putting shite on my ACTUAL WORKING DESKTOP. Stop interfering with how I store my files. Stop getting in the way of HOW I WANT TO WORK.

MS do the equivalent of walk into my house and/or office and trash my workspace randomly every second Tuesday, and at random other times too, and then leave a bunch of adverts, shite that I don't want, junk, and basically burgle / hide all my files, applications and neat organisation (e.g. start menu) whenever they do so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too little, too late

I’d love to know why we needed to have the crap like the XBox, Groove Music etc. stuff foisted on us in the first place without an option to say no. A couple I know had bought their son a shiny new windows laptop for his birthday. The poor boy were told this was for school work only and there were to be no games put on it etc. He didn’t install anything game related but Microsoft did as most of us would know by putting their XBox crap there. When I was asked round to remove it from the machine, I pointed out that Microsoft had dumped it on there without giving people an option. There were two very guilty looking faces at that point as they had given him a serious bollocking for having done so.

I said it were no different to Apple putting that U2 album on Apple products and they were even more horrified. Poor lad had protested his innocence and they hadn’t believed him, doubling his punishment for lying. They are not very technologically gifted and had no idea, they’d just checked the laptop and saw it there. As a result of this new information, a holiday was hastily booked for Florida to visit the theme parks there. I said the lad should be commended for keeping the computer OS up to date (and for ditching Windows 8).

[RussT]

Re: Too little, too late

> Just to be clear, MS: You drove me away. It's literally your fault.

Couldn't agree more. Your whole post really sums up my feelings, if they'd done nothing, it would have been better than what's happened over the last few years. I moved to Mint last year after 35 years on windows out of sheer frustration/desperation and haven't looked back.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Too little, too late

> Microsoft claimed that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows ever... and they were right. It's my last version of Windows ever.

Same here, using Mint now and very happy with it - quite surprised how many equivalent programs there are available that do what I want to do

[Eye Know]

Too little

Too late.

Microsoft left reliability behind long ago.

[[e-mail]]

Death to AI in Windows.,

"Windows needs to be faster, more reliable, and contain a more targeted deployment of AI." Windows needs a single kill switch in the settings application that kills all AI, including AI in apps. When I say apps, I include apps like Chrome and Acrobat. These windows apps should be required to obey the kill switch.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Death to AI in Windows.,

Windows does not need a deployment of AI.

[Always Right Mostly]

Isn’t this the square root of Pi x ∞ time we’ve heard this bullshit?

Here’s the first step to fix it: fire Nadella.

[frankvw]

Win back fans?

Since W10 and W11 came out I've only installed more fans! Things like constant 100% CPU load, ridiculous amounts of harddisk I/O (especially on start-up) and tons of Coprolite A/I slop have driven up the power consumption of PCs something awful.

Honestly, if MICROS~1 would like to impress me they should start by releasing a version of their products that are aimed at my productivity (and by that I mean actual productivity, not their marketing blurbs about how much more productive it make me while doing the opposite). An OS should enable me to do my work, not get in the way of it, and the latter is what all Windows versions since W7 have done for to me.

Which is why I've recently purged MS slop from the last PC in my house. I now live and work (productively!) in a Linux-only environment. Which is a lot quieter, seeing as it requires fewer fans to operate. Fortunately I'm no longer required these days to use and support applications that only run on Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the antifeatures, stupid

How about removing the stuff which actively makes Windows a worse experience?

Long-delayed bugfixes are a baseline expectation, not a triumphal victory. These fixes could have landed sooner if the priority was solving problems, rather than creating new ones.

[Briantist69]

Microsoft really thought - like Apple - that all these AI lies would come true.

As ma developer I tend to have stuck with windows cos I needed to dog food by work using what my end-user use.

When Windows stopped doing the thing I used first in Windows 1.12 like dragging the the Recycle Bin to delete things I'm this close to switching to other desktop OS.

[IGotOut]

"like Apple - that all these AI lies would come true."

Apple out of all of the big tech companies are probably the least exposed to the AI bullshit. Note: LEAST, not free from.

[DS999]

It is kind of hilarious that even though Apple was not trying to build AI beasts they managed an accidental hit anyway with the Studio & Mini which turn to be easily the best bang for the buck for running Openclaw, so now they can't keep the things in stock.

Meanwhile Microsoft forced Intel/AMD to build dedicated AI inference capability into their latest PCs to run Copilot, which no one wants!

[Penguinista]

Agreed. Apple fumbled the AI integration ball so badly that it's now starting to look like a good thing.

[AMBxx]

I'm in a similar position. Work on the server side doesn't need Windows any more. On the client side it's mostly browser based. Problem is Outlook, OneDrive & HyperV. That's a chunk to migrate away from.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of which simply confirms they were taking the piss before and giving users the middle finger when they could have been fixing the metastasising bugs.

[anthonyhegedus]

A bunch of computers we support just had a slightly delayed Patch Tuesday update. In it, Microsoft have decided in their wisdom to increase the security on the Remote Desktop client. All very good and well, except they forgot to take into account that there are actually people using this, and it may not be relevant or convenient to change the entire way that RDP works just for security.

We have a customer who uses an old application that is going to be retired soon, but it works by connecting via RDP. Microsoft have added an extra dialogue box that makes you tick all the things that should be activated in RDP, such as shared clipboard and shared printers, etc. This would have confused the user, so we found a registry key that Microsoft had published that allows you to make RDP work as it USED to. Great, I thought—this will solve the problem. But no, it appears to work exactly like RDP used to, but it disables all the functionalities that we took for granted, such as a shared clipboard and shared printers. So now we've got to go to the trouble of self-signing a certificate for every computer that's going to use RDP in order to get rid of this set of questions.

So yes, I realise it's for security, but why break something that's already working? Why can't Microsoft stop telling us how to run our businesses and start producing software that actually gives quality-of-life features rather than adds more and more roadblocks along the way? So sure, this is a relatively simple problem to fix, but they keep changing things and won't stop, and none of the things they seem to change seem to make life any better. They either confuse the user, advertise to the user, or annoy the IT admins.

Buggy software, arrogant company and a shitty experience for all. Lovely, well done Microslop.

[ComicalEngineer]

Win back fans by:

Getting rid of the persistent adverts.

Remove the spyware. The OS does not need to phone home every 500 milliseconds.

Make the OS "silent" in that it doesn't interfere with my getting work done.

Make it reliable and secure.

Cut out the useless crap that eats CPU time.

Stop forcing the "game bar" and other garbage on my work machine.

As well as the obvious deletion of at least a binary on/off button for AI.

And I don't want a MS account to install the OS.

Personal opinion only, but Nadella will probably be based like for like whose only real interest is the MS profit & share price.

[Apocalypso - a cheery end to the world]

Win back fans by making the Windows UI completely skin-able - every single feature. So if we want it to keep looking like Win10 then it can do. Make the skins sellable in the Windows store so that enterprising and creative designers can profit from producing a better UI and MS gets *real* UI feedback - if people are willing to pay for it then it must have some merit.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they care about that part of the userbase, those skins also need to be saleable outside the Windows store.

It still hasn't dawned on Redmond that the Microsoft account requirement is a hard dealbreaker for many, whether it's required to turn the computer on, install things, compile and use software, etc.

The folks who think they're slick for knowing what a "funnel" is often forget that many ex-users do too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnels

MS can sit on theirs and spin.

[Doctor Syntax]

"As well as the obvious deletion of at least a binary on/off button for AI."

I'm not sure you meant deletion there.

Essentially what you're saying is look at any good Linux desktop distro and make it work like that.

[Tron]

So...

We won't need a MS account, can turn all AI and OneDrive off with a single click, and can pick and choose when to update, when others have tested them.

If not, this is just more MSBS.

[Richard 12]

Re: So...

The MS account requirement utterly screws small businesses who want MS365.

Tiny business buys a laptop. During first boot they're forced to create an MS account without realising it.

Once they have a PC, they buy an MS365 subscription tied to their business email because they think they want Word and Excel.

Now they have two MS accounts on the machine and no idea how to get rid of the one they were forced to make during first boot. Their experience of MS365 becomes orders of magnitude more horrific than normal as they have to keep switching between those two accounts all the time. MS365 also keeps insisting that it needs to take over their email hosting, and if they follow that "guidance" it won't work...

Worse, they have no idea that bitlocker was enabled until a bad update requires them to find the recovery key. They now have absolutely no idea which account contains said key.

Or, they use LibreOffice and have none of the above issues.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: So...

"Or, they use LibreOffice and have none of the above issues."

Not entirely. They still have have business email tied to MS<365. They could get their own domain for an email address, services by a good MSP (it's not expensive - and if even I don't think it's expensive it most certain is not expensive) and use Tbird. Of course they still have the issue of using Windows 11...

[xyz123]

47 "new" control panels.

ONE old control panel that STILL is required to access some functions

Adverts on the start menu. STILL get repeated "go back to Edge" messages that take over the current website.

Buggy and slow 3D with mismanaged resources.

this patch didn't even fix file explorer speed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pavan Davuluri acknowledged that Windows needs to be faster, more reliable, and contain a more targeted deployment of AI.

Not quite. Rather than "more reliable", Windows just needs to be reliable. Period.

As distributed it doesn't need to contain ANY AI at all. just a link to a download of the appropriate bits, for both of the people who want it.

We are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets, and Notepad."

So that'll be ALL Copilot entry points then? None of them are necessary. Just provide a link to a download of the appropriate bits, for both of the people who want it.

[David 132]

> As distributed it doesn't need to contain ANY AI at all. just a link to a download of the appropriate bits, for both of the people who want it.

But surely both Pavan Davuluri and Satya Nadella already have it?

[Mike Lewis]

Explorer bug fixes

Have they fixed the bug in 25H2 where Explorer shows me the views it thinks I should have instead of the ones I told it to? I hastily went back to 23H2.

[David 132]

Re: Explorer bug fixes

Or the longstanding bug whereby if it can't resolve a shared network drive or location, Windows Explorer hangs for ~30s when opening the "My Computer" window or a file dialog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much time spent on that unwanted AI

Not enough time sent on the primary objective: basic stability and security of the OS.

[Penguinista]

I remember the days when...

...Windows *mostly* stayed out of your way. Nowadays, it can't wait to get in your way by forcing M365 accounts, Copilot, OneDrive, Edge et al down your throat.

I'm glad I ditched Microsoft back in 2018/19 by avoiding the current car crash that is Windows 11 and haven't looked back :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

if its broken dont fix it

keep going with the entshittification so that everyone dumps it. save new generationsof all the garbage genX has endured win windoze. save the world from Cloud, subscription based only, dumb terminal streaming, client PCs. do yourself a favor, and your kids.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: if its broken dont fix it

And no. subscription based Ubuntu Pro is not a solution.

[Omnipresent]

Everything all at once

There are about to be a whole lot of systemic changes happening all at once. Part of the problem of the past was that updates broke current architecture. That is a big reason for NOT updating. There is a separate article on El Reg rn describing how AI bug hunting is going to throw a whole lot of patches and "fixes" at the industry all at once. This is correct. There are about to be a lot of long standing systemic changes in how and why things work or don't. This will happen across ALL platforms. Linux is being actively targeted by Azure and others at the moment. AI is coming for your linux.

As for myself, as someone who has an original apple in my closet, and learned how to type on apples in grade school in the 3-4 grade, I always wondered how apple escaped all this unharmed?

Siri was the first AI assistant. Icloud was the first "one drive". And, at this point I have to wall off and turn off my apple services just to keep people from spying on me through location services and such. It seems weird that they don't get more heat.

Our computing world has changed. There are NO more personal computers, and there is no more internet. There is only what you are allowed to do, and that gets nicked and adopted as soon as you expose a good idea.

Welcome to the new world order. A serious contender is needed. A new beginning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple question

Why the f*ck only now? What does it always take a loss of customers before companies go back to the idea of quality and customers first? This should be a standard focus.

Actually, forget I asked this about Microsoft, that has always been about money first and maybe you'll get something usable if you're very patient, and even then only until they kill any usability in their UI in the next update. And then introduce a lot of bugs so you keep paying, afraid you miss out on the one update that fixed a backdoor (because a breach is, according to Microsoft, always the customer's fault, that's IMHO the second reason to keep the update scam going).

[mcswell]

"...reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points"

Meanwhile, in Visual Studio Code 1.116, the updates includes this: "GitHub Copilot built-in: start using AI without having to install the GitHub Copilot Chat extension."

So PLEASE, Microsoft, reduce the Copilot entry points by one more. If I don't want Copilot, I don't want it lurking inside my editor.