Windows 11's second-chance setup dialogs hurt IT, drain productivity

Wife just upgraded her laptop, and the newer one has Win11. Of course yours truly was tasked with setting it up, etc.

Oh my, now I get why people complain about advertising in Windows. The relentless noise of the OneDrive and Edge advertisements, riddled with dark patterns, is deafening. It's not like they are notifications, either, but as The Reg article pointed out, they are full-screen things that prevent you from doing anything else.

I have my own W11 setup on my laptop but somehow it never was this spammy. Well, if wifey complains about it when she's using it, I'll say: "There's always Linux...". Let's see if she wants to switch. So far, she has refused.

One of the reasons I no longer work on windows

1. Log onto a server

2. Need a browser to run some stupid tool, everything besides edge is removed

3. Edge shows "setting up profile" with multiple steps (cant be skipped ofc) and after setup it goes to new tab showing shit ton of ads and stuff lagging the RDP session

explain that, macroslop

SCOOBE has been a thing since Windows 10. I got hit with it again just this week on a machine that's run W10 for nearly half a decade. "Let's install O365! And move your stuff to OneDrive! And replace Firefox with Edge! And use your Android phone to connect to your PC!"

And this is why I will never build another Windows box again once I replace my VR headset, nor have I recommended Microsoft products in Enterprises for several years, now. It's still my area of expertise, but the company is - somehow - more hostile to its customers than Oracle.

This is MBAs doing what MBAs are trained to do. If you have a product like Windows with a large userbase that is no longer growing, you put the bare minimum effort into maintaining it while you leverage the large userbase to push growth in other parts of the company (in this case, Office subscriptions, Xbox, and online services). No amount of negative articles or online complaints will stop this because they don't change the incentives that the people in charge have. They don't care about ruining Windows because ruining Windows makes the stock price go up. I feel bad for the people who are stuck on Windows for one reason or another, it's going to be rough from here on out.

I stopped using windows on my devices long ago in favor of Linux but when I periodically have to use it for IT assistance for family I am flabbergasted at how hostile and manipulative it is to the purported owner of the device. I can’t believe things have got this bad.

Wow, I didn’t know you could kill these in the registry, will definitely do this. They are absolutely maddening in my case, which is where I only boot into my Windows SSD sporadically, so there seems to be some time out so I get it basically every single time I boot Windows. It’s really not making me want to use it any more than the absolute minimum…

If I were a multi-billionaire, I'd pay people to follow around Microsoft executives with a megaphone. They'd just shout "Do you want to save that to OneDrive?!" every few seconds right near their ears. Indefinitely, all day long, all night long. Forever. Of course, there would be no relief. My request wouldn't make sense and there would be nothing they could do to make them cease

Definitely a dark pattern. However, setup dialogs can be managed using an autounattend.xml answer file, and IT should be able to handle those kind of things. I am assuming the base schneegans [1] will take care of it. If not, it might take a minute to find the actual registry responsible for it and manually add that to the setup scripts.

https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

I wish you could write a bill for hours wasted and send it directly to the department that caused that waste. You gained three internal promotion crystals and have been a loss-leader for humanity, congrats, here is your awardcard.

This is so extremely annoying when paired with the forced auto restarts. Here is how it works:

1. I walk away from the computer with a bunch of my tabs and programs running. I also have a couple of servers running (docker compose).

2. Microsoft decides my work is worthless and restarts the PC to install updates to fix their own shoddy programming.

3. After 3-4 restarts, it finally drops back into the login screen. So my open apps, tabs, servers are all gone, and will not be running. Basically means I cannot rely on the PC being online if I am outside.

4. And on top of that, even when I enter the password, it will pretend to login, but stops on this spam screen with the anti-pattern "remind me later" button. Every single time. I've told them no for at least 50 times. Oh and this screen blocks every startup program from loading, even though I have signed in. So I have to clear it before docker will load.

Unfortunately, Windows' entrenchment means that it's gonna be extremely painful to return to computers that work for the users again. I have personally moved my personal PC to Linux, but what is really needed is a back-to-basics OS that integrates modern usability and design with reduced bloat.

You could only get the funding such a project requires if you promised that it would make an infinite amount of money, which would directly undercut the goals of making a debloated, usable operating system. yay, capitalism.

This is the cue for IT to make the switch from Windows.

This isn't exclusive to Windows 11, I also got those on Windows 10.

We used to call this a Trojan horse.

It is time to break free from the microslop tyranny.

Now - I use Linux since about 2004 on my main computer, and I have Win10 on the computer to my left, so it is not that I am 100% Microsoft free. But people need more options here; having Microsoft dominate the desktop system for so many decades, has led to issues. This has to change. And Linux has to become much simpler too. This is where it still fails totally.

It is even worse than the article says. You can, though these dialogs, wind up having folder on your hard drive moved around, have your desktop or other folders which you do not intend to be, cloud-synced. Then you get home and all of a sudden two PCs you mean to keep separate have new apps installed, background changed, etc...

I HATE this window.

> But Microsoft is slick, so it’s always possible they won’t work forever.

That's a very gentle framing. Maybe Microsoft should spend less time being "slick".

My entire household is finally all-Linux after the last non-technical holdout got fed up with Win 11.