Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Windows 11 was released to the public today. You can get it using the Windows Upgrade Assistant or wait for Windows Update if you have a qualifying system.
Windows 11
- Thread starter Mercutio
- Start date
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
That appears to be the case. I don't have anything that immediately qualifies aside from my big desktop at home. I suppose I'll find out, but I'm not super thrilled for it.
Here's what I can say so far: I clean installed Windows 11 on an i5 NUC and upgraded an Asus Zenbook with a 4000-series Ryzen 7. Both had nVMe drives and 16GB RAM. The clean install took about 15 minutes, a little longer than 10 takes. The upgraded Windows 10 took about 45 minutes to finish.
My clean Windows 11 install accepted and activated from a Windows 7 Pro product key.
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are among the suggested apps in the Start Menu. I don't remember that being the case in the beta, but it's possible I just didn't notice. The Widgets don't work if you aren't signed in to a Microsoft account. I actually did like the News and Weather Live Tiles in the start menu. I know there's some concern there might be a performance hit with games, but the systems I'm looking at don't really give me a way to look in to that.
I don't think Windows 11's default fonts look as good as Windows 10's. I'm on FHD screens on both computers. It might be a case where it's optimized for higher DPI screens.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I think there are a couple third parties offering Start Menu replacements. The thing that drives more nuts more than that is that Microsoft moved the OG Context ("right click") Menu so that it's now a second-level submenu.
11 is also mildly clueless about printers; you get the Microsoft drivers for most things auto-installed, but it didn't recognize LAN-enabled plotters or document center-type printers, and installing Windows 10 drivers for Brother and Canon printers from manufacturer executables often generated application crashes. Microsoft drivers allow for basic printing, but not things like paper type selection or double sided printing, so they're hardly ideal. In this way it isn't much different from 10, but it was an area I thought might be a bit better.
I wound up having to mess with the Cleartype setting on both Windows 11 systems. I literally never even looked at those on 10. I'm not sure why it's a problem on 11.
11 is also mildly clueless about printers; you get the Microsoft drivers for most things auto-installed, but it didn't recognize LAN-enabled plotters or document center-type printers, and installing Windows 10 drivers for Brother and Canon printers from manufacturer executables often generated application crashes. Microsoft drivers allow for basic printing, but not things like paper type selection or double sided printing, so they're hardly ideal. In this way it isn't much different from 10, but it was an area I thought might be a bit better.
I wound up having to mess with the Cleartype setting on both Windows 11 systems. I literally never even looked at those on 10. I'm not sure why it's a problem on 11.
Windows drivers for a 4-color SOHO printer might be OK, but not a photo printer. For example I noticed that Epson claims the drivers for the SC P7000/P9000 claim support for 11. Whether it will actually work I have no idea.
I suffered with the inability to properly scan on some older devices when 10 came out. I have a ticket to Hamrick to see if the current version will work under 11.
I suffered with the inability to properly scan on some older devices when 10 came out. I have a ticket to Hamrick to see if the current version will work under 11.
So I D/L and installed 11 clean and the GUI sucks. The scaling is borked so everything is blurry.
Many items are no longer easily accessible. It's like they are trying to make it more difficult to do simple things.
I'm sure there are workarounds, but it's not close to being worthwhile.
It is necessary to enable the TPM thing in the BIOS to install the OS, but then I was able to disable it and the computer continues to boot. (I'm not online nor is Windows activated, so that may change after a while.) That seemingly contradicts the supposed need for TPM security.
Many items are no longer easily accessible. It's like they are trying to make it more difficult to do simple things.
I'm sure there are workarounds, but it's not close to being worthwhile.
It is necessary to enable the TPM thing in the BIOS to install the OS, but then I was able to disable it and the computer continues to boot. (I'm not online nor is Windows activated, so that may change after a while.) That seemingly contradicts the supposed need for TPM security.
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sedrosken
Florida Man
Yeah, there was a big hoopla with the leaked beta builds where they supposedly needed TPM, but only to install. "Fixed" builds were circulating just hours later. Getting force-updated to Win11 might just be the last straw that makes me figure out how to do GPU passthrough to a VM through KVM in Linux -- I've been looking for an excuse to for a pretty long while now, but I'm hanging up on finding a decent low-power card for cheap enough that can still adequately drive dual displays and decode VP9 in hardware. Preferably a Radeon so I don't have to fuss around with the proprietary nVidia drivers, though if a 1030 winds up being what I need, I guess that's just how it goes. I almost wish higher-end Ryzen CPUs still had iGPs, even if just for a fallback, but I understand not wanting to waste even more power on that. I also wonder about an equivalent to the Ryzen Master software that enables my PBO to function more intelligently.
The thing about it is, WINE/Proton have come a long way, yes, and in general I'd say that you can get most things working on Linux through them now, but I made some stupid purchases and some of those will flat-out never run on Linux regardless of emulation/compatibility layers.
The thing about it is, WINE/Proton have come a long way, yes, and in general I'd say that you can get most things working on Linux through them now, but I made some stupid purchases and some of those will flat-out never run on Linux regardless of emulation/compatibility layers.
I expect that most of the "badness" in Win 11 will get into Win 10 through updates.
MS may remove the TPM requirement later since it is mainly artificial, but they won't do it soon.
The two concerns I had with 10 from the beginning are that 1) a change may render my critical older programs unusable and 2) that new programs will have to be obtained from a central store. I don't see 11 being any different yet.
MS may remove the TPM requirement later since it is mainly artificial, but they won't do it soon.
The two concerns I had with 10 from the beginning are that 1) a change may render my critical older programs unusable and 2) that new programs will have to be obtained from a central store. I don't see 11 being any different yet.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Anyone tried installing on "unsupported" hardware yet? It looks like there are working scripts to bypass secure boot and TPM, but I didn't have the strength to spend any time on it this weekend, but I have a Lenovo m83 sitting here with with an i7-4785 and 32G RAM that I'm about to try to upgrade.
The weirdness with fonts really bothers me. How can Windows 11 be this bad with something Microsoft has gotten right basically since Windows Vista? So far I haven't seen a Windows 11 system with what I'd call good looking fonts out of the box. They ALL have to be tuned. Maybe it'll be different on new machines shipped with 11, but right now that's a pretty big disappointment.
The weirdness with fonts really bothers me. How can Windows 11 be this bad with something Microsoft has gotten right basically since Windows Vista? So far I haven't seen a Windows 11 system with what I'd call good looking fonts out of the box. They ALL have to be tuned. Maybe it'll be different on new machines shipped with 11, but right now that's a pretty big disappointment.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
My "unsupported" m83 only needed about 30 minutes to upgrade. It's a relatively vanilla PC with Office 2013 and some basic developer tool installed. Windows Update doesn't seem to do anything, but I can run the Offline Updater if I have to.
Apparently, Office 2013 is unsupported on Windows 11, which is pretty lame. I know it's still fairly common as an operating standard.
Apparently, Office 2013 is unsupported on Windows 11, which is pretty lame. I know it's still fairly common as an operating standard.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
There is some evidence that Windows 11 security features are often the culprit for reduced performance. For example, some people find that disabling Hypervisor Enforced Code Integrity (HVCI) fixes their issues.
This doesn't sound encouraging. I'm sure they'll fix it eventually but I'm not motivated to install quite yet.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22900767/bfarsace_211004_4777_0007.jpg)
www.theverge.com
Windows 11’s first update makes AMD CPU performance even worse
AMD and Microsoft previously warned of performance issues.
www.theverge.com
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I guess the requirements to mess with the Android on Windows 11 are fairly hefty; 8GB RAM and a 3000-series Ryzen. From what I've read so far, people aren't having much luck getting the Play Store framework to run, although it's not that hard to get individual apps sideloaded.
Does anyone else think it's funny that the most exciting things about Windows 11 are graphical Linux software and running mobile-only Android messaging applications?
Does anyone else think it's funny that the most exciting things about Windows 11 are graphical Linux software and running mobile-only Android messaging applications?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
ShellExView can be used to fix Windows 11 context menus. If they had just put basic operations like Cut and Paste on there, I wouldn't be bothered, but that extra click is a click too far.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Having just installed Windows 11 on 3 machines (all new/clean builds), here are my observations:
- Intel indicates that the chipset INF update drivers are included in Windows 11 (no download for them from their website), but Windows 11 doesn't include them, or download them from the driver store on Windows Update... Solution - install chipset INF update for Windows 10.
- All other components had Win11 drivers available for download or where included with windows.
- Had to reboot the system to get the Display Settings applet to recognise the monitor as having 144Hz capability, after installing the driver (INF and ICM profile) for the monitor. (Monitor is connected via DP, not HDMI).
- Had explorer.exe crash a few times when copying files from a remote server (copying documents, etc from an old machines). Extremely annoying. It hasn't crashed any other time, only when copying files from a remote SMB/CIFS share. Oh, and SMB/CIFS is still slow when dealing with lots of small files. (eg, 10KB/s on a GbE link).
- Their ZIP file implementation is still super slow. Extracting 210K files from a zip file (with NO compression, all files were stored), still only worked at 20-30MB/s, despite the source and destination being on separate NVMe devices (both rated at over 2.5GB/s read/write). (I redid the test with 7zip, and 7zip extracted at near 1GB/s).
- Sniping tool works sometimes, and not others?
- The initial setup was slick, no issues there.
- Setting up Mail to use a Microsoft Account and a GMail account worked first time, except 1 time and I suspect that was a GMail issue.
- One of the machines has a wacom tablet attached, the pen applet is pretty slick.
- The time and steps it takes to set another browser as default is BS. (Set Chrome as default browser).
- The number of permissions prompts when running things that were downloaded (small apps like paint.net) was a reminder of the Vista days.
- Had no issues with using different Microsoft accounts for the user login, and for Office365. (Office365 is provided by the school, so a separate login required).
- It was pleasant to see uBlock Origin was available for Edge.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I don't have a client system that's worth trying it, but Windows 11 should support SMB Direct if you're using advanced NICs and have links that can take advantage of them. I think Windows 10 needed some weird workstation version to use it, but on 11, we can supposedly enable it via Powershell. Infiniband stuff is cheap if you don't want to spend a bunch of money on 10GbE (and also don't care much about whether or not you have a graphics card).
Changing default applications *is* absolute bullshit on Windows 11. There's just no way to say "Give application X all of its defaults." That's particularly aggravating for things like general purpose graphics viewers or audio players, but also for the browser specifically. At least Webkit/Edge isn't the pukefest that prior Microsoft Browsers have been, but it's still a sore point that I can't just copy over a profile including extensions and have them work on unmanaged client PCs like I can with Firefox.
I'll also throw in another HUGE recommendation for Chocolatey.org, which is an amazing package manager for Windows. Microsoft has WinGet, which is fine for grabbing dev tools and Windows admin stuff, but doesn't tend to have the best repository for third party tools. choco is more or less how I put everything on client systems now, aside from a couple browser addons. uBlock for example can be loaded from chocolatey, but chrometana, a must-have for Edge, can't.
Changing default applications *is* absolute bullshit on Windows 11. There's just no way to say "Give application X all of its defaults." That's particularly aggravating for things like general purpose graphics viewers or audio players, but also for the browser specifically. At least Webkit/Edge isn't the pukefest that prior Microsoft Browsers have been, but it's still a sore point that I can't just copy over a profile including extensions and have them work on unmanaged client PCs like I can with Firefox.
I'll also throw in another HUGE recommendation for Chocolatey.org, which is an amazing package manager for Windows. Microsoft has WinGet, which is fine for grabbing dev tools and Windows admin stuff, but doesn't tend to have the best repository for third party tools. choco is more or less how I put everything on client systems now, aside from a couple browser addons. uBlock for example can be loaded from chocolatey, but chrometana, a must-have for Edge, can't.
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Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
MS has released OOB patches to correct the sniping tool from not working, as well as a few other internal tools.
arstechnica.com
Snipping Tool not working in Windows 11? An expired certificate is to blame [Updated]
Some issues have already been addressed, others are waiting for a fix.
arstechnica.com
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
JTR, I have the need, once in a while, to run 16-bit DOS software. I find that it works very well under 64-bit Windows using DOS Box.
sdbardwick
Storage is cool
Deja vu with a Lunar post
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
I'm hoping that one of you has some experience with moving Windows 11 installs.
I have a customer with a failed fan on their HP laptop. It's still under warranty, but they can't be without a machine for the two week turn-around time, so I'm picking up this year's model with the intent of selling the old one when it comes back. The new machine comes with Windows 11, while the old one is on 10.
The plan is to simply swap the M.2 drives and move his memory upgrade to the new machine. I'm hoping that it "just works", but the worst case scenario on the new machine is that I have to use one of my $10 Win10 keys to reactivate the old install.
Does anyone have a clue what will happen with the Windows 11 install put on the old machine? Will it activate for the new owner?
I have a customer with a failed fan on their HP laptop. It's still under warranty, but they can't be without a machine for the two week turn-around time, so I'm picking up this year's model with the intent of selling the old one when it comes back. The new machine comes with Windows 11, while the old one is on 10.
The plan is to simply swap the M.2 drives and move his memory upgrade to the new machine. I'm hoping that it "just works", but the worst case scenario on the new machine is that I have to use one of my $10 Win10 keys to reactivate the old install.
Does anyone have a clue what will happen with the Windows 11 install put on the old machine? Will it activate for the new owner?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
If it has a Windows 10 license, it'll just activate. As long as there's no huge change in the storage controller, you can sort of whatever driver issues might exist if there are different devices.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I found out today that Windows 11 is not immune to the "Windows Store apps are fucked, so now not even the Start Menu works"-bug.
It's been almost seven years now. How is this still a problem?
It's been almost seven years now. How is this still a problem?
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
As far as I know, the new machine will be licensed to Windows 11.
There's actually a SKU with the same hardware and Windows 10, but it costs fifty bucks more....
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Anyone had a problem with OneDrive deciding by itself to create a backup of the user's Desktop / Documents and Pictures folders to OneDrive including setting up redirects to OneDrive if you browse to those locations via Explorer?
Had this happen on my son's system, and took about an 2 hours to fix up once I worked out what was wrong. (Having to reconfigure the OneDrive backup to not do those folders, remove the auto-redirects to OneDrive and then download those folders from OneDrive to restore local copies, as when you remove the auto-redirects it deletes all local copies).
OneDrive tried that same on my wife's and daughters systems, but since they had more than 10GB+ (in the three folders) it failed. My son only had 3.9GB (in the three folders) so it succeeded in the migration.
Context: Windows 11 Home, with MS Accounts used for login, with only the free tier for OneDrive (5GB storage).
Had this happen on my son's system, and took about an 2 hours to fix up once I worked out what was wrong. (Having to reconfigure the OneDrive backup to not do those folders, remove the auto-redirects to OneDrive and then download those folders from OneDrive to restore local copies, as when you remove the auto-redirects it deletes all local copies).
OneDrive tried that same on my wife's and daughters systems, but since they had more than 10GB+ (in the three folders) it failed. My son only had 3.9GB (in the three folders) so it succeeded in the migration.
Context: Windows 11 Home, with MS Accounts used for login, with only the free tier for OneDrive (5GB storage).
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
If it had Windows 10 on it in the past, the license is transferrable. If it had a 7 or 8 license that was upgraded, the license will be registered as Windows 11 during the upgrade process. I've literally used license numbers I've found on stickers for PCs that were sitting at my local recycler and found that they work.
I have seen that. I don't know what causes it, but Windows Home really does seem to want to use OneDrive for everything if you let it. I think there's an install-time prompt where users are asked if they want to do that, and if you don't read that and just say yes to everything, but my installs are all customized to the point where I don't see that stuff myself.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
For the record, the brain swap went off with only a few hitches
I had to manually install some drivers for Win10, but it reactivated without any complaints. Windows 11 activated on the old laptop without any complaints
Also, Win11 Home sucks donkey balls
I had to manually install some drivers for Win10, but it reactivated without any complaints. Windows 11 activated on the old laptop without any complaints
Also, Win11 Home sucks donkey balls
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
The thing is, I set all 3 systems up, and don't remember any OneDrive setup options during Windows 11 installation or user setup. Additionally this only occurred after an update for OneDrive and none of the respective users noted any setup dialogs or prompts post update?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The prompt is at install time, before the screen that asks you to specify if you want to allow things like customized ads and location tracking.
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
I don't suppose there is an easy way to stop Windows 10 spamming you about it being time to "upgrade" to Windows 11?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
sedrosken
Florida Man
Yeah, I just went and disabled fTPM in my main's UEFI settings. I'm leaving it on my work laptop -- if it gets force-upgraded, I can then push for my boss to acquire some LTSC licenses It helps that I keep image backups of that laptop made roughly once a week.
I left it alone on my personal laptop as well, because I'm going to use that to play around with 11 when it finally comes around to it, and probably buy a copy of StartAllBack for it. If all goes south it's not my main, it'll take me about a half hour to install a totally legit copy of LTSC or what have you and get it back up to snuff.
It helps that I keep image backups of that laptop made roughly once a week.I left it alone on my personal laptop as well, because I'm going to use that to play around with 11 when it finally comes around to it, and probably buy a copy of StartAllBack for it. If all goes south it's not my main, it'll take me about a half hour to install a totally legit copy of LTSC or what have you and get it back up to snuff.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Goddammitsofuckingmuch.
Also, if you don't know, you can only have a maximum of 10 PCs attached to your Microsoft account at a time, and a SEPARATE 10 PCs with access to the Windows Store.
Also, if you don't know, you can only have a maximum of 10 PCs attached to your Microsoft account at a time, and a SEPARATE 10 PCs with access to the Windows Store.