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Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

pcworld.com

41–50 of 270 posts

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#41

I have a theory, which I have no way of backing up or testing at all, that the entire slump in the laptop segment is driven by the fact that Windows is just utterly user-hostile garbage, and there aren’t any alternatives really, other than MacOS, which is too tied to Apple. Like any reasonable tech savvy person I use Linux of course, but I’d have trouble suggesting it… lots of people just don’t want to use the termin…

But do they know they don't have to use a terminal? You can use Linux Mint perfectly fine without ever opening a terminal, like MacOS. Seems like more of a reputation issue.

Only if all you ever do is web browsing and do some light office work. As soon as you have to troubleshoot something or install some less popular software, you can't avoid it.

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#42

I have a theory, which I have no way of backing up or testing at all, that the entire slump in the laptop segment is driven by the fact that Windows is just utterly user-hostile garbage, and there aren’t any alternatives really, other than MacOS, which is too tied to Apple. Like any reasonable tech savvy person I use Linux of course, but I’d have trouble suggesting it… lots of people just don’t want to use the termin…

I agree. I've been a Linux user since 2017, and in the last year transitioned to an M1 MBP for the battery life (cheaper than buying an inverter+batteries in South Africa with loadshedding). Tried to upgrade to a new machine last month. New-ish (and not name brand) hardware made Linux unusable on it (keyboard & BT wouldn't work), while Windows was passable. After some work I decided to try working on Windows again. H…

Same situation here. Apple is not the best option, but it's the least shit.

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#43

I have a theory, which I have no way of backing up or testing at all, that the entire slump in the laptop segment is driven by the fact that Windows is just utterly user-hostile garbage, and there aren’t any alternatives really, other than MacOS, which is too tied to Apple. Like any reasonable tech savvy person I use Linux of course, but I’d have trouble suggesting it… lots of people just don’t want to use the termin…

But do they know they don't have to use a terminal? You can use Linux Mint perfectly fine without ever opening a terminal, like MacOS. Seems like more of a reputation issue.

It's an issue of supply-chains and gap in the market. I can't buy a generally competitive Linux Mint (or anything similar) device in a shop anywhere in my country as far as I know. Whereas existing vocal demand are generally tinkerer types who often want the opposite of what we actually need. So I can see why it's a difficult market to bootstrap. Meanwhile, incumbent hardware vendors have competence and interest elsewhere and are probably getting decent incentives from Microsoft...

Valve's been bringing eberyone forward. I wish System76 et al to keep on their optimistic trajectory, for what that's worth. And Framework would be in a great position to spin out a dist or just offer a community install (fingers crossed Manjaro don't get them loljk).

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#47
post #25

I recently had to install windows on 2 computers after some years without doing it. Had to spend an entire day debloating the thing. Had to use a handful of tools and powershell scripts to do it. I still can't imagine how they managed to make a context menu open in almost a full second. In Windows 9x on a 200Mhz it was instant. A useless one too, because all the options that matter are in the old one. The only thing…

> The only thing holding me from Linux I've spent the last 25 years using linux and seeing this statement. There's always something.

Let's be honest here, the something is 99% drivers. It was printers, then it was wifi, now it's gpus. DNNs and LLMs at least made the compute part of the gpu driver Linux-native (from the vendors' perspective), one would hope the graphics part of the graphics processor would come next, but alas making big iron do work is done from macos and windows laptops.

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#48

I recently had to install windows on 2 computers after some years without doing it. Had to spend an entire day debloating the thing. Had to use a handful of tools and powershell scripts to do it. I still can't imagine how they managed to make a context menu open in almost a full second. In Windows 9x on a 200Mhz it was instant. A useless one too, because all the options that matter are in the old one. The only thing…

>I still can't imagine how they managed to make a context menu open in almost a full second

They did make everything slower than it used to be when it comes to new UI elements, but the context menu can also be slowed down by third parties.

On my machine, the primary cause was the shortcut to AMD radeon settings. You can remove it with this powershell command :

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers AdvancedMicroDevicesInc-RSXCM | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers

It was a major pain to find how to disable this thing. In fact, if you google "AdvancedMicroDevicesInc-RSXCM" (with the quotes, to get a verbatim search) you won't find more than a handful of results talking about its existence.

It doesn't uninstall the settings panel itself, just the shortcut. Yes, the context menu shortcut is a standalone app package of its own. It's crazy.

After uninstalling this AMD crap the context menu went from taking a second to being almost instantaneous.

On other people's machines I've also remarked certain antivirus like Kaspersky causing major issues with 11's context menu performance.

I thought the new context menu was all about fixing the mistakes of the previous ones when it came to the nasty things people can do in extending explorer.exe but seeing the behavior of those new third party additions to the menu, I guess not.

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#49

I recently had to install windows on 2 computers after some years without doing it. Had to spend an entire day debloating the thing. Had to use a handful of tools and powershell scripts to do it. I still can't imagine how they managed to make a context menu open in almost a full second. In Windows 9x on a 200Mhz it was instant. A useless one too, because all the options that matter are in the old one. The only thing…

This may not fulfill your needs in the way that MSI Afterburner and ThrottleStop do, however I would recommend checking out MangoHUD and cpufrequtils respectively for similar (but perhaps not identical) behaviour.

Re: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

#50
post #4

More user hostility. Less user choice. I remember a few years ago on here everyone crowing about the new Microsoft and how it wasn't like the old one. It's notably worse a this point.

I’m very uncomfortable with the degree to which I’ve become dependent on VSCode, GitHub, and Typescript. Microsoft has the same incentives to exploit their users now that they always have.

Fortunately I think we're good here given how MS org chart[0] looks like.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/XLuaF0h.png

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