Botherations, You’ll need a Microsoft account to set up future versions of Windows 11 Pro

[Mark Kaine]

36 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

No. It's not for fixing stuff, unless you used a registry cleaner.

Thats really something you should tell thewindowsclub, tenforums, and a gazillion of other websites… they often actually post a proper fix… but then still go on telling the user how to fix this also in the registry… (and im talking about common stuff like BSODs etc)

 

36 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Group Policy.

Ah, you see, thats also something i tried to say, its often difficult to almost impossible to figure something like that out when you're already  following instructions, ie. when the instructions clearly tell you to use registry… you dont wanna mess up by doing something else entirely… but thats something i learned now, I guess, almost any "settings" related stuff can be done in group policy instead of registry… apparently? 

 

 

36 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Everything should be designed for users to not need to touch any config... registry.. or file.

yeah, well "should" but often isnt… for example games often have rather important settings in some "ini" files or something instead of "in game" (for example "filmgrain" or whatever, it could be "any" setting really) Now that isnt a big issue, because its usually easy to access, but it definitely feels like a mixture of laziness *and* that the devs actually dont want the user to access this setting , for whatever reason, but still dont want to piss off "power users"…

 

Windows does this too, with the ceveat that it may be accessible otherwise through "group policy" which isnt really much different to changing some settings files… for example if i want to change the right click context menu, what options do i have? Most guides will tell you to delete a registry key or entry…

Like seriously, this should be a system setting , its not hard to imagine people would like to add or remove things there… of course nothing  is perfect , but thats a pretty big oversight imo.

 

 

 

 

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Maybe, but if you look up how to fix any common windows issue one of the fixes will always be "change something in the registry" and that may or may not be a "customization" setting -- its pretty stupid because people really shouldn't randomly change stuff in the registry, i mean those instructions could simply be wrong and mess stuff up for example… 

Existence of something is not proof of anything really, just remember that 

 

Bad advice can be found literally everywhere.

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Ah, you see, thats also something i tried to say, its often difficult to almost impossible to figure something like that out when you're already  following instructions, ie. when the instructions clearly tell you to use registry… you dont wanna mess up by doing something else entirely… but thats something i learned now, I guess, almost any "settings" related stuff can be done in group policy instead of registry… apparently? 

Everything supported by Windows. Not supported means that it may work today, but tomorrow it might not. It could be legacy things, or things they hasn't been tested. For example, changing Windows font form its default to another.... they have been a few stories where it all worked out, then one day, some Window update comes along, and now its broken, and now they have a font issue, and text is not showing up, and unless they know how to use Windows without any labels anywhere, or broken, then it will be hard to fix.

 

I am not going to say that Windows is perfect, but this is not typical for anyone. This isn't "part of ones workflow" to do basic things.

On top of things, Windows has protections in place:

• Concept of permissions on registry entries, preventing users from "accidentally" deleting (and malware) critical entries. Under Linux, it is all open. You can run a utility or script, suggesting you to run as sudo, and it does: rm -rf, and gone the whole system in a flash (no recycling bin concept in CLI). Under Windows, even if you are "Administrator" you can't. You are blocked from extreme stupidity and also malware (malscripts?!)
   
• System Restore feature and Backing up features available to the user built-in into the OS, allowing a user to go back in time, or recover their systems. 
   

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, well "should" but often isnt… for example games often have rather important settings in some "ini" files or something instead of "in game" (for example "filmgrain" or whatever, it could be "any" setting really) Now that isnt a big issue, because its usually easy to access, but it definitely feels like a mixture of laziness *and* that the devs actually dont want the user to access this setting , for whatever reason, but still dont want to piss off "power users"…

Games is complicated. Mostly because studios work off a basic template project. That template tend to be age old (XP days old). Notice how virtually no games are using "Saved Games" folder, dumps their save in "Documents". "Saved Games" folder was introduced in Vista. It's been 16 years. They don't care, reviewers don't review this, gamers don't care.... until they start doing work + gaming on the same system, and then it gets annoying.

 

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Windows does this too, with the ceveat that it may be accessible otherwise through "group policy" which isnt really much different to changing some settings files… for example if i want to change the right click context menu, what options do i have? Most guides will tell you to delete a registry key or entry…

In this case, you should interact with the program that added the menu entry.

Doing anything beyond that (touch system menu item entries) is all on you, and then one day it works, and the other not (like with Win11 with its new menu model).

 

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Like seriously, this should be a system setting , its not hard to imagine people would like to add or remove things there… of course nothing  is perfect , but thats a pretty big oversight imo.

Windows does have tools for certain things, to help users do things that program's who should have options to do thing, don't.

For example: Autoruns: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

 

Talking about menu, the Win+X / Power User Menu, is editable through File Explorer:

C:\Users\<account name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WinX

Just add your shortcuts, and it will show in the menu. No registry.

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Talking about menu, the Win+X / Power User Menu, is editable through File Explorer:

C:\Users\<account name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WinX

Just add your shortcuts, and it will show in the menu. No registry.

 

Oh, thats interesting… and yeah autoruns is cool too… Id have to read up on it more though, not sure about everything it can do.

 

Well, I just want to remove "turn on bitlocker" from the context menu , i found this, but its very old, i dont think thats even win 10, but it sounds like it can be done in group policy…

https://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-disable-bitlocker/#:~:text=You can remove the BitLocker,bde as the key path.

 

You think that still works? 

[RejZoR]

5 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

1. They need physical access to your machine.
2. Nothing stops you to have 1 account for Windows / Office / Store / etc. and not use it as an actual email... security by obscurity
3. And if you think one day Microsoft will use the platform to sell your data, or you'll be using Edge. Set the age to 35 or better yet 40 years old, and now your data has 0 value to marketing companies. Too old to be sold stuff or get what you like to shape future products and too young for retiring home ads. You may get ads for the next generation filing cabinets though.
4. Use a strong password, and go password-less (Windows Hello technologies, or PIN to login to the system).
5. Remote access to system has been disabled by default since the longest time (well before Win8.. prob since XP as a security update)
6. Use 2-factor authentication
7. Most compromised accounts is really because people use crap passwords.
8. Don't save your credit card info.

 

Another one for me is that I just DON'T want to deal with stupid login process. Not Hello or otherwise.

[GoodBytes]

17 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Another one for me is that I just DON'T want to deal with stupid login process. Not Hello or otherwise.

Well, you can setup auto login. Mind you, you need to set things in the registry.

[Lightwreather]

2 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Concept of permissions on registry entries, preventing users from "accidentally" deleting (and malware) critical entries. Under Linux, it is all open. You can run a utility or script, suggesting you to run as sudo, and it does: rm -rf, and gone the whole system in a flash (no recycling bin concept in CLI). Under Windows, even if you are "Administrator" you can't. You are blocked from extreme stupidity and also malware (malscripts?!)

I don't know,

It's rather fun to just nuke a system when you're bored

/s

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also "Digging in to the registry" is code wording for "I'm fucking with shit I shouldn't be",

Yeah, its pretty normal that the os opens the web brower every boot and the only way to disable it is modifying the registry....

 

Thanks for proving my point...

[GoodBytes]

6 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah, its pretty normal that the os opens the web brower every boot and the only way to disable it is modifying the registry....

 

Thanks for proving my point...

huh? Sounds to me a program you install that does this.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

huh? Sounds to me a program you install that does this.

Sorry, typed that at work and didnt had time to search for an article, but i was referring to this:
https://techdows.com/2016/10/fix-msn-page-opens-on-windows-10-startup-in-chrome.html

[AnonymousGuy]

I really started a tangent!  I'm not denying registry is a thing on Windows but the number of times I've had to mess with it has decreased dramatically since the Windows 98 days.  Now half the time I'm just googling a problem and find a major site that already has a .reg fix.  Like turning on the recycle bin desktop icon or something.   Double click, boom, fixed.  Rarely there's some group policy that needs to be messed with but at least when you google those they seem very unchanged for a long time.  I've read tons of Ubuntu forum posts that are from 2018 and already out of date and completely useless. 

I personally like when programs use .cfg files or similar because then I can reinstall the program, migrate settings to multiple PC's, etc.  But the most important point is there's at least a GUI front end for the vast majority of what's in the .cfg file.  Again, the number of times I've had to manually go rooting around in a file to change a setting is *very* low.  

 

But with linux as mr moose said, the entire operating premise seems to be you're SSH-ing into the thing and doing it from command line.  Why bother making a GUI for anything let alone changing settings?  It just wears me down when I'm just trying to make simple stuff work and feels like I'm being fought for every inch of it.  Hey what's the command to restart this daemon to reload settings?  *fucking have to google it again*.  Or there could be a tray icon with right click -> reload settings. 

 

 

Let me give a real world example of something I did 2 days ago.  I needed to see a history of USB devices being plugged in and out to figure out what ghost-device was spamming the bing-bong sound.  Google, first result is a tool that shows me that history in a good enough GUI to show me the info.  I guarantee on Linux it would be different log file for every distro that is 9000000 lines long being spammed with all sorts of stuff.  So even if someone were to write a GUI for it, it would probably be one one snapshot of one distro and then be broken 2 years later.  (Hell on Linux I probably wouldn't even have been aware there was an issue with a sketchy USB cable because it would be logged into oblivion)

[Kisai]

18 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

 

Microsoft recommends that applications store their configurations in the registry. It's a database, it's a great place for such task.

A dev/support staff might give you instructions to change something under the program section in the registry. That is fine, it affects the program itself. But bad on the dev to have it's user need to do something. Everything should be designed for users to not need to touch any config... registry.. or file.

 

I hate the registry, and have hated it ever since it started to be a thing in Windows 3.1

 

The registry should have been for the OS and it's drivers only. Applications should have been self-contained, and self-associating when an application needs to be auto-run, scheduled, or double-click/menu-integrated. Basically, if I remove a program and also say "remove the settings permanently" it deletes this "append to OS registry" blob. No need to reboot, no need to do anything else. If I'm updating it, I want the old software deleted, and the new software to use the existing settings. That's basically why the registry exists, so settings will persist beyond initial installation.

 

The reality is that applications fall into three broad categories:

- Things that change how the OS work (eg maintenance tools), and the user should not be asked to elevate. Either it's necessary, and has all the permissions to install itself, or it's unnecessary and the user should be asked if they want to replace or add this functionality upon the first run. The settings are unique to the PC and should never follow the user.

- Things that only the user needs, and should never be elevated (such as all office applications, teams, discord, spotify, etc), if these applications are moved to another PC, the settings should follow it.

- Things that are only needed for brief amounts of time (eg several days) and then never touched again, such as games. These programs should be be removed (eg wholesale deleted) from the system, and retain only the user's settings (such as save games and controller mapping) not the OS-Machine settings (such as resolution and output devices)

 

On MacOS settings are stored in OS or User settings, or self-contained to the application, depending on the nature of the application. In Linux, setting files can be in the user's directory, in the root user's directory, in /etc, in /usr/local/etc, or any number of locations, including the location it was compiled if it was compiled by the user.

 

The problem, ever since 'Windows 10' and also most mobile devices that aren't iOS, is that you can't migrate your profile anymore. We've come full circle back to the problem of "why even bother storing the user's settings in AppData if you're not going to save AppData when you switch computers."

 

Anyways, perhaps Microsoft will come up with yet a new solution. But the Registry has never been a good solution, as it's wiped out on reinstalls, and doesn't allow the user to migrate things to other computers. The existing "store things on Onedrive" with Windows 10 and 11 is also problematic. I was playing Final Fantasy 14 the other day, and ever few minutes, the Onedrive popup would show up every time it saved settings when switching zones. Like to a certain extent, yes I'd like to save my game settings, but, please be smart about what is happening, and defer uploading things to onedrive if the application itself is also using network functionality.

 

[Donut417]

Microsoft is sick of people buying the pro version to get around the MS account I guess. Personally Im not surprised. Microsoft wants what Google and Apple have. An ecosystem and lots and lots of cloud services. The cloud services is why Microsoft keeps pushing the MS account. Many think that Microsoft is going to make Windows a subscription. I dont feel that will happen, HOWEVER Microsoft might try to force more and more cloud based services down our throats, the easiest way for them to do that is with the MS account. 

 

On 2/17/2022 at 4:33 PM, starsmine said:

Businesses dont use pro, they use Enterprise edition. 

Yes and no. Large enterprise users use Enterprise Windows. A smaller business that only has a few machines might only use the pro version. 

 

 

 

[leadeater]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

On MacOS settings are stored in OS or User settings, or self-contained to the application, depending on the nature of the application. In Linux, setting files can be in the user's directory, in the root user's directory, in /etc, in /usr/local/etc, or any number of locations, including the location it was compiled if it was compiled by the user.

Well isn't it wonderful that this is exactly how Windows and Registry works. You literally have a self contained entire registry hive/structure for each user that applications and user level OS customizations can use.

 

All these arguments boil down to is where you think things like this should be stored, often with little understanding of how each OS actually does it which again leads to the curious problem of arguing against something that doesn't exist or isn't even how it actually works in reality.

 

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

The problem, ever since 'Windows 10' and also most mobile devices that aren't iOS, is that you can't migrate your profile anymore

Yes you can, USMT. Also if you are using a Microsoft account all your settings are copied to your Microsoft account and by signing in to another computer with that account all the settings are copied down and applied, settings only not data. Any application following Microsoft's application programing guidance and standard will be covered with this, but "everyone" knows "better" than Microsoft and insist constantly to develop software in their own unique special ways.

 

Freedom includes the allowance to do stupid things.

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

But the Registry has never been a good solution, as it's wiped out on reinstalls, and doesn't allow the user to migrate things to other computers.

Only if you do a clean install and wipe your data. Your user registry is stored in your NTUSER.DAT in your profile directory. If you actually went through the effort of running up USMT, it's very simple, and creating a .mig export of your account you can simply import your account back to a new install where you did blow everything away and USMT will even migrate your data as well.

 

Registry is not the problem, it's not using it that is the problem.

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

I was playing Final Fantasy 14 the other day, and ever few minutes, the Onedrive popup would show up every time it saved settings when switching zones.

OneDrive will not pop up to sync files or change zones (what does this even mean?) The only time OneDrive should give a popup is if it detects a sync conflict where the local file and cloud file have both been changed since the last sync and needs to ask which one you want to keep. Otherwise OneDrive sync is completely silent and in the background.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

if you are using a Microsoft account

Which is totally needless for what it does, meanwhile on linux i can just copy over the user folder and thats it....

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also if you are using a Microsoft account all your settings are copied to your Microsoft account and by signing in to another computer with that account all the settings are copied down and applied, settings only not data. Any application following Microsoft's application programing guidance and standard will be covered with this, but "everyone" knows "better" than Microsoft and insist constantly to develop software in their own unique special ways.

I would like to add that only a handful of things are synced to your Microsoft account. And I don't mean it's because of third party developers. A ton of Windows settings and things from Microsoft's own programs are not synced through your Microsoft account. 

It's very hit and miss.

[Voy]

Okay, I will have very unpopular opinion here.

 

What is the problem with MS account?

I can't see anyone complain about Apple doing that for years.

 

I use Windows 11 Pro, and I am logged in with their account, and you know what? I also have 2FA set up and when I reinstalled my Windows recently all I had to do was give my account email and accept login on 2FA app.

 

No one is making people use Windows, especially now that you can do most things on Linux, in some ways arguably better. 

 

I just don't understand constant complaining these days, you don't like it, don't buy it, don't use it....

[jagdtigger]

33 minutes ago, Voy said:

What is the problem with MS account?

Um not everyone uses o365 and/or onedrive and forcing ppl to use it as a user login in an os is stupid beyond description? (Apple does not force you to use an account and AFAIK it is not used to log into the os itself.)

[Voy]

10 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Um not everyone uses o365 and/or onedrive and forcing ppl to use it as a user login in an os is stupid beyond description? (Apple does not force you to use an account and AFAIK it is not used to log into the os itself.)

About Apple, I set up a Mac just once for my friend and I am pretty sure it asked for her login and password, but I might be mistaken.

I do not use O365 or OneDrive either.

I guess I am just used to the fact that I need some kind of account for everything.

 

[pas008]

23 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Um not everyone uses o365 and/or onedrive and forcing ppl to use it as a user login in an os is stupid beyond description? (Apple does not force you to use an account and AFAIK it is not used to log into the os itself.)

how do you get apps then?

[jagdtigger]

5 minutes ago, pas008 said:

how do you get apps then?

The old fashioned way, i download them from the dev's website....

[pas008]

Just now, jagdtigger said:

The old fashioned way, i download them from the dev's website....

only on macos though right?

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, pas008 said:

only on macos though right?

AFAIK yes (but i was speaking about macos anyways, had a hackintosh a long time ago just for fun), but i do not know if they force you to use an account for the store itself. Never had one of their phones.... (in my eyes it is overpriced AF and dumbed down to the point that i dont even want to use it)

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Well isn't it wonderful that this is exactly how Windows and Registry works. You literally have a self contained entire registry hive/structure for each user that applications and user level OS customizations can use.

Which isn't how it works at all. You copy that User directory entirely from one Windows installation to another, and the entire profile is wrecked, and the "IT" people will just tell you to delete it, losing the settings.

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

All these arguments boil down to is where you think things like this should be stored, often with little understanding of how each OS actually does it which again leads to the curious problem of arguing against something that doesn't exist or isn't even how it actually works in reality.

Because on Linux, stuff is stored in places that don't survive the OS being reinstalled, while MacOS does, and Windows "kind of depends when and how"

 

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

Yes you can, USMT. Also if you are using a Microsoft account all your settings are copied to your Microsoft account and by signing in to another computer with that account all the settings are copied down and applied, settings only not data. Any application following Microsoft's application programing guidance and standard will be covered with this, but "everyone" knows "better" than Microsoft and insist constantly to develop software in their own unique special ways.

Nobody has a month to wait for their profile to be synced via USMT. Some users will literately have 100GB profile, that will then be attempted to be synced-over-the-internet-over-a-VPN. Look, for previous two years I was told that USMT was the "right way" to do this, and *** spent a week waiting for USMT to migrate a profile, and nothing happened. I wound up resorting to the Windows 7 tool every time because it could be done in an hour, and had the same or better outcome of nothing in the registry being saved, but all the applications that didn't save things to the registry would keep their settings.

 

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Freedom includes the allowance to do stupid things.

 

Only if you do a clean install and wipe your data. Your user registry is stored in your NTUSER.DAT in your profile directory. If you actually went through the effort of running up USMT, it's very simple, and creating a .mig export of your account you can simply import your account back to a new install where you did blow everything away and USMT will even migrate your data as well.

Again. Not how it works for anyone. NTUSER exists, but if you copy it to another machine, everything will be broken. The migration tool from Windows 7? Works fine, but it's DEFAULT settings is to skip NTUSER.DAT and everything in APPDATA. That's why it works at all. If you override the settings to include NTUSER.DAT, it will create a profile to migrate, and then it will be total crapshoot if the user can even get to the desktop. Most of the time, migrating NTUSER.DAT will result in the user having more things broken than working.

 

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Registry is not the problem, it's not using it that is the problem.

 

OneDrive will not pop up to sync files or change zones (what does this even mean?) The only time OneDrive should give a popup is if it detects a sync conflict where the local file and cloud file have both been changed since the last sync and needs to ask which one you want to keep. Otherwise OneDrive sync is completely silent and in the background.

This just proves you don't understand the problem. "change zones" is what happens in a video game when it loads another map. FFXIV uploads and downloads your settings rather frequently, and Onedrive will popup, every time this happens, sometimes causing the game itself to complain that it couldn't save the settings. Sometimes it will popup every 30 seconds if you're quickly changing maps or viewing several cutscenes in sequences, sometimes you won't see it for hours.

 

This is obviously not something you have any personal experience with. Please talk to people who actually use the computers about what they actually want saved, because USMT does not do anything you said it does.

Quote

There are some scenarios in which the use of USMT is not recommended. These include:

• Migrations that require end-user interaction.
• Migrations that require customization on a machine-by-machine basis.

USMT is for doing clean, mass-deployed installs. To date, that's all it ever gets used for. Users have gripes over USMT for ignoring all their settings from everything when they migrate to a new machine. It was especially gripe-y when migrating to Office 365. At least if I used the Windows 7 tool, everything that wasn't in the registry would be saved. Nobody had the time or patience to use USMT, and with the pandemic, USMT is completely unusable since you need to physically be at the office. 

 

Just to install Windows 10 over USMT, it could take 2 hours. You know what other companies do? They use the Dell image tool, and have the exact same result.

 

Migrating of settings is something that just does not happen on Windows unless you barely used the computer, and the vast majority of people out there get rightly upset when they get a new computer and have to reinstall everything, look up licenses for software they installed 5-10 years ago, and lose their personal photos and documents because various migration solutions only look at the User/Documents or User/Photos folders and not any folder created by the user somewhere else, like the Desktop.

 

Somehow Apple gets this right, and it works out of the box. Microsoft does not, and Microsoft has removed the "Windows 7 migration tool", so unless you saved it from a previous machine, that's not an option. What really happens when you login to the machine and use a Microsoft account? Nothing that you think it does. It only migrates things in OneDrive. Nothing else.

 

 

 

 

[jagdtigger]

34 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Because on Linux, stuff is stored in places that don't survive the OS being reinstalled

It depends, just having a home partition (which can be done from the installer pretty easily) and your statement becomes false. Some distros (debian for example) even asks what you want, one huge partition (not counting boot and efi) or separate partitions for important places (like /home)...