Sadly, i agree that Windows 11 is in many ways indistinguishable from malware. It gave me a ransomware attack, moving all my files offline and then threatening to delete them if i didn’t buy (cloud) space for them.
Also, i don’t really want my laptop to not up with a lot of news clips and ads. I probably turned it on because i wanted to do something. Let me do it.
I find it very hard to believe that Windows 11 “gave you a ransomware attack” instead of you clicking a dodgy link. FWIW I have never seen any ads on Windows 11 and my files are exactly where they have always been.
Windows 11 “backed up” my files to the cloud. Then it deleted them from my hard drive without telling me it was going to do that. It was my travel laptop. I loaded up some files i needed to work on over my Italian vacation. I opened up the laptop in the medieval castle i was staying in. You know, with 2 foot rock walls and crummy cell service. I couldn’t get at my files. Fortunately, i had copies on my phone, but it was a huge pain in the ass, and I’d carefully put everything on the hard drive to avoid that kind of problem.
Oh, and i have more shit on my computer than fits on the free OneDrive service. So yes, they threatened to delete my files if i didn’t buy space. Even though i bought a huge hard drive and never asked them to “back up” my files.
I was freaking pissed. Yes, you can turn that “feature” off. But by default it’s on, and if you turn it off, every time you boot up Windows “reminds” you that you “haven’t finished setting up your laptop”.
If you don’t want to call that ransomware, fine, call it something else. It’s why that laptop now runs Linux, though. And it was absolutely default Windows 11 behavior, not some virus i picked up by clicking the wrong link.
If you don’t have a lot of files, and your computer can always access the Internet, you wouldn’t be injured by this. You might even benefit from the existence of a backup. But i have a lot of files and i am somewhat often in places without Internet. It’s freaking malware.
I have never had Windows 11 try to back up files to the cloud, it has never deleted anything, and it doesn’t ask me to finish setting up the computer when I reboot.
Perhaps when I first got the computer years ago I turned off some setting but if so it was something so simple that it was a one-time click. I’ll also add that my co-workers also use Windows 11 and they have never had anything like you say happen either.
Can we just agree on some basic facts? Namely, that
And therefore:
Windows 11 includes ads by default, and includes OneDrive by default. Both those things can be turned off, but they are there unless you turn them off. (Though some may be off already if you upgraded from an older Windows).
On a fresh install or new machine, though, it’s a mess — check it out at the computer store next time and see how bad the new user experience is.
It does this to me about once a month, usually after a big update patch has been pushed. Why are you (Windows) asking me basic set-up questions on a computer that I’ve had for two years - and not letting me proceed to using my computer until I answer these same questions, yet again?
Maybe you really, really, really want Copilot and OneDrive, and you just didn’t know it yet the first thirteen times? It’s for your own good, dontcha know.
Yup. Frickin’ nagware, is what it is. Along with, “wouldn’t you like to set Edge as your default browser?”
I actually rather like it. It’s far from perfect but runs a lot smoother than 10 did.
There are some ads by default which of course detract from it but they aren’t a big deal.
I don’t like the Copilot stuff but that’s not a W11 thing. That’s in any modern Microsoft product. And that at least isn’t hard to turn off (just as Cortana was a pain in W10 but easy to turn off).
When I update to a new OS, the first thing I do is brute force it into shape. I turn off annoying things, change colours and sizes and whatnot to make it look familiar and practical, and clean out the crap. But to be honest, that is a straightforward and simple process. All this talk of ads and malware is not my experience at all. It’s mostly just settings like screen effects and adjusting the taskbar, with tons of online resources to help me when I get stuck.
Don’t be afraid to poke around and switch off the unnecessary nonsense.
My 16 y/o laptop is running win10 (upgraded from Win7), and won’t run
Win 11…
Win 10 still nags me frequently to finish setting up my computer with onedrive,
backups etc. Stupid bastard.
(So it’s not just Win11)
Work installations are often different. Although my current employer is cheap, and it’s much like using a consumer laptop. But it was a much cleaner experience on my prior employer computer, because they didn’t want their employees to be coaxed to browse the news and shop while they were working. But i had no complaints about Windows 11 using it as an employee at a large corporation.
But I will say again, that if you use a computer that’s never offline, you may never have noticed that it “backs up” your files. It doesn’t tell you it is doing this. And if you have little enough on your computer that it can all be “backed up” in the free account MS gives each user, you may even have benefitted from OneDrive. Or if you pay for the service, of course. Except that it’s a little opaque about how you can control where the files live, it’s a pretty good backup solution if your MS cloud account holds your files.
OneDrive does not move your files to the cloud unless you tell it do so. It syncs it, but the local copy remains. You can optionally set it to save space on the local device and only download as required.
The problem here is understanding how OneDrive works. I have both a personal and work subscription, so I have always kept all my local files in OneDrive, and yes the Backup “feature” annoyed the shit out of me too. But if it deleted your local copies it was because at some point you (mistakenly) told it to “free up space”. If you right click on a file stored in OneDrive you will either see “Always keep on this device” or “Free up space”. I recommend going to the root folder and select all and choosing “Always keep on this device”. I would call this experience an annoyance, not malware. But I too submitted feedback that the Backup feature should be opt-in not opt-out.
I’ve had my current computer for a few years and I still get asked that when I reboot. I have a work computer that does it as well.
I’ve learned, and it’s probably why I still get those ‘finish setting up’ screens, that if, when you originally set up the computer, you’re very careful to not allow it internet access during the set up process, a lot of the ‘malware’ isn’t installed. Namely, it won’t set up OneDrive. And, since, I have exactly zero use for OneDrive, that works for me. Also, the first thing I do after setting up a new computer is to go into the Uninstall/Remove menu and get rid of everything I don’t want (XBox Console etc) and specifically anything that says OneDrive or CoPilot gets uninstalled (and I disabled the CoPilot button on the keyboard).
Another thing I learned is to create my own ‘My Documents’ folder. Using the one Windows provides is how I ended up with the One Drive train wreck the first time.
I have very little Linux experience and it’s almost entirely limited to Raspberry Pis, but I’m starting to lean in that direction. I’ve been meaning to dual boot my computer so I can play with it more.
Of course, the easiest way to not have this behavior is to, like me, not have a Microsoft account. It is a pain with a new machine to get past the installer that requires it, but it is possible. After that, no real issues, other than the usual, go through the control panel and turn off all the places where it shares things, and “uninstall” the bloatware they think you should have. Thought as others have noted, after major updates, you can still get the prompt to log into your microsoft account, but you get an option skip this step if you already set it up without an account.
I actually never use One Drive, even on my work laptop, which is the one PC where I use Windows 11 on any kind of regular basis and is connected to our Microsoft managed corporate account. On that one I had to install a third party software to get the interface to work how I wanted to when we were upgraded to Windows 11 because of how they broke the task bar.
//i\\
I recommend starting with Kubuntu. The desktop interface will be very familiar. All of my older Windows 10 computers are now running Kubuntu.
Tron by default gets rid of OneDrive integration (unless you are using it): index - TronScript