Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken
Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken
See. This is why they need AI. Copilot will fix all of the issues if they just ask it nicely and tell it to not make mistakes.
And that is how it began...
Nah, copilot will see the code is unsalvageable. So it'll start replacing it with code learned from public repositories. Windows becomes Linux. Year of the Linux desktop achieved.
As silly as that sounds, it is the absolute truth.
Ah but there are also a lot of minor features in Windows 11 that aren't really looking too good.
What kind of idiots create a program that says, "Outlook failed to load. Repair application?" when the only problem is the wifi is disconnected?
vibe coders
The problem is that someone decided to dumb down the error message to not scare users, instead of passing on the real error code from the application that people could Google and fix in 5 mins themselves.
Dumb downed? They've taken a simple error and made it into something that does scare users. The "Repair application?" was far more alarming to my visiting friend than a "No Internet connection" would have been. It is astounding that any company would put out such complete shit.
It's like this with a blue screen. You used to tell you what went wrong but now it just shows a :-( Which is pathetic.
On top of that, the logs for the actual support technicians are scattered all across the filesystem.
C:\ProgramData\
C:\Users\AppData\Roaming or Local or maybe LocalLow
C:\Windows\Temp
It's own install folder
C:\Programs
C:\Programs (x86)
Like...why (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
Microsoft says that it is working on a fix but, for now, has provided a couple of workarounds to deal with the issue. First, Microsoft says that restarting the Shell Infrastructure host (SIHost.exe) service will help restore the missing Immersive Shell packages. This can be done with the following commands:
Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode
Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS_8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode
Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode
Second, a PowerShell logon script has been shared that essentially blocks Explorer from launching prematurely until the required packages are fully provisioned. The batch script for that is given below:
@echo off
REM Register MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"
REM Register Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS_8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"
REM Register MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"
I swear to god, if I hear "Windows just works" one more goddamn time...
"Windows just works"
When did Microsoft steal Apple's marketing material?
Maybe I've just been lucky, but for several years and on several different machines I've found Linux just works, while Windows is an endless treadmill of frustration and brokenness.
What didn't Microsoft steal?
Well compated to others it did kind of just work. Plug&play, USB, most simple peripherics didn't need a driver to be manually installed and configured.
Windows 98 I guess.
More like they adopted Bethesda's marketing material after they acquired ZeniMax
It does, if you are talking about pre 11, and dont care about internet pre 10. But otherwise fuck Microsoft with a rusty shovel, theyve ruined anything good about windows and make it harder and harder not to switch to steamos, the only reason I don't is because of the pain of reinstalling everything and not having the drive space to shuffle files to it.
"Omg Linux is so hard!!" Meanwhile Windows:
“Linux is an objectively worse OS because you have to run all kinds of weird commands in an esoteric command line to even get it to work right”
Meanwhile: windows just works! You just have to run this batch file from some guy on GitHub, download this powershell script from some woman on MSDN, apply these reg hacks, and run this freeware debloat tool, and it’s smooth sailing after that. Well, at least until the next cumulative update which will make you repeat this process all over again. Oh whoops, something you did broke the install. Better sfc /scannow or clean install and try again!
They could resolve many things if they did not push AI so hard, or making stupid things like removing the local account option, windows recall, etc.., but i guess SHAREHOLDERS.
We aren't the consumer anymore. We are the product. The vessel which makes them money by collecting, storing, and selling our data. They don't care about making a good OS for their users anymore. Just a money train to prove their value to their shareholders.
Microsoft, you already got me to leave Windows, you don't have to keep sending me reminders, I wasn't at risk of wanting to come back...
I use windows 11 everyday, without issue. what exactly is broken?
I use windows 11 everyday
"no kink shaming" is a hard rule to follow sometimes
It doesn’t understand the concept of “no means no”.
Kind of a wide variety of things that varies from person to person in often absurd ways -- broken in ways I've never seen Macs or Linux systems be, nor even Windows 10 and older.
And that's just my personal experiences. The ones I've seen others deal with is much weirder.
Honestly I'm buying more into the idea of how ostree distros work; Windows is like a very broken version of that anymore.
On my work computer when I maximize a window, I get a little strip of desktop still showing between the window and the start bar.
I've been using windows 11 for six months. when I hover over the taskbar, a phantom windows explorer window appears, but it's not clickable and it disappears when I move the mouse away. my right hand monitor has a white box with a small 'no' symbol in it stuck in the middle of the screen. it doesn't seem to derive from any running application and I cannot get rid of it. on the windows 10 install I ran before, the task manager totally stopped working, it just froze every time I opened it. I run Linux on all my other machines and stuff does go wrong, but it goes wrong in ways that make sense to me and which I can fix. on windows people just tell you to run sfc scannow and reinstall if it doesn't work. that's no way to live your life.
One I see daily at work is File Explorer adding an extra 'window' when you hover over the icon in the taskbar. If you click on it, nothing happens, and you cant close it either.
I'll add, Clicking on running programs in the task bar and they refuse to become the active window. You need to work through them all to fine one that works before they all start working again.
At work I've had issues with the Start Bar not showing any/most programs and centering the one program that does show up (even though I have it left aligned). Then when I mouse over it, it'll try to move to where it should be causing it to jump around and be unclickable.
I've also had the file explorer just stop working entirely.
This is on a pretty powerful dev laptop, so it's not lack of resources.
That being said I've never heard of anyone else having that issue so it seems rare.
The article is about a XAML bug, which affects a lot of core components, when used in a corporate setting.
Your perception
The start menu is mostly white for me. I have to type out what I want because I can't navigate it
My decision to switch to Linux feels better and better every day. Windows 11 sucks.
In last April:
"Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI"
Microsoft says that it is working on a fix but, for now, has provided a couple of workarounds to deal with the issue
Install Linux.
that's a feature of windows 11, not a bug.
Install Linux!
You know I never really thought about it but do you think the spying tools these companies provide ever fail like the way their other products do?
Nah, if there's one thing they thoroughly test, it's the spying.
A-ha! So that's where the development resources go. To where the money's made.
One might hope
IT has been an interesting ride the last two months, encountering some of the weirdest bugs I've ever seen, after two decades of Windows working just fine for the most part.
Had one yesterday where sound in win11 worked, except in browsers. Multiple browsers just wouldn't output any sound through any site.
Haven't fixed it yet.. it was end of shift and there was a dell bios update to run (which has been known to fix some of the weird shit around there.) I uninstalled all the third party audio drivers, rebooted for the bios update, and called it a day. Will check on monday, haha.
I've seen a bunch.
Had my phone wish me a happy birthday on the wrong day. I had a whole folder of emails inexplicably moved back into my inbox, and yes, various wacky hardware problems.
It's clear that a bunch of the people they laid off were QA people.
We have finally gotten rid of Windows on all PCs in our house this week and my partner has taken the plunge. Even with a little faff he says he is never going back lol.
Did you switch to Linux?
I've been on Linux for ages, he was the hold out haha.
Man, I have 3 windows 11 desktops and a laptop. Sometime in the last month all of their edge browsers became “managed by my organization”… they’re all personal computers with no work info on them. And I can’t undo it. I’ve tried every trick on the internet. Fuck MS.
Did you use ShutUp10 or something similar? It says that when settings are changed via registry/group policy. It doesn't actually have anything to do with your work.
Not that they're going to fix any of them though.
"We'll slap some 'AI' on any a few things and, boom, it'll fix itself" -Whoever the Microsoft CEO is now
That’s quite a headline they’ve got there!
After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 [KB5062553], various apps such as StartMenuExperiencehost, Search, SystemSettings, Taskbar or Explorer might experience difficulties.
This will occur for the following: First time user logon after a cumulative update was applied. All user logons to a non-persistent OS installation such as a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or equivalent as application packages must be installed each logon in such scenarios.
If you are wondering, provisioning essentially is the way admins configure devices as they automatically deploy various settings and policies on a client PC. So while the issue is in office PCs, considering a huge number of enterprise PCs are Windows, this is probably a very big problem.
So when will we see W12?
Oh right, never mind. 🐧
Here are some Windows 12 rumors (pulled from one of the biggest German-language tech news sites citing insider information)
https://www.computerbild.de/artikel/cb-News-Windows-12-Geruechte-Release-Systemanforderungen-Download-2025-33395891.html
Probably never, Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version of Windows we'd ever need and they just killed that.
I will be using Win10 for dev and audio purposes, then I'll install Linux on my main PC too, not just my ThinkPad.
This is why I have always waited for the version that is just like the previous ones, but fixed. 3.11, 98SE, XP SP2, 7, 10...
I need to get a new computer, and it has to have windows, but I'm not getting freaking Win11. Gimme Win12.
Hate to break it to you but those days are over.
From what we know so far, Win 12 will go all in on AI, cloud and a subscription model.
My prediction is that they'll go full SaaS and make the non-pro version "free", with a whole raft of features "cloud only" behind a Azure/O365 subscription.
That system fell apart when they showed they could not count to 9. 10 Should have been 9, and it was mid at best.
For what it’s worth, my KDE file browser would freeze up when I had a WebDav network drive to a server that went offline, not exactly elegant either, just opening my home folder and randomly after a second or two ….. all software can bug in bad ways.
The main difference is KDE doesn't make disgusting money off it, and if someone cares enough they can actually submit a fix
That's the reason I put up with a lot of FOSS issues: "I'm not paying you for this, so it's still a better price/result ratio than paid services"
True, I've experienced that bug.
The big different is that, depending on how knowledgeable you are, you can either report the bug, you can diagnose it (check the logs, trace and profile the calls), dig in the code, patch it or try a patch someone developed for the bug, or simply ignore it and use a different file browser. That freedom is priceless.
With Windows you're stuck waiting for the next upgrade that may or may not break something else and brings new and exciting AI and telemetry shoved into it.
That is definitely an annoyance. But the cause is not your file browser or KDE. The webdav has been mounted to the system and when an application tries to use it, it runs into a timeout. You can't even unmount it, since that requires the system to talk to the network drive.
This is also not limited to webdav, it happens with all kinds of network drives. This is something that needs to be addressed at the core level of Linux. But I have no expertise, so no real clue where exactly.
this is a file browser or KDE issues, as file system operations shouldn't happen on the UI thread. if it weren't happening on the UI thread then it would keep working.
Even windows does that if the network drive is unavailable, it'll spend about 30 seconds trying to reach it before giving up. And if you accidentally try to query that network location again you get to wait another 30 seconds before you can do anything related to files
I don't believe that is a KDE specific issue. I've seen it in most DE's
It's more of a mount/file system limitation. For whatever reason you have to explicitly tell the file system that if it can't connect to something, to timeout.
Add a timeout to your mount rule and if it ends up being unavailable it'll just timeout instead of freezing your file browser.
Also happened to me just yesterday when I put my raspberry PI offline that served as a NAS, dolphin just became frozen...
If it is this easy to reproduce, maybe we should file a bug report - it is really annoying/buggy behaviour. I am not opening the network folder, so maybe it’s trying to greedely cache media files for preview thumbnails or something, I don’t know..
Trinity's more stable and dependable.
Or openbox, declared feature complete something like a decade ago.
Really hoping Microsoft fails for everything ezcept Xbox. Then Xbox team takes over and then turns the company into a private non-stock unionized one
Would love to see what an Xbox-lead Microsoft can do with it reformed
What are Microsofts most moneymaking fields aboce Xbox? Are they getting eroded at all?
Xbox feels like the biggest one being eroded rn... i don't think what Xbox is doing is any good nor would it help the main business
Azure is the cloud backbone of many businesses and services, so if Windows went away, MS would still have their fingers in a number of pies.
I've previously predicted that Microsoft would slowly divest of Windows thanks to declining desktop/laptop markets and eventually as a cost saving measure cut over to just making a Linux distro with their own proprietary DE.
As it is if the rumors are true that they're destroying their codebase with AI coding they'll have quite the job ahead of them to clean it all up once the AI bubble pops. They'd have two easier options essentially at that point: either roll back 2-6 years in their codebase and rebuild every update and change that they wanted to keep or rewrite from scratch (which they'd basically be looking at in order to clean up the AI mess) I could very much see a future where Microsoft looks at that gargantuan job and says "ehh let's just use someone else's work" and shifts to a Linux of BSD kernel
Xbox OG was good, everything since then has been garbage. The UI just makes me want to vomit and reminds me of windows 8.
Forget them too. I'm all full steam ahead on SteamOS.
When do I get a calendar on my systray or whatever they call it on my other monitor?
That was seriously the biggest regression I noticed immediately when I upgraded my work laptop. A colleague was pissed they couldn't move the task bar too
Microsoft has government and cooperate costumers that will keep paying them for decades. Why care? If MSword still works, people will buy it.
Except they're slowly being ditched for Linux. LibreOffice can do most things MSOffice can. One thing it cannot do is "cooperative work online, in an Office365 document", which might force governments to develop their own solutions instead of letting users hide other people's fields, then waste my work time on duckduckgoing all the newly discovered cell hiding methods, because some other institute's office workers thought it was useful to them, but forget to unhide them every time.
I'll take it one step further and say that if you absolutely must use Office, O365 works in a browser on any operating system. You literally don't need Windows anymore for that.
In the support article Microsoft explains:
"After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 (KB5062553), various apps such as StartMenuExperiencehost, Search, SystemSettings, Taskbar or Explorer might experience difficulties.
lol
So they've taken a leaf out of KDE's development book.
Is windows11 Microsoft's KDE4 moment?
I feel like Windows 11 is just another Microsoft "Windows moment".
What's your preferred DE?
Does it have to be a DE?
Preferred WM is Xmonad (with my tabular boonad config, the grandpa version).
But much love also for herbstluftwm.
And dwm, openbox, icewm, i3, and others.
I have all these window managers in my wmrotate scripts in my wminizer script, so I can kill one and move to the next, without losing all running gui programs, keeping my X11 session going.
But if it has to be strictly DE...
I guess LXDE's still my fave.
Respect to XFCE and Trinity too. And Mate.
KDE's awesome. Big love to it again, after it got settled in after the KDE4 debacle.
LXQt's fine too (though I prefer LXDE).
I've not tried Cosmic.
I dont know my way around cinnamon and the various other similar. Only briefly experienced.
GNOME have utterly lost the plot.
Why'd you ask?
Some anecdotal evidence, but when I boot into my W11 install for certain online games, I have none of these issues mentioned. My 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC + StartAllBack setup- knocks on wood- continues to be bullet proof. For anyone who still needs Windows, I highly recommend it.
I've only been supporting Enterprise for a while, but for me Win 11 is just Win 10 with more graphical overhead, and a start menu coded with React for some goddamn reason, because it's fun to gamble as to how many seconds it will take to pull up the start menu this time.
Which is where StartAllBack comes into play. Its not just one sluggish mess. It feels normal lol.
because it’s fun to gamble as to how many seconds it will take to pull up the start menu this time.
I also like how it randomly brings up some random website first instead of an installed application I'm looking for. Corporate policy says windows, so I get paid to deal with it, but it helps only so much.
Microsoft finally admits
almost all majorWindows 11core featuresare broken
FTFY
Well, it does boot most of the time. So it's not completely broken, just majorly broken.......
Last month they broke audio drivers, so USB connected speakers were not being recognised unless they had third-party drivers. The native windows drivers just stopped recognising them as audio devices, and just listed them as Unknown Device.
Windows could see them, it had no idea what they were, or what to do with them. So you had no audio.
The only solution was to continuously restart until eventually it randomly worked.
What it boots into is broken.
The more it works, the more it's broken.
It's broken that much, at such a deep level.
They're going to be heroes when they fix Windows
Hope they fix it the same way spaying or neutering dogs is called fixing: Prevent it from propagating further.
wHy ARe yOu nOT iMprEssEd?
All user logons to a non-persistent OS installation such as a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or equivalent as application packages must be installed each logon in such scenarios.
Cries in supporting multi-user AVD Hosts
Hey relax, take it easy now, don't make crazy demands on Microsoft.
They've just recently released Windows 11, and I'm sure they will have it completed soon,
and have all core features broken.
They're contributing to making the world a better place by increasing Linux adoption. Thank you anonymous Microsoft vibe coders and overly enthusiastic PMs.
Open shell is a helpful solution that replaces some of the problems in the windows UI at least for the start menu.
It's pretty easy to customize most elements for the style you prefer and no adverts.
I have a computer that broke from 24H2. Huge pain in the ass and no matter what I do, looks like reinstalling is the only fix.
Guess what! 😱😂
It sounds like you can just log out and back in to fix it? For a local system, the article says it only occurs for "First time user logon after a cumulative update was applied."
As an Apple shareholder, I’d just like to thank Microsoft for their outstanding contribution to selling more Macs.
Didn't windows 11 become available long ago? Did no one ever try it out before the hostage situation?
Certainly not the beta testers
I mean they pretty famously laid off the majority of their QA teams around the time of the Windows 10 rollout
Maybe all the dependable beta testers who would report bugs had already left to Linux or BSD.
Or like the other commenter replied here suggests,
Maybe dependable beta testers who would report bugs had too steep a workload they gave up and moved to Linux or BSD.
I tried it for a couple of months when it first came out. At that early point it wasn't too bad for usability. But, after a decent look around it, I wiped it and went back to Linux on my laptop.
It's nice of them to admit it, but saying Windows is broken is a bit like saying water is wet
Completely off topic, but I hate when articles appear to link to original sources, but only link to their own site.
“Microsoft admitted that …” -> link to Microsoft’s admission? Nope, to a neowin article.
“Nvidia released a patch …” -> links to a neowin article instead of the patch.
“Microsoft KB 0000” -> surely this will link to the actual KB? Nope, neowin article.