Windows 10, New Features, DO NOT WANT

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
Joined
Oct 29, 2000
Messages
38,739
Alright,

I shut down my laptop I am primarily using for work last night, as there were pending updates.

Once it booted back up there is new bloat on my machine.

Some little weather thing in the task bar, and if you click on it, in brings up news and shit.

donotwant.png


I didn't ask for this!

I can't for the life of me figure out how to get rid of this distracting bloat that does nothing but consume my limited desktop and menu bar real estate.

Does anyone know how I make this stupidity cease existing?

I like minimalism. First thing I do on a new machine is to disable Cortana, set all security settings to their most restrictive, blocking camera and microphone, delete all tiles in the start menu.

I didn't love things the way they were, but it was relatively OK. Now there is a nother piece of Microsoft junk bloat to get rid of.

Can't these idiots understand I want ABSOLUTELY NOTHING running in the background, unless I intentionally and explicitly tell it to!?

No little news or weather widgets, or recommendations on things I might find interesting, or automated backups and syncs I didn't ask for, or telemetry. NOTHING!
 
Right click on taskbar and in news and interests check never show.

beat a a few seconds... :D
 
Yeah, found it.

PXL_20210610_140318001.jpg


Thanks. Initial problem was I didn't even know what they were calling this new "feature" so I didn't know what I was looking for.

Thanks
 
I feel like it is still doing shit in the background, just not showing it to me.

Pisses me off.

I want a minimalist Windows 10 version with no included features or apps by default. Not even a browser. If you want a program or feature, you install it manually.

I don't even want features or apps sitting on the disk waiting to be enabled. I want to have to manually download and install everything.
 
It's a tough thing when MS wants to roll out stuff like this. Average joe consumer is never going to install anything manually, so they kinda have to push it out. At the same time, it's annoying when things like this mysteriously show up without warning, too. Feels like this would have been better as an addition to one of their bi-yearly updates, though. Especially the last one which included a whole lot of nothing.
 
I feel like it is still doing shit in the background, just not showing it to me.
Been noticing more and more of that "we're going to make your computer act like it has malware but it's actually Just Doing Windows Stuff, lol"
- system idling at desktop
- notice compy fans ramping
- notice CPU power is high
- open Task Manager
- Windows services scatter like roaches before I can catch what's using all the CPU
- CPU power drops
- fans ramp down
- close Task Manager
- background services sense I'm not looking and resume whatever they were doing
- Repeat
It's not just Windows Update stuff either, it's... I don't even know honestly, and that's a problem.
 
I too noticed this "new" feature and have turned it off. One thing I am concerned with is, I think its still working in the background. While gaming I noticed the system would lag a bit every few minutes - perhaps when updating the weather widget in the background?
 
Been noticing more and more of that "we're going to make your computer act like it has malware but it's actually Just Doing Windows Stuff, lol"
- system idling at desktop
- notice compy fans ramping
- notice CPU power is high
- open Task Manager
- Windows services scatter like roaches before I can catch what's using all the CPU
- CPU power drops
- fans ramp down
- close Task Manager
- background services sense I'm not looking and resume whatever they were doing
- Repeat
It's not just Windows Update stuff either, it's... I don't even know honestly, and that's a problem.

Couldn't agree more
 
It's a tough thing when MS wants to roll out stuff like this. Average joe consumer is never going to install anything manually, so they kinda have to push it out. At the same time, it's annoying when things like this mysteriously show up without warning, too. Feels like this would have been better as an addition to one of their bi-yearly updates, though. Especially the last one which included a whole lot of nothing.

Agreed.

At the very least they could offer "prosumer" users a version of either the enterprise or embedded Win10 license, but instead like always they just want to strongarm everyone into using whatever they see fit to force down our throats.

Maybe I'm old school, but I want an operating system to be just an operating system. I don't want an ecosystem of services or pre-installed applications, and I sure as hell do not want any kind of "digital assistant".

Why have I had to uninstall OneDrive like 20 times on this one machine alone? I didn't ask for OneDrive. I never want any cloud service from any provider, and I sure as hell don't want some piece of shit cloud storage app that I will never use sitting resident in my task manager eating RAM.

It is so infuriating that they try to force this shit on me and I have to play whack-a-mole (sometimes including registry hacks) every time there is an update to get rid of the next "brilliant" idea some idiot Microsoft programmer had.

That, and there should never under any circumstance be anything named "Xbox" on my work machine. That just annoys the hell out of me. This isn't some child's "battlestation".
 
- system idling at desktop
- notice compy fans ramping
- notice CPU power is high
- open Task Manager
- Windows services scatter like roaches before I can catch what's using all the CPU
- CPU power drops
- fans ramp down
- close Task Manager
- background services sense I'm not looking and resume whatever they were doing
- Repeat
It's not just Windows Update stuff either, it's... I don't even know honestly, and that's a problem.
thats probably the indexing or defender scanning.
 
Microsoft has made some poor decisions, but they aren't the ones treading the way when it comes to this stuff. They see everything that Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, etc gets away with on their devices and operating systems, yet 99% of it's users don't care, and in fact are so thrilled to death with all of it that they gleefully wait in line for their next $1400 phone/tablet the moment it's released.

I mean, you think Chrome became the #1 browser because your average Joe decided to seek it out and download it? Or, was it because Google spent years pushing it on everyone who did a google search? You think anyone would actually use Safari voluntarily? Some little annoying news app that is easily disabled is small potatoes compared to the liberties other companies take with your devices.

So don't blame Microsoft, who hopped on this bandwagon rather late. Blame the companies that established this behavior as commonly accepted business practices.
 
Actually, what's funny is that when I ran Linux, one of the things I always liked doing was adding a weather widget next to the clock when customizing my toolbar. That is the one thing I've always kinda felt was missing from Windows, and now they've added it. I kind of like having the feature back without me having to do anything to add it. Though I can imagine some people would just see it as clutter.
 
Actually, what's funny is that when I ran Linux, one of the things I always liked doing was adding a weather widget next to the clock when customizing my toolbar. That is the one thing I've always kinda felt was missing from Windows, and now they've added it. I kind of like having the feature back without me having to do anything to add it. Though I can imagine some people would just see it as clutter.
they had one for years. they took it out, people complained, they put it back in, people are complaining. they cant win....
 
At the very least they could offer "prosumer" users a version of either the enterprise or embedded Win10 license, but instead like always they just want to strongarm everyone into using whatever they see fit to force down our throats.

I think it does exist, either one of them or both:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/d/windows-10-pro-for-workstations/dg7gmgf0dw9s?rtc=1
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/windows/windows-10-enterprise?rtc=1

One big difference is that it never push an upgrade on the user I think, all manual by the network admins or the local user doing it, I think I never worked in a place that paid for it too, so it can give the impression that there is no prosumer version outthere.
 
I mean, you think Chrome became the #1 browser because your average Joe decided to seek it out and download it? Or, was it because Google spent years pushing it on everyone who did a google search?
It was mostly because, at the time, it was the only browser that was really worth a shit. So everyone with even a hint of "tech savvy" used it and recommended it to everyone else and their cat. Fast-forward to today and it's a bloated piece of crapware but people still use it because it's basically replaced the ubiquitous "blue E" for internet browsing.
 
Ran into this at work while testing patches for deployment... It literally doesn't show up in the patch notes and I never heard a peep about this feature until it was staring me in the face... Then I did some searching and saw some talk about this in April from a few media sources...

Management saw it and wanted it gone... So I had to support our AD admin in testing updated GP templates and settings to disable it...

Honestly, I'm kind of pissed off. This kind of stuff is fine in a feature update, but completely unacceptable for a CU (monthly update). We need to get CUs out in a timely manner to ensure systems are protected against the latest security threats and zero day BS, kind of puts you on the spot... Are you really going to delay a CU deployment because Microsoft added a widget? Idiots working at Microsoft...

Life goes on I suppose. It is hilarious how redundant this thing is though... Literally by default they have weather and news in tiles on the start menu... if you open a new tab in Edge... news and weather there too... now they want to take up space on people's task bar with the same information...
 
It was mostly because, at the time, it was the only browser that was really worth a shit. So everyone with even a hint of "tech savvy" used it and recommended it to everyone else and their cat. Fast-forward to today and it's a bloated piece of crapware but people still use it because it's basically replaced the ubiquitous "blue E" for internet browsing.
If you think Chrome became #1 because of word of mouth... well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I know many who don't even know what a "browser" is yet ended up with Chrome on their computer basically because they clicked on a google popup while doing a search.
 
I think it does exist, either one of them or both:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/d/windows-10-pro-for-workstations/dg7gmgf0dw9s?rtc=1
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/windows/windows-10-enterprise?rtc=1

One big difference is that it never push an upgrade on the user I think, all manual by the network admins or the local user doing it, I think I never worked in a place that paid for it too, so it can give the impression that there is no prosumer version outthere.

Well yeah, both Enterprise and Embedded licenses which are more what I like exist, but as an individual they will not sell them to you. You have to have your procurement department contact them and set up a B2B contract of some sort.

These are pretty much unobtainable to individuals. At least legally.
 
they had one for years. they took it out, people complained, they put it back in, people are complaining. they cant win....

Best way to win is, everything off by default, but allow it to be enabled as an option. You just need the options to be easily accessible and usable. That "welcome to windows" popup on first boot after a major update would be a great place to put opt in questions for new features.
 
Ran into this at work while testing patches for deployment... It literally doesn't show up in the patch notes and I never heard a peep about this feature until it was staring me in the face... Then I did some searching and saw some talk about this in April from a few media sources...

Management saw it and wanted it gone... So I had to support our AD admin in testing updated GP templates and settings to disable it...

Honestly, I'm kind of pissed off. This kind of stuff is fine in a feature update, but completely unacceptable for a CU (monthly update). We need to get CUs out in a timely manner to ensure systems are protected against the latest security threats and zero day BS, kind of puts you on the spot... Are you really going to delay a CU deployment because Microsoft added a widget? Idiots working at Microsoft...

Life goes on I suppose. It is hilarious how redundant this thing is though... Literally by default they have weather and news in tiles on the start menu... if you open a new tab in Edge... news and weather there too... now they want to take up space on people's task bar with the same information...

I ran into it in the same way. I actually reverted back and re-ran the update because I thought I fat-fingered some bloatware crap accidentally.

Unfortunately, stuff like this will probably become more common as MS is moving away from the "feature" part of "feature updates" and is just making them a collection of the last six-ish months of CUs.
 
It is hilarious how redundant this thing is though... Literally by default they have weather and news in tiles on the start menu... if you open a new tab in Edge... news and weather there too... now they want to take up space on people's task bar with the same information...

I was thinking the exact same thing...how many places do they need to fill up with Weather/News!, that's what the specific tiles are for...no need for it on the taskbar
 
Best way to win is, everything off by default, but allow it to be enabled as an option. You just need the options to be easily accessible and usable. That "welcome to windows" popup on first boot after a major update would be a great place to put opt in questions for new features.
people bitch about the oobe too...
 
I feel like it is still doing shit in the background, just not showing it to me.

Pisses me off.

I want a minimalist Windows 10 version with no included features or apps by default. Not even a browser. If you want a program or feature, you install it manually.

I don't even want features or apps sitting on the disk waiting to be enabled. I want to have to manually download and install everything.

Sounds like you really want to use Linux. :)
 
At the very least they could offer "prosumer" users a version of either the enterprise or embedded Win10 license, but instead like always they just want to strongarm everyone into using whatever they see fit to force down our throats.
They may be trying to avoid having yet another SKU when any "prosumer" could figure out how to turn off a taskbar widget in 10 seconds. A "prosumer" knew this widget was coming weeks ago.

Maybe I'm old school, but I want an operating system to be just an operating system. I don't want an ecosystem of services or pre-installed applications, and I sure as hell do not want any kind of "digital assistant".
So use FreeDOS. There are large swaths of the computing market that want services and want pre-installed applications and want digital assistants. Maybe those people are just willing to pay more and have more influence. Heck just the built-in Mail app is way more friendly than Outlook or any webmail interface, and it scales perfectly on my 17" laptop.

Why have I had to uninstall OneDrive like 20 times on this one machine alone? I didn't ask for OneDrive. I never want any cloud service from any provider, and I sure as hell don't want some piece of shit cloud storage app that I will never use sitting resident in my task manager eating RAM.
I don't personally know why you had to "uninstall OneDrive like 20 times." In my business environment we don't use OneDrive, so with one single registry key I turned off OneDrive. It doesn't show in the UI and doesn't nag the user. (it's actually a local policy but the policy just sets a registry value)

It is so infuriating that they try to force this shit on me and I have to play whack-a-mole (sometimes including registry hacks) every time there is an update to get rid of the next "brilliant" idea some idiot Microsoft programmer had.
The weather widget thingy rolled out to our users over the last couple of weeks and the grand total number of tickets we got about it is: 0. I'm not sure what else they've introduced in the last couple of years that would make me so angry that my S.O. would need to go stay with mom for a couple of days.

That, and there should never under any circumstance be anything named "Xbox" on my work machine. That just annoys the hell out of me. This isn't some child's "battlestation".
So don't open it? It's just an app, and it's down in the X's. You could even remove the Xbox app if you want.
 
Oh no, 20mb out of my 64gb (okay, 32gb for most new rigs) is gonna tank my performance!

SuperSubZero stole all the good points that I could have made against the whiners.
 
Oh no, 20mb out of my 64gb (okay, 32gb for most new rigs) is gonna tank my performance!

SuperSubZero stole all the good points that I could have made against the whiners.
Not really the point. If it's turned off, it should be off, not running behind the scenes. The point of turning it off is because you don't want it to provide you with that information, so turn it off.
 
It's a tough thing when MS wants to roll out stuff like this. Average joe consumer is never going to install anything manually, so they kinda have to push it out. At the same time, it's annoying when things like this mysteriously show up without warning, too. Feels like this would have been better as an addition to one of their bi-yearly updates, though. Especially the last one which included a whole lot of nothing.

Like, when I'm a software developer, it's annoying that I have to actually get people to install my crap, but I can't just push it everywhere. Whatever happened to encouraging people to use your software by making a fuss about it? This kind of regular upgrade implies regularly bombarded with BS encourages people to turn off upgrades and use alternatives. If you really want to include weather with blurry text (seriously; why is the temperature and weather summary so f***ing blurry) on by default on new installs, umm ok, I guess; but leave existing installs alone. At most, do a stupid tool tip and let me know I can turn it on, even though I'm probably not going to.
 
Not really the point. If it's turned off, it should be off, not running behind the scenes. The point of turning it off is because you don't want it to provide you with that information, so turn it off.
Yes, but the whiners were against having to turn it off.
 
Cue the window's white knights!

This an excellent example of poor implementation, poor integration and just because a random person on the internet doesn't think its doing anything in the background - doesn't make it true.
 
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Cue the window's white knights!

This an excellent example of poor implementation, poor integration and just because a random person on the internet doesn't think its doing anything in the background - doesn't make it true.
Prove it is. Show us the facts, not random speculation. P.S. Basic logic and objectivity doesn't make someone a white knight.
 
Cue the window's white knights!

This an excellent example of poor implementation, poor integration and just because a random person on the internet doesn't think its doing anything in the background - doesn't make it true.
I don't believe anyone made the argument that the weather widget consumes no RAM/CPU resources at all? All any of us were saying was that we liked the feature, thought it was neat having the weather displayed there, and we don't get why it's a big deal that it's on by default. I don't think anyone claimed that services running in the background don't take CPU time away from other things, because obviously some people do speed up Windows by going and disabling a ton of services. That said, I would be very surprised if the weather widget used more space in the background than something like, say, Windows Defender. There's also an option to keep the system clock synchronized with an online server. Wonder how much that feature uses?

But overall, I would say Windows isn't the right operating system if you want all your computer's resources dedicated to doing only the single thing you're focusing on. It's designed for general use scenarios where you'll have enough headroom to not have to worry about a couple of extra services running. If you're trying to control your system's resources that tightly for a server or something, then something like Linux starts to make more sense.
 
But overall, I would say Windows isn't the right operating system if you want all your computer's resources dedicated to doing only the single thing you're focusing on. It's designed for general use scenarios where you'll have enough headroom to not have to worry about a couple of extra services running. If you're trying to control your system's resources that tightly for a server or something, then something like Linux starts to make more sense.


I have no problem with background tasks...

...of I select them myself, set them up and configure them the way I want them to run on my terms.

Some random thing someone else decides to just push out to me? That's always going to piss me off.


There should be a few basic rules for software development:

1.) Feel free to include all the bells and whistles in a fresh install, but all new features must be "opt in". If someone has selected to not opt in, or had previously opted out, they should never re-enable themselves on their own

2.) All pre-installed software and features must be uninstallable. Not through some hack you have to research online, but easily and clearly. Camera, Calendar, Phone app, digital assistant, you name it. And by uninstalled, I mean the binaries must be physically removed from my drive, not sitting in waiting somewhere to install themselves again as soon as someone does something like creates a new user account.

3.) All privacy options must always default to the least permissive setting.

4.) Only data absolutely necessary for the functoning of the end users use case may be collected from that user

5.) An existing product may not be used as a springboard to promote or push other new products. Everything must stand on its own. Never use the "foot in the door" method to distribute crap to people they may not want.

6.) No software or component may contact anything on either the LAN or WAN without either being explicitly told to do so by the user, or being intentionally set up and automated by the user.

7.) The software may never lie to you. If it says it is going to do something in a setting (like disable GPS) it MUST disable GPS.

If we could just settle on this being the fundamental commandments of ethical software development, I'd be fine.
 
I have no problem with background tasks...

...of I select them myself, set them up and configure them the way I want them to run on my terms.

Some random thing someone else decides to just push out to me? That's always going to piss me off.


There should be a few basic rules for software development:

1.) Feel free to include all the bells and whistles in a fresh install, but all new features must be "opt in". If someone has selected to not opt in, or had previously opted out, they should never re-enable themselves on their own

2.) All pre-installed software and features must be uninstallable. Not through some hack you have to research online, but easily and clearly. Camera, Calendar, Phone app, digital assistant, you name it. And by uninstalled, I mean the binaries must be physically removed from my drive, not sitting in waiting somewhere to install themselves again as soon as someone does something like creates a new user account.

3.) All privacy options must always default to the least permissive setting.

4.) Only data absolutely necessary for the functoning of the end users use case may be collected from that user

5.) An existing product may not be used as a springboard to promote or push other new products. Everything must stand on its own. Never use the "foot in the door" method to distribute crap to people they may not want.

6.) No software or component may contact anything on either the LAN or WAN without either being explicitly told to do so by the user, or being intentionally set up and automated by the user.

7.) The software may never lie to you. If it says it is going to do something in a setting (like disable GPS) it MUST disable GPS.

If we could just settle on this being the fundamental commandments of ethical software development, I'd be fine.
LOL. This mostly makes no practical or business sense with average users. Go back to dos or something.
 
Cue the window's white knights!

This an excellent example of poor implementation, poor integration and just because a random person on the internet doesn't think its doing anything in the background - doesn't make it true.
While I know people are really against new features being opted off, vs on, but I would bet the majority of Windows users have no idea what new features even exist in windows and wouldn't even understand the missed functionality at their fingertips if it wasn't shown to them.
 
I feel like it is still doing shit in the background, just not showing it to me.

Pisses me off.

I want a minimalist Windows 10 version with no included features or apps by default. Not even a browser. If you want a program or feature, you install it manually.

I don't even want features or apps sitting on the disk waiting to be enabled. I want to have to manually download and install everything.

Yeah, that was a cool idea twenty-odd years ago when I wanted to download Mozilla over command-line FTP. Now, I've got enough unutilized resources that I don't care about mspaint.exe's mediocre existence. It don't bother me; I don't bother it.

Been noticing more and more of that "we're going to make your computer act like it has malware but it's actually Just Doing Windows Stuff, lol"
- system idling at desktop
- notice compy fans ramping
- notice CPU power is high
- open Task Manager
- Windows services scatter like roaches before I can catch what's using all the CPU
- CPU power drops
- fans ramp down
- close Task Manager
- background services sense I'm not looking and resume whatever they were doing
- Repeat
It's not just Windows Update stuff either, it's... I don't even know honestly, and that's a problem.
thats probably the indexing or defender scanning.
There's a couple other weird-ass profiling services that I don't entirely understand which it could be... but, yes. It's the shit that happens in the background that makes things marginally less obnoxious when you're actually screwing with the machine. Ignore it.

Also, if one process loading up one CPU core makes your fans spin up enough to alarm you, unfuck your fan curves. You're running too close to the ragged edge.


With regards to the thread topic, I never actually saw it before I got the inevitable family tech-support call. Probably because I pin the taskbar to the side, and they don't have a UI cooked up for that configuration. Took me all of ten seconds and three clicks to figure out how to "fix". *shrug*
 
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Yeah, that was a cool idea twenty-odd years ago when I wanted to download Mozilla over command-line FTP. Now, I've got enough unutilized resources that I don't care about mspaint.exe's mediocre existence. It don't bother me; I don't bother it.


There's a couple other weird-ass profiling services that I don't entirely understand which it could be... but, yes. It's the shit that happens in the background that makes things marginally less obnoxious when you're actually screwing with the machine. Ignore it.

Also, if one process loading up one CPU core makes your fans spin up enough to alarm you, unfuck your fan curves. You're running too close to the ragged edge.


With regards to the thread topic, I never actually saw it before I got the inevitable family tech-support call. Probably because I pin the taskbar to the side, and they don't have a UI cooked up for that configuration. Took me all of ten seconds and three clicks to figure out how to "fix". *shrug*
it's a laptop so the fans ramping is super noticeable no matter how I set the curve. But yeah, I guess I should be thankful in a way that Windows is that good at spinning down background activity when it detects user activity.
 
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