Windows sucks, too.

Windows_sucks.md

Windows sucks, too!

Audio

• Needs a registry hack to stop audio pops.
• Windows 11 TTS stops working randomly.
• 64-bit Windows 10 Home version 1909 build 18363.900 (and probably 11) lacks audio enhancement tab. Turns out MSI decided to change that to Realtek Audio Console, Sound Effects, Nahimic, Effects ON, Volume Stabilizer.
• Audio mixer sucks since 11. Doesn't show the Xbox game bar making noise, eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNCQzwPptbA
• Settings app fails at volume mixer and Bluetooth settings, unlike the settings popup from the systray.

Apps

• Microsoft Store:
  • Search bar camouflaged and in title bar.
  • Reinstalled Microsoft Teams. This time it did accept my company account type, but it had a noninteractive ad popup so i quit it. Now it's hard to find and launch from the Store.
  • Started Microsoft Teams App from Start menu. Same issue with it not accepting my company account email!
• 3 ways to uninstall an app, none of which being the app store.
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/signal.html doesn't work on Windows.
• New browser windows aren't maximized, and partially under the task bar. Fix by changing taskbar's shortcut properties.
• Can't uninstall programs when out of space on C:

Law

• Windows is not free.
• Windows is not open source.
• Windows comes with annoying spy/bloat/adware.
• Microsoft killed DR-DOS, OS/2, and BeOS, made an attempt on Linux, and allegedly only saved Apple to prevent more monopoly lawsuits. As evident by lack of approval voting and in spite of cartel law, de-jure duopolies are fine.

Security

• Holds external drives hostage.
• Buggy UTF8 (chcp 65001) support!
• Appears to send crash data to Microsoft despite having disabled all diagnostic settings.
• Does not respect Defender settings either, insisting on flagging Nuitka output as Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml malware, which it isn't according to VirusTotal.
• Defender takes 80% of transfer speed, even while using PowerShell to move Windows-generated PNG screenshots to an external drive.
• Fingerprint-based detection fails to find new threats, anyway. Sandboxing apps like Android does is superior.
• Comes with multiple old and insecure PowerShells enabled.
• Windows Defender won't let me open the freaking .php.txt version of https://github.com/pentestmonkey/php-reverse-shell/blob/master/php-reverse-shell.php despite manually allowing it. After allowing multiple times and downloading as .txt it now does let me open either.
• Copy/paste still fails sometimes. Adding Shift should paste as text everywhere that supports rich text but doesn't as keyboard shortcuts vary per app. PowerToys does offer Paste As Plain Text with Cmd+Ctrl+Alt+V.
• Won't sleep when little (<10 GB?) space on C:
• 5 seconds remaining? More like 5 minutes!
• Why not have 100+ VMs to test updates like the cumulative .NET one that causes a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION BSOD on my machine before autoinstalling that crap on my computer?
• Randomly reboots overnight to reattempt faulty Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools update, despite PowerToys explicitely set to stay awake to run my LLM.
• Sleeps while using Spotify; doesn't sleep while locked with no media playing. Directly opposite of "Keep awake" PowerToy settings.
• Updates are automatic but slow and frequent. Ubuntu only requires 3 manual actions. (apt, snap store, and firmware updater. Maybe kernel as well.)

Explorer

• Hides $Recycle.Bin when sorting by date.
• Default apps need a reboot to completely remove. And you can't add a program with the same name until you do. And default executables can't be in UserData anymore.
• Explorer just fails to do anything on trying to move thousands of files from a USB drive if it includes one with a long name. Total Commander was able to do the task and keep the name.
• Explorer also hangs with only 2,752 files in one HDD folder. Maybe due to me trying to rename a file while it was still trying to preview it.
• Explorer can't rename a filename that's 255 chars long. It pretends to when you shorten it enough, but keeps the old long name.
• NTFS allows each path component (directory or filename) to be 255 characters long, but Windows 11 Explorer does nothing when attempting to move a file with a 229-char filename to a subfolder, or even a selection containing that file, but a couple of 232-char name files did move individually, but one's path copies like D:\code\AI\Python\2024-0~4\2024-0~1.PNG instead of the complete name, but Windows successfully scanned the drive. No errors were found. 400+ GB free and 0% activity on that SSD. D:\code\AI\Python>move 2024-02-05*.png 2024-02-05/ works fine though. Much faster as well.
• Windows 11 Explorer search results are extremely inconsistent as well, and even copy the hidden current folder areas from Finder. Good thing i duplicated the date in the filename as the result's folder is only discoverable via the context menu that only appears when you don't click too close to the invisible separators. It's even worse from a dialog:
• Needs winget install Microsoft.PowerToys --source winget to enable SVG thumbnails.
• Needs https://github.com/brookmiles/windows-heic-thumbnails or rather https://www.copytrans.net/copytransheic/ to enable HEIC thumbnails. It's sad that Windows' best feature needs external tools now like it's MacOS.

Storage

• Doesn't even know why devices are in use:

  

• Resizing an ExFAT partition destroys the ExFAT partition!

• Litters drives with System Volume Information folders.

• Slow file access. Workaround using VHDX Dev Drive.

• rm -rf? No! Use rd /s or rmdir /s (What's the difference?)

Task bar

• How to remove "ENG" ("Input Indicator" system icon setting), date ("Clock" also hides time), and empty notification icon (Will "Action Center" reappear when there is a notification?) from task bar, and move pinned items to Start tiles? (Windows 10, because Windows 11 doesn't support this HP laptop's AMD CPU for no apparent reason.)
• PotPlayer icon in Windows 11 task bar lacks a running indicator.
• Can't resize or move Windows 11 task bar, despite Edge featuring vertical tabs and window snapping being the best yet:
• Windows 11 task bar context menu sucks as well, but can be fixed with this registry setting.
• Annoying suggestion popups not even accompanied by a whimsical mascot:

Word

• Hard to restore regular single page centered view. (View, Print Layout + Vertical + One Page.)
• Autosave option it likes to hide is DISABLED BY DEFAULT?!
• Windows Update yeets unsaved docs you've spent hours editing!!!!

Xbox 360

• Xbox 360 broke internet support. Fix by removing last update via X, LB, RB, X, LB, RB, X.
• Optical drive lens fails and can't be cleaned by a 10 euro disk like my 30 euro DVD player.
• A pain to open without breaking the plastic near the HDMI connection unless you use a good guide. Also be sure to have a T10 Torx screwdriver to open the case, a Phillips one for the drive, and some more aggressive lens cleaner in case the regular stuff doesn't work when directly applied either.
• Not backwards compatible with all older Xbox games. Same for Xbox One.

See also other tech fails and my preferred tech list.