2w ago

Microsoft breaks Windows reset and recovery

www.theregister.com Microsoft breaks Windows reset and recovery

: Want to pass on that old PC? Perhaps wait until out-of-band patch arrives

110 comments

Jesus fucking Christ, is Windows just 100% vibe coded now? How do those fuckups keep happening? It's honestly unbelievable...
I'm so glad I decided to move away from it - I still have no idea what I'm doing in Linux, but then again I never had a lot of idea about what I'm doing in Windows either, so it's all good :)
- You might not yet always know what you're doing to your Linux install...
  But you can never really what the fuck Microsoft is gonna do to your windows install.
  That's without even getting into whether or not Microsoft knows what they're doing themselves.
  
  Amen to that.
  I settled on Manjaro for now because it's super nice and easy to use - I heard it had some issues with updates on the past, but for the last year or so it's been really nice for me, so I'll wait until the first screwup before distro-hopping somewhere else :)
  
  They know that they know nothing. They do what they must and let be what comes. An enlightened monopolist corporation.
- Microsoft is literally requiring its devs to use AI to write parts of Windows
  
  ...and it shows. God damn it shows, almost every week it seems, with yet another fuckup.
  
  If that "AI" is getting feedback from fixes they make, then it makes sense. They are basically training it all the time. Except training it on their own devs seems to be pissing against the wind.
- As the article mentions, it's because Microsoft cut down their quality control to the point where they're just sending stuff out then reacting when people report what breaks. Sure they have their "insider" builds but that program isn't working very well to catch these issues that find their way into release builds.
  Back in the day they had a massive testing lab and a big team of testers. Then they fired them all just over a decade ago. We can thank Satya Nadella I guess. He's more of a line-go-up man than a good quality products person.
  
  It's completely insane to me that businesses deal with it without suing their butts off. I can understand individual customers, they tend to be docile, but how did all this not cause massive losses to a litigious company yet?
  
  This is what happens when corporations become so large, their product so ubiquitous, and have so many customers that they don't need to worry about actual quality or service.
  
  Ah yes, the return of right-shifting
- At work win 11 has already messed up twice. Once in an image and it black screened. As in it stopped working and no blue screen just black.
  Its pretty bad. At least win 10 kept working.
- How do those fuckups keep happening?
  I guess, they're still trying to reproduce the Ballmer Peak
- thier new thing is focousing on thier money-hemmorhaging AI.
- Monopolies. That’s what happens when you’re allowed to patent software.

I got a survey question from windows feedbackhub on my work computer yesterday, asking if i would recommend windows. And i thought fine ill answer this seriously with real reasons why.
I wrote a long explanation from my own experiences helping people and using it, half way through i shit you not, the feedbackhub froze and crashed.
- It probably detected a certain number of flagged words or phrases and knew it was gonna be really negative feedback and “crashed”
  
  It wasn't even that negative.
  Would you recommend windows to family and friends?
  No, 90% of those i help (ages 10-70) with computers and tech dont need a computer, they can use their phone for everything. A phone can pay bills, contact friends and family even print documents or pictures just fine and they have everything they need and want.
  The only reason someone even wants a PC today is to play games or they need it for work and in those cases i usually don't need to recommend them an os because they probably don't have any other options, because they are comfortable windows or mac.
- I just put “[Object object]” in one of the survey fields when I don’t like the company.
  
  Calm down, Satan.
- You have learned the lesson. The lesson to Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C (select all and copy) your text into a separate document elsewhere before hitting send. In fact you should be doing that periodically anyway because browsers and browser-based apps are more likely than they should be to stop working unexpectedly.
  And if the form disallows this action you'll have to get creative with the browser tools to modify the page that way instead.
  
  You can install a clipboard manager tool like CopyQ or just enable the one built into windows and use that as temp storage for your text
- I don't usually leave feedback. I have done it maybe six times when I've been really pissed. In two of those times I've gotten "server error" or similar after writing a long rant and pressing "send"
  Seems to be a really important and respected part of any service.

Linux!
- (quite literally) LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
  
  ...UPDATES UPDATES
  uh LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
  UPDATES UPDATES
  uh LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
  UPDATES UPDATES
  BILL GATES BILL GATES BILLL GATES oooOooh it's BILL GATES!
  uh LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX....
- Since 1998, baby! Found my RedHat 3.0.3 install CD recently. It's been such a long road, but it keeps getting better.
  
  A CD with RedHat on it? Pretty fancy. My first RH installation came on about three boxes of floppy disks, took hours to unpack it all. And damn right, been all uphill since.
- Linux has reset and recovery?
  
  Does "reset and recovery" mean "wipe the hard disk and put a fresh licensed Windows install on"?
  Not needing a license for a Linux distro means that's straightforward without a special tool.

I’m so glad I switched to Linux when I did (a couple months ago). I was dual booting for a bit but two weeks ago I removed my windows partition. Feels good to be free.
- I switched to Linux when i built my first tower in 2022
  And have never looked back
  
  I’d love to build my own pc, maybe in a few years. I’m currently using a gaming laptop which is good enough for most games, but when I feel the need to upgrade I’m gonna build.
- What distro, and how do you like it compared to windows so far? (And I’m assuming you’re not using Arch since you didn’t say anything)
  
  I distro hopped a bit but landed on CachyOS, which is arch-based (btw) but a lot more straightforward to install and has a faster kernel supposedly. It’s been fantastic, I much prefer it to windows. Still getting used to the occasional hiccup but it’s worth it. I was never too attached to windows anyway. I’m currently running KDE Plasma but I want to try out Hyprland or something similar. It seems really cool. I have to look into how to download it though.
  
  Classic recommendations are Linux Mint and Ubuntu, I think Zorin as well, but there are many others. For starters which one you use won't matter too much, because more likely than not you're gonna switch again.
  I started with Ubuntu because it's easy to use and I was new. One can argue over the pros and cons. I'm looking at Manjaro at the minute, an easy to install and beginner friendly Arch distro. Really, you can just try most of them out online though. Check out DistroSea and you can actually emulate the OSs with several desktop environments right in your browser.
- The only time I’ve booted into Windows in the last month is for the Battlefield beta and my work’s annoying proprietary VPN. Other than that I’d say Linux is finally ready for the desktop. Proton was the straw that broke Microsoft’s back for me.
  
  i had an annoying proprietary vpn for work that was unwittingly compatible with the openvpn client
  
  What OS do you recommend for desktop Linux. I’m mostly into protecting my data.

"Thanks to Microsoft's legendary approach to quality control, installing Windows patches these days is getting to be less like Russian Roulette and more like accidentally stepping on a rake left in the grass."
Oooof!

Thanks to Microsoft's legendary approach to quality control, installing Windows patches these days is getting to be less like Russian Roulette and more like accidentally stepping on a rake left in the grass.
I like the second metaphor:
The whole neighborhood is going to hear you swearing and shouting 🤬
- "...which upon being stepped on, triggers a rifle aimed at your ass, covers you with sausages and emits a sound in the 20khz range to attract the neighbourhood dogs"

How does Microsoft regularly. Was up this badly?
Do all companies (Apple/linux) do it to but we don’t hear about it because of the smaller user base or is Microsoft literally this incompetent?
If they are, why can they fix the root issue?
The is a genuine question that I don’t have the answer to.
- Apple's base is big enough where if a problem like this happens, it's a big deal. Apple has the benefit of controlling both hardware and software.
  With Linux, being open source helps it out since so many people can test and chime in.
  
  Exactly, plus you can decide if you want to be on a stable distro versus one where you get to test new features / get all the updates at the cost of stability.
- MacOS only has ~10-15% market share (depending on which stats you read) so something breaking in MacOS has much less impact compared to Windows. Apple also control the hardware, so there's fewer things that can go wrong.
- Microsoft stopped trying a long time ago. The benefits of having a monopoly. Windows would have to cease functioning entirely for them to lose their position.
- The is a genuine question that I don’t have the answer to.
  I would say that because nobody can muster the consensus on any real policy. There's plenty of legacy, with many different people and teams responsible, knowledge lost and so on.
  And then this requires some sort of unified vision. Despite, eh, all the downsides, Apple can do that. MS can't.
  They'd honestly have to make a separate "neowin" subsystem with new GUI and everything, and make win32 and win64 and all the old tooling optional and parallel. Because their approach to backward compatibility means keeping everything around. They can't fix the mess maintaining that.
  
  Thanks I wondered if the backwards compatibility stuff was part of it.
- This kind of shit happens with a similar frequency... on Arch Linux. It's rolling release, shit happens sometimes. archlinux.org's homepage actually lists past major packaging issues.
  Debian however is rock-fucking-solid. But so is Windows Server, I hear. The problem is that Microsoft is treating Windows Home/Pro like a rolling release distro, and the users are guinea pigs. I guess Microsoft is right though, their users will eat it up 'till shit is spilling out from both ends, so why bother?
  
  Any reason to not just run windows server for desktop use?
- However often you think windows machines break on updates Apple ones break 100x more.
  
  This is complete bullshit Windows machines break WAY more often whenever MS releases their spotty updates. Especially when they decided to break up their quality control dept years ago. Every other week or so you get this shite with Windows/MS.
  
  I’ve been on macOS since the Windows XP era and never in my life has the OS broken after a software update.
  Come to think of it, same goes with iOS. I’ve been on iOS since the iPhone 4.
  
  Do you have an examples of this? I have not used Mac for quite some time.
  
  No
  
  My Apple-using friends seem split on this when I ask them whether Macs are stable these days. I've heard from several people that their reputation for stability is a hangover from the past, and updates in recent years have been somewhat unreliable. But it would be hard to get good comparative data given that the companies won't be eager to share the numbers.

🐧🐧🐧

Glad I ditched Windows entirely on my personal devices and went to Linux. No ragrets. Games still work wonderfully.
Any absolutely required usage of Windows on a personal device is provided by a VM running a stripped-down version of W10 LTSC, activated by massgrave scripts.

Weird that they started pushing bad updates after they fired all those people
Must be a coincidence

oh, I installed Debian Trixie yesterday ! having a little trouble with my Wacom tablet, which wasn't a problem in Fedora a few years ago... But apart from that it's 👌🏼
- Just Debian things give it another 5 years and you will be good to go!
  The cost of stability lol
  
  Stable in debian means little to no change in functionality
- Does Debian have HWE kernels like Ubuntu? They were called backports I think
  
  Yes Debian has backports,
  https://wiki.debian.org/Backports

I think, on a abstract level, the dynamic between a companies relationship to code is comparable to genetics in biology. In that sense, Vibe Coding is the last generation in a chain of inbreeding and Microsoft are the Hapsburgs. There will be a day where they succumb to their lack of quality control.

Again.

Please don't upgrade to Linux so I can buy those outdated servers...

I have a little bit to do left before I tell Microsoft to kiss my ass. But I will.

Another reason to switch to the Linux. 🐧

Break. Up. Windows.

110 comments