News I’m Sticking With Windows 10, but Microsoft Won’t Stop Nagging Me to Upgrade

[Admin]

I want to keep my desktop PC on Windows 10, but Microsoft’s attempts to convince me to upgrade to Windows 11 keep getting more aggressive.

I’m Sticking With Windows 10, but Microsoft Won’t Stop Nagging Me to Upgrade : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

I feel the pain... My solution was* simpler: disable the TPM module in the BIOS.

Regards

 

[Brian D Smith]

Ah! First world problems...

 

[Phaaze88]

Eh, it hasn't been bothering me that much. The frequency of ad spots in videos are much more - before ad blocks, anyway.

 

[palladin9479]

Thankfully I'm on Windows 10 Pro at home so just pushed out a GPO that sets the global target to Windows 10 22H2 and all that Windows 11 nagging goes away. Microsoft is hoping to avoid another Windows 7 situation, where everyone stays on something they like and prevents Microsoft from collecting even more information to sell to advertisers.

 

[eichwana]

I feel the pain... My solution was* simpler: disable the TPM module in the BIOS.

Regards

This is exactly what I did in my home pc.

On my work laptop we’re on Win 11 and just the inability to ungroup taskbar icons is enough for me to delay upgrading unless I have to.

And for those wondering why that’s such a big deal: I use Outlook for reminders and meetings, now the reminder pop up window is suppressed and you can’t see it in your taskbar without clicking into the Outlook icon. If I forget I have a meeting at this time, it’s far far too easy to miss the reminder. And because it’s a work laptop, things are locked down which stops me tweaking registry keys or installing addons to give me the same functionality I have already at home.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm not a fan of all the horrible waste of space on mobile-centric UI designs in a desktop environment. Lots of settings I use semi-regularly aren't in the new-style UI and make me dig 2-3 layers deep before landing in the XP-era legacy dialogs where advanced mouse, audio, networking and other options still reside.

Most of the old UI still exists because the modern UI would become excessively bloated if all of the legacy features were exposed. I'd very much like an option for going back to XP/Vista/7 UI instead of Microsoft's newer touch-centric designs. I do not own any PC or laptop touch-screen and have no plans to either as I'd rather not have fingerprints all over my screen. If I want to use a touch-screen, I'll use my phone or tablet.

 

[BX4096]

I switched to 11 not that long ago and have no regrets whatsoever. But then again, I'm a power user who's very particular about my settings and set-up, and it took some heavy tinkering and third-party tools to get things back to normal. In regard to the utterly <Mod Edit> taskbar that caused a lot of frustration early-on, I settled on StartAllBack to get my 7+ Taskbar Tweaker functionality - not to mention, my sanity - back, and the rest of is was pretty straightforward as far as OS upgrades go. Windows 11 has a lot of new stuff that is worth it in the end, and if you have newer hardware like Raptor Lake and whatnot, you don't really have much choice but to update.

 

[citral23]

There's that thingie called Linux you know

 

[palladin9479]

I'm not a fan of all the horrible waste of space on mobile-centric UI designs in a desktop environment. Lots of settings I use semi-regularly aren't in the new-style UI and make me dig 2-3 layers deep before landing in the XP-era legacy dialogs where advanced mouse, audio, networking and other options still reside.

Most of the old UI still exists because the modern UI would become excessively bloated if all of the legacy features were exposed. I'd very much like an option for going back to XP/Vista/7 UI instead of Microsoft's newer touch-centric designs. I do not own any PC or laptop touch-screen and have no plans to either as I'd rather not have fingerprints all over my screen. If I want to use a touch-screen, I'll use my phone or tablet.

If it wasn't for OpenShell I would still be on Windows 7 as I absolutely loath the Metro UI. Windows 10 + OpenShell puts most everything back the way it was, unfortunately Windows 11 keeps breaking UI stuff making it hard to use OpenShell.

 

[BillyBuerger]

Everything in this article is true and Microsoft needs to be called out on it as much as possible. But, there have been some improvements and alternatives that make it better. On the start menu, there is an option under personalization to give more room for apps and less for recommendations. That at least removes some of the dead space. The old context menus were a mess of crap so something did need to happen. But as is usually the case, the "fixed" it by making it completely unusable. But, I just found Custom Context Menu (open source on GitHub and permanent free trial from the Microsoft store) that allows you to add some custom items to the context menu. I've been playing around with it a bit and it should hopefully cover most of what I want. And I found RetroBar is a very competent task bar replacement. It's designed with the idea of making it look like older windows versions but you can build your own them so I created something that still looks like modern Windows. I can dock it to the side giving me my full vertical screen space and there's no combining of windows so everything I have open is directly accessible. Another interesting thing with it is that it puts windows in order they are opened by default including windows from the same app. That's a bit awkward as you can have two browser windows open with one at the top and the other at the bottom. But, that also means you can reorder them as well. With Windows 7/10, even without combining, it always puts the same application together and you can't reorder within that group. I've wanted to do that before and couldn't but with this I can.

With all of these work-arounds, I am finally thinking about upgrading my work PC to 11. I have a 3-monitor setup and the way Win11 handles the taskbar on multiple monitors is terrible so I've avoided upgrading. But I feel like I have enough options now with these tools that I could get by with it and might finally do the upgrade. But it also needs to be at a time that is convenient for me so as to not affect the work I need to do. Microsoft really doesn't care about that and would prefer to upgrade or install updates when it wants even if that breaks things I'm doing.

 

[ecth]

I'm really happy with Windows 11. I liked 7, as most of us did. I also like 8, underneath the new start menu. It was basically an improved 7. 8.1 tried to give you better access to the "behind the start menu" experience. I liked 10 a lot, since it was more of that and finally startet getting rid of old pre-XP menus. Plus improvements here and there.

And actually 11 feels the same. Yes a new UI, boohoo. But besides that: adaptive refresh rate features, new settings that actually replace a lot of pre-XP menus. Lots of little goodies here and there. I like that.

But.

I get the same fullscreen interruption on boot just to get:

• Cortana - no
• handwriting - no, I don't have it on my PC and laptop
• an Office 365 subscription - no, I use LibreOffice and have to get a new major version every time I need it. Guess what, I need it very rarely.
• and OneDrive - had it, it got full quite fast. So: no.

This is just rude. And I can imagine my grandparents or whoever just clicking on the shiny blue button. Rude.

 

[russell_john]

Thankfully I'm on Windows 10 Pro at home so just pushed out a GPO that sets the global target to Windows 10 22H2 and all that Windows 11 nagging goes away. Microsoft is hoping to avoid another Windows 7 situation, where everyone stays on something they like and prevents Microsoft from collecting even more information to sell to advertisers.

I was going to say the same thing .... and if you aren't on Pro and don't have the Group Policy Editor available it can be done with a simple Windows Registry hack (Which is basically what the Group Policy Editor does)

 

[derekullo]

Resistance is futile!
Your Windows 10 will be assimilated!

 

[mrv_co]

You can always leave 'Secure Boot' disabled so they don't nag you to upgrade. The downside is that they nag you instead about how your computer sucks and can't be upgraded to Windows 11.

 

[palladin9479]

I'm really happy with Windows 11. I liked 7, as most of us did. I also like 8, underneath the new start menu. It was basically an improved 7. 8.1 tried to give you better access to the "behind the start menu" experience. I liked 10 a lot, since it was more of that and finally startet getting rid of old pre-XP menus. Plus improvements here and there.

And actually 11 feels the same. Yes a new UI, boohoo. But besides that: adaptive refresh rate features, new settings that actually replace a lot of pre-XP menus. Lots of little goodies here and there. I like that.

But.

I get the same fullscreen interruption on boot just to get:

• Cortana - no
• handwriting - no, I don't have it on my PC and laptop
• an Office 365 subscription - no, I use LibreOffice and have to get a new major version every time I need it. Guess what, I need it very rarely.
• and OneDrive - had it, it got full quite fast. So: no.

This is just rude. And I can imagine my grandparents or whoever just clicking on the shiny blue button. Rude.

Internally Windows 11 is great, there were solid improvements to the kernel though Windows was already pretty good. The issue is that for some of us, Metro UI is just downright terrible to the point of being unusable. It started with Windows 8 trying to make a single common TouchUI between Windows Mobile and Windows Desktop, this continued with Windows 10. The center of all this design work is the Microsoft App Store. MetroUI has been built to funnel users into using the Microsoft App store instead of traditional external applications. They are attempting to recreate the Apple walled garden environment where users have a central pre-approved location for software and Microsoft can not only get a cut of the business, but also gather more detailed user telemetry to sell to third parties.

For Windows 10 Open Shell reimplements Aero and lets us just walk past that entire system. In Windows 11 they hard coded a ton of those elements into the system making it very hard to bypass.

GitHub - Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu: Classic Shell Reborn.

Classic Shell Reborn. Contribute to Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Dr3ams]

When Windows 11 first arrived I installed it, played around with it for about an hour and then rolled back my machine to Windows 10. My two biggest issues? You couldn't create folders in the Start Menu and the missing link to the Task Manager when you right click on the Task Bar. Since then Microsoft has reinstated folder creation in the Start Menu and the Task Bar link to the Task Manager. So, I've reinstalled Windows 11 and am satisfied with it. There are some minor issues, but I had those with Windows 10 too.

 

[danpomeroy]

GRC | InControl

InControl - Disable Windows automatic updates and upgrades

www.grc.com

This works great!

 

[Rouxenator]

Question - why stick to Windows 10? Clearly you have something against current versions of software so why not Windows 7 or XP? Heck NT4 was great and 3.11 too?

Ever since I started on computers in 1995 I have always stuck with the latest, 3.11 then 95... even Me, Vista and 8. All worked remarkably well.

Remember, the UI is a very tiny part of the OS. That is why my favourite linux is Debian headless.

 

[Dr3ams]

Question - why stick to Windows 10? Clearly you have something against current versions of software so why not Windows 7 or XP? Heck NT4 was great and 3.11 too?

Ever since I started on computers in 1995 I have always stuck with the latest, 3.11 then 95... even Me, Vista and 8. All worked remarkably well.

Remember, the UI is a very tiny part of the OS. That is why my favourite linux is Debian headless.

Hard to believe that ME worked remarkably well.

 

[techfreak]

As a PC technician here, sometimes when users have issues with their PC.
Is usually after Win 11 upgrade especially for branded PCs since branded PCs
uses factory image.
Factory image will have issues down the road and stability will be affected
once you upgrade to Win 11.
Some may argue the fact Win 11 is smoother and much slick to use.
However in my experience it really depends on hardware, if you are using
older gen CPU like Intel 8th/9th gen is best to run on Win 10 than Win 11.
Win 11 is quite resource intensive so it will impact performance on older gen CPU
which are weaker at this current age.
But like some users which I encounter which is also reflected in the article.
The Win 11 upgrade is annoying, even if you decline it may pop out down the road.
Which is why some were force to upgrade but end up facing stability issues
after the upgrade when running on older PCs.
It remind me way back when Win 10 was introduced, Microsoft also did the same thing.
But at that time was far worst that almost all generations of PCs even older gen without UEFI
boot like Intel Core 2 Duo was able to install Win 10.
If you ask me are there any workaround for this majory issue?
Some may argue with me if I say this and that is to set the minimum system requirement
lock at both UEFI, Secure Boot + TPM as well as modern CPU like Intel 12/13th gen CPU.
Like that those who running older gen can choose to not to install Win 11 cuz it is not supported offically
anyway.
Some do know how to bypass the CPU requirement as I have seen Win 11 installed on older PC
running Intel 3/4th gen. Is possible by registry hack but how stable is the PC down the road
is questionable.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I feel the pain... My solution was* simpler: disable the TPM module in the BIOS.

Regards

That's exactly what I did to my PC's and laptops 2 yrs ago that I did not want on W11. I have an Alienware rig that I did not want the automatic BIOS updates to show up, which I also disabled in the BIOS. I also set my network to "metered". That keeps updates from downloading and installing automatically in the background.

 

[InvalidError]

I feel the pain... My solution was* simpler: disable the TPM module in the BIOS.

Regards

I didn't remember why I disabled TPM on my PC... stopping Windows from saying my PC qualifies for Windows 11 was probably it

 

[-Fran-]

Question - why stick to Windows 10? Clearly you have something against current versions of software so why not Windows 7 or XP? Heck NT4 was great and 3.11 too?

Ever since I started on computers in 1995 I have always stuck with the latest, 3.11 then 95... even Me, Vista and 8. All worked remarkably well.

Remember, the UI is a very tiny part of the OS. That is why my favourite linux is Debian headless.

I would still be happily using WinXP if MS didn't drop it like a hot potato.

All of the new stupid UI stuff MS has been adding to Windows over the years is completely unnecessary, lagging the whole OS down considerably over the years.

Kernel upgrades for CPU and even the display driver don't need all the UI baggage MS wants to push down everyone's throat and all the fancy effects you see now on the desktop compositor for Windows could've been done in XP.

If you want to eat the new upgrades, that's good for you. Be happy. Some of us just don't see the point, specially when it breaks things unnecessarily.

For clarity, I started my PC life with MS-DOS 5.0, which was garbage. MS-DOS 6.2x was the better version back then until they finally migrated to NT4.1 with XP. So we started around the same year, but unlike you, I've always stuck to what works first and moved whenever it has been absolutely necessary.

Regards.

 

[blppt]

Ehhh, honestly, I've upgraded to 11, and its so similar to 10 that I haven't looked back. I don't see intrusive ads anywhere, TBH, but I've disabled a bunch of things like notifications that might normally have had them.

I think the hate for 11 is a bit overblown vs 10.

And of course, there's always Ubuntu which is downright simple to install and use unlike Linux distros decades ago.