Ran into Windows 11 today for the first time

[numbawunfela]

Any tips, tricks, words of wisdom?

In the adoption of the OS I am at the 'I want to punch someone' phase.... This will pass. Maybe

Got the fun taskbar centered in the middle - meaning the start button constantly moves as you open new programs. Idiotic.
I had previously set this particular customers File Folder Settings to -Show file extensions for known file types -show full path in the title bar -Show hidden folders -show empty drives -Expand to the open folder..... All the basic things that take this from a 1st grader's toy to a functional device. All of these got set back to the useless defaults during the upgrade it appears. Especially the Hide extensions on known file types. That one was silly when it came out years ago. How is that a thing still?
I now have chat pined to the taskbar - USEFUL! and widgets.... ugh.
I may be suffering from Monday-itis.... So I better stop typing before I say something I may regret.

If there are some early-adopters out there that have anything to share I would be happy to hear it. Things to watch out for. Ways to make it look and feel more like W10 (and by extension W7 and WXP). Benefits I might be too grumpy to see just yet.

Thanks in advance.

[Right Control]

We've got a couple of guys who've upgraded their laptops to Win 11. Have no idea why they want to be early adopters. I will kick and scream out of the Win 10 world. That said, if its a customer PC you've got no choice I guess than to wear out the mouse trying to find things.

[ascj]

Any tips, tricks, words of wisdom?

In the adoption of the OS I am at the 'I want to punch someone' phase.... This will pass. Maybe

Got the fun taskbar centered in the middle - meaning the start button constantly moves as you open new programs. Idiotic.
I had previously set this particular customers File Folder Settings to -Show file extensions for known file types -show full path in the title bar -Show hidden folders -show empty drives -Expand to the open folder..... All the basic things that take this from a 1st grader's toy to a functional device. All of these got set back to the useless defaults during the upgrade it appears. Especially the Hide extensions on known file types. That one was silly when it came out years ago. How is that a thing still?
I now have chat pined to the taskbar - USEFUL! and widgets.... ugh.
I may be suffering from Monday-itis.... So I better stop typing before I say something I may regret.

If there are some early-adopters out there that have anything to share I would be happy to hear it. Things to watch out for. Ways to make it look and feel more like W10 (and by extension W7 and WXP). Benefits I might be too grumpy to see just yet.

Thanks in advance.

Everything you stated can easily be fixed. What drives me nuts with Windows 11 is the right click on a file. All the good stuff is hidden and you have to go to "Show more options". You have no control over it, other than messing with the registry.
Been running Windows 11 on home PC for 7 months. I rather get use to a new OS drinking a beer, then under pressure at a customers site. Work PC is Window 10. It is 5 days old and came with Windows 11.

[digo]

If there are some early-adopters out there that have anything to share I would be happy to hear it. Things to watch out for. Ways to make it look and feel more like W10 (and by extension W7 and WXP). Benefits I might be too grumpy to see just yet.

I've been running it for about 6 months and I'd say it's nothing to call home about. I've always been the early adopter type, trying to stay ahead of the curve.
My Dell Latitude 7480 is technically not supported, because the i7-7600U CPU is a 7th gen processor, but I was still able to install.
Good news is that Classic Shell still works (I use CTRL+ESC for the old school start menu) and I like the dark theme and that's about it.
Most annoying thing... the right-click actions in Windows Explorer, where the useful stuff is now a layer down under "more properties."

[orion242]

Wife let her tablet upgrade to win11 and would agree its not a welcome change.

After seeing that I ran this on every other machine I could.

https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm

[numbawunfela]

I like that inControl thingie.

I used classic shell, until it bricked my laptop. It was running fine, then windows updated. After the update I had exactly 1 reboot and it was BSOD. I got another laptop and installed classic shell... I was suspicious and took a VM of the host. That VM would not boot. Went to BSOD. I told IT the laptop was gonna die on the next reboot. They was understandably grumpy.
IT folks chastised me for using 'open source software', it turns out classic shell had gone open source the week before it killed my laptop twice. 'It was not open source when I installed it' I said. And sent screenshots. To be fair, it was not classic shell alone - it still clearly works for most. It was classic shell and whatever the IT lackeys put on the laptops... but it still scared me a little.
So I tend to leave the host alone and muck up the VM as much as I want. Everyone is happy that way.
Everything I seen so far is manageable. Right click is annoying, but windows has been hiding the network sharing center deeper and deeper for a while now. Just wondering if there was anything deeper in Win11 that was less manageable.
I appreciate the responses.

[Right Control]

Everything you stated can easily be fixed. What drives me nuts with Windows 11 is the right click on a file. All the good stuff is hidden and you have to go to "Show more options". You have no control over it, other than messing with the registry.
Been running Windows 11 on home PC for 7 months. I rather get use to a new OS drinking a beer, then under pressure at a customers site. Work PC is Window 10. It is 5 days old and came with Windows 11.

Yeah usually do the same thing. Upgrade the home PC, and play around with it prior to sitting in front of the customer. My work PC will stay Win 10 as long as I can make it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MaxBurn]

With all the crap msft pulls on UI changes I've gotten pretty used to hitting the windows key and typing a key word for the thing I need. I deal with way too many machines to go in and customize the UI on them all.

For example "ncpa.cpl" legacy network settings page. They've built like four over this over the years but this is the one that actually works.

At the moment our guidance is do not install win 11, it is not on any of the compatibility lists for the things we work with.

[Frosty72]

I've got it running on my desktop at home and my new Niagara supervisor. I don't see it as an improvement but it seems to work fine. I had a lot of issues with my new Dell XPS 8940 supervisor crashing 3-4 times a week on 11. It took me a while to figure out what was causing it. It turned out to be the GPU. I don't like the new right click copy paste menu so I stick with control c & v. I haven't had any software issues yet and no errors on my home PC. My new Dell supervisor seems to be having more errors but it's not crashing since I removed the GPU. It's an RTX 3060. I'm going to try testing it in another PC to see if it causes crashes before I return it to Dell or EVGA whom made the GPU. I'm not sure how the warranty will work out, yet to be determined. I didn't need a GPU for my supervisor anyways but it was the only SKU available at the time due to the chip shortages.

[numbawunfela]

I changed Laptops and the new one had Win 11 on it. So I had Win11 for about 3 weeks and did a destructive install of Win10. Done. My official take is that it needs to bake another year or more. Among the issues I had were:

Spotty USB device detection. I would have it recognize NO new USB items plugged in at all - while ones already plugged in continued to work - until a reboot.

Slow performance - The old laptop was an Intel i5 with 64GB of RAM. The new one is an i9 with the same amount of RAM and a faster clock speed. The W11 performance was roughly the same or a little worse AT BEST than the older i5. When I blew W10 away, it jumped dramatically - faster boot times, faster HDD indexing (W11 took 3 days, W10 took a single evening), faster app loading and starting, faster in every way.

Memory Leaks - I would see my VMs get laggy at an allotted 8GB RAM - which was the same as under my older laptop. I increase the ram allotment and I would get better performance - for a while. Increasing the RAM allotment to 8GB, 12GB, 20GB, 32GB, up to the max I could of around 58GB - It would buy me a few VM boots until it was laggy and SUPER slow again. Reset the VM allotment back to 2GB.... starts up with performance that is better than at 50GB+... but not great. Then back to 8GB and every one is happy. For a while. Then repeat the cycle. Infuriating - since I live in VMs. Downgrade to Win10 - no issues.

Poor support - I have the fancy Dell 3 year tech support warranty. So after failing to get several programs to install on Win11 - and then trying an overlay install on Win11 and having that fail... I called tech support. I gave them the error code that Windows crapped out with and they had no idea at all. A Google search turned up literally no results. The idea here is - there are not enough early adopters out there getting slapped around to have developed a deep support database of their misery to then save me time as I follow in their footsteps. Instead I AM a beta tester - ain't nobody got time for that.

Just an update. Also the start button in the middle is beyond silly. But easy enough to remedy with a little aftermarket software. Not a huge deal - just silly.

[Right Control]

I changed Laptops and the new one had Win 11 on it. So I had Win11 for about 3 weeks and did a destructive install of Win10. Done. My official take is that it needs to bake another year or more. Among the issues I had were:

Spotty USB device detection. I would have it recognize NO new USB items plugged in at all - while ones already plugged in continued to work - until a reboot.

Slow performance - The old laptop was an Intel i5 with 64GB of RAM. The new one is an i9 with the same amount of RAM and a faster clock speed. The W11 performance was roughly the same or a little worse AT BEST than the older i5. When I blew W10 away, it jumped dramatically - faster boot times, faster HDD indexing (W11 took 3 days, W10 took a single evening), faster app loading and starting, faster in every way.

Memory Leaks - I would see my VMs get laggy at an allotted 8GB RAM - which was the same as under my older laptop. I increase the ram allotment and I would get better performance - for a while. Increasing the RAM allotment to 8GB, 12GB, 20GB, 32GB, up to the max I could of around 58GB - It would buy me a few VM boots until it was laggy and SUPER slow again. Reset the VM allotment back to 2GB.... starts up with performance that is better than at 50GB+... but not great. Then back to 8GB and every one is happy. For a while. Then repeat the cycle. Infuriating - since I live in VMs. Downgrade to Win10 - no issues.

Poor support - I have the fancy Dell 3 year tech support warranty. So after failing to get several programs to install on Win11 - and then trying an overlay install on Win11 and having that fail... I called tech support. I gave them the error code that Windows crapped out with and they had no idea at all. A Google search turned up literally no results. The idea here is - there are not enough early adopters out there getting slapped around to have developed a deep support database of their misery to then save me time as I follow in their footsteps. Instead I AM a beta tester - ain't nobody got time for that.

Just an update. Also the start button in the middle is beyond silly. But easy enough to remedy with a little aftermarket software. Not a huge deal - just silly.

This is good feedback. I was about ready to build a Win11 VM for all my niagara stuff, and start testing. Maybe I will hold off for a bit.

[MaxBurn]

Upgraded my personal X1 and it's all regret. Just a big suck show, I don't know what windows is doing anymore but it isn't working for me. Same machine dual boot into mint and suddenly it's a power house, fan never comes on and it never heats up. Windows has so much going on in the background it's hot and screaming just running windows update. That machine is going away for me though, just got a used mac and while the UI has some equally silly things going on it feels light weight and does what I want with ease. Stuck win 11 in fusion in it just so I can have access to the couple tools I need and it isn't terrible but it isn't fun.

IMO Stick with win 10 as long as you can.

[Right Control]

We have newer control tech who is a computer guy! Loves everything about the dumb things. Well he talked the boss into a Macbook pro, and is running Win11 on a parallels VM. Has nothing but good things to say about that setup. Thinks Win11 is great. I'm like no way do I want to early adopt with an operating system. Been thinking about moving my core niagara usage to a VM for many reasons. And was thinking about Win11 as the operating system after the co-workers comments. With this feedback thinking it will be Win10.

[numbawunfela]

Been thinking about moving my core niagara usage to a VM for many reasons.

I dun did this 4 or 5 years ago. Do this. Yesterday. Everyone.
The 'should I downgrade to Win10' conversation DIDN'T include any consideration for the 2+ days needed to get my MANY versions of Workbench set back up again, backups, gimp image editor, and many other pieces. It is safe in a VM, and just boots right up in VMWare.
So the downgrade conversation means I gotta set up my email again... a couple of other things. Simple.
It is so helpful to have that flexibility.

[Right Control]

I dun did this 4 or 5 years ago. Do this. Yesterday. Everyone.
The 'should I downgrade to Win10' conversation DIDN'T include any consideration for the 2+ days needed to get my MANY versions of Workbench set back up again, backups, gimp image editor, and many other pieces. It is safe in a VM, and just boots right up in VMWare.
So the downgrade conversation means I gotta set up my email again... a couple of other things. Simple.
It is so helpful to have that flexibility.

Me and the co-worker I'm speaking of are the only two at our company that use VM's. I use them for old JCI N2, Barber coleman, and tools that I need in the 32bit environment. Niagara on my host is always been the approach, but given the recent laptop issues I'm having. And the thought of having to reload windows, and the host id debacle I'm facing. If I have to go that road it will be all on a VM for the reasons you list.

[MaxBurn]

We have newer control tech who is a computer guy! Loves everything about the dumb things. Well he talked the boss into a Macbook pro, and is running Win11 on a parallels VM. Has nothing but good things to say about that setup. Thinks Win11 is great.

Key question for that is it intel or apple silicon? I would expect a disaster if apple silicon, as I understand it the ARM version of windows doesn't have as good emulation as rosetta so all the old software we all need to use seems to be trouble brewing for such a setup. Mine is intel so in theory should be a non issue, I've already passed through USB sitcks to burn bootable USB via rufus which worked flawless. I'm expecting that if I wanted work tools and things like the CCN dongle and NSTv5 should not be a problem.

I'm like no way do I want to early adopt with an operating system. Been thinking about moving my core niagara usage to a VM for many reasons. And was thinking about Win11 as the operating system after the co-workers comments. With this feedback thinking it will be Win10.

The fact of the matter is we have to work with OLD software, and even if it's current it's old ways of doing things. For the boss that needs office type things I'm sure he'd be fine. Meanwhile we are maintaining XP VM's for things we can't bring up to win 10.

Edit; apple fanboys have drunk the coolaid on apple silicon and the last gen intel mac laptops are getting dumped cheap now. They will support current OS for quite a few years too. If you are Bi curious it's a good time to pick one up.

[Right Control]

Key question for that is it intel or apple silicon? I would expect a disaster if apple silicon, as I understand it the ARM version of windows doesn't have as good emulation as rosetta so all the old software we all need to use seems to be trouble brewing for such a setup. Mine is intel so in theory should be a non issue, I've already passed through USB sitcks to burn bootable USB via rufus which worked flawless. I'm expecting that if I wanted work tools and things like the CCN dongle and NSTv5 should not be a problem.



The fact of the matter is we have to work with OLD software, and even if it's current it's old ways of doing things. For the boss that needs office type things I'm sure he'd be fine. Meanwhile we are maintaining XP VM's for things we can't bring up to win 10.

Edit; apple fanboys have drunk the coolaid on apple silicon and the last gen intel mac laptops are getting dumped cheap now. They will support current OS for quite a few years too. If you are Bi curious it's a good time to pick one up.

Pretty sure its the ARM version. He was complaining about having issues with his JCI CCT software load, and SQL. Think he was talking about the ARM as his suspected issue. I kind of tuned it out to be honest. Not a Mac guy and probably never will be. Hell I'm not a windows guy! This guy is an Apple fanboy times 10! Bought both my daughters macbook pros for college, and said don't ask Dad if you've got issues. That's what they wanted and seem to work well for their needs. I was actually considering one to be honest just to play around personally. Then thought I have so many other things that piss me off why add another.

[MaxBurn]

I've jumped around a lot and back in 2011 ish I had a mac and didn't like it at all. Now that I have more linux experience things make a LOT more sense. Pretty sure that's why the tech sector developers like them, that industry is all linux/unix. Heck heard Dave on the Podcast Index podcast say he had to ditch the apple silicon mac and go to a real computer to get some app built as he was fighting the apple silicon. There's a decent amount of talk about arm in the data center too but my gut feeling is ARM on desktop/laptop is a couple more years off minimum.

[numbawunfela]

Then thought I have so many other things that piss me off why add another.

Bahahaha! That is me EXACTLY. I gotta wrastle with 90s technology daily... involuntarily for work. Why would I choose to wrastle with something else voluntarily...

[numbawunfela]

Now that I have more linux experience.....

Got an easy (easier) way to get into Linux? I don't mind command lines, but any time I try to learn some Linux commands that is all 11k variations and options included.... I just wanna know the 20% of Linux necessary to get the 80% of my day done. Call up the NIC card and change the IP. Find your installed programs and start one.
I want to doggy paddle a little. Then learn to swim.