c’t 3003: Five Really Stupid Things in Windows 11

What’s so annoying about Windows 11 with everyday use? We present to you the five biggest annoyances.

Video text:

In this video I show you what really annoys me about Windows 11. And how to fix at least two problems. Get warm, Microsoft, it’s now here on the taskbar.

Dear hackers, dear surfers, welcome here to c’t 3003.

Yes I know. We’ve already made quite a few videos about Windows 11 and some of them have been mainly positive. I am also in favor of this because Windows 11 does some things well, for example Android emulation and many well-thought-out small improvements in quality of life and above all because, in my opinion, it looks more modern than Windows 10. But of course that does not mean that by Long shot, we’re kind of a die-hard Microsoft fan here. Impossible, that’s why: Five really trivial things about Windows 11. By the way, the criticism points are not mine alone, but they come from the entire editorial team.

Bad things 1: The new right-click menu

Because I’m making the video here, I’m going to start with my very personal nerves feature that makes me head over heels every day. Modified context menu, i.e. what comes up when you right-click on something. First of all, the thing is slow. Look here, this is my office. Now I right click on this file. This is the time it takes for the stupid menu to finally display. Well this only happens the first time right-click is used, once the pane is loaded once it gets a little faster, but still: it’s still not fast.

But what I find equally annoying: Microsoft has rearranged and scaled down the context menu, which means that not every piece of software can add any entries and the thing will be forever. Well, I understand that everyone with an old installation of Windows with a lot of software is probably familiar with this. Here, this is the old context menu in my system, it’s actually a bit crowded. You can get this by “Show more options” in the new context menu.

But: why can’t I decide what to display in the first list? It doesn’t make any sense at all, why aren’t there more regular “copies” here? Why is that in this super difficult mini-icon now? Does Microsoft think everyone does it all with Control-C and Control-V? Another function that I use a lot is also buried in the second menu, which is the quick sharing of a file with Dropbox. Grrrmbl. The Dropbox features are on the first list, but not the ones I want.

W: Why do the exact same things appear in the second list that were in the first? No one – really no one – will click on Other Options if you want to add something already available in the first list! This does not make sense! Technically, all this is already clear to me, one is the new menu and the other is simply the old Windows 10, which is called there – but elegantly there is another way.

The workaround is to just activate the old list by changing the registry, and it loads faster. If you delete the registry key, everything will be back to normal. I have put the command line commands in the description below. Still: the style is different, I don’t want to work with it, especially since the old list looks uglier than the new one.

Deactivate the new context menu:

reg.exe adds “HKCUSoftwareClassesCLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}InprocServer32″/f/ve

Activate the new context menu again:

Delete reg.exe “HKCUSoftwareClassesCLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}”/f

Important thing 2: Pre-installed teams are completely broken

Well, it got really weird: Windows 11 has placed this icon here very prominently on the taskbar. Chat, written on it. If you click on it, there is something with friends, family and loved ones; Then it says: First steps. Well, I will continue with that. Then the difference registration window appears. Registration does not work at all. Then it comes: You cannot register here with a business account, school or university. Use your personal account instead. First of all: the university was capitalized by Microsoft. But above all: I, probably like a billion other people, don’t use Teams for fun, because it’s a great program. But because the employer wants it. Are there people who really think: Yes, I’ve been in teams all my working days, and now I really want to use them after work to chat with Grandma? No, Microsoft does not exist. And when there are very few. We’ve already made a video about the difference.

But above all, why? Why are there two versions of Teams, one for business accounts and one for private accounts? Why doesn’t Microsoft call the Special Edition differently? Like in the system tray it just says “chat”? Because seriously, nobody checks this: “Welcome to Teams” – and at the bottom it says “Call Microsoft Teams (work or school”)? Oh yeah: if you install the “normal” Teams version and then enter Teams into the start menu, this will come here. Would you like to guess which one? Exactly, the white light-framed version is the broken version, and the other one is the regular version.

Mist Dings 3: Kontozwang im . Store

When installing the main version of Windows 11, a Microsoft online account is first required. You can delete that afterwards and replace it with an offline account. But you need it to install. In fact. Unless you use a forbidden word as your username, for example “Microsoft” or “elonmusk”. Huh, it’s supposed to be. I could not hear. In any case, you can then enter any snippet in the password and after that you can create an offline account.

With more expensive versions of Windows, the so-called “offline account” is officially introduced; What is meant by this is simply a user account that is set only on the system in question – as it should be.

The question is: Why does Microsoft really want to create an account online? And why is this only the case with the Home Edition? Sure: If Microsoft were to bring in the online account requirements for corporate licenses, the companies would come up and say: Are you stupid, we already pay enough for your products, and you don’t have to collect our data either. But you can do it with individuals: they have to create an account – and once there is that, of course you can easily sell them any Office subscriptions or stuff in the App Store – which, by the way, can only be done with Microsoft – use your account, even with free apps . By the way, this is already the case with the new Microsoft Store for Windows 10, so there is nothing specific for Windows 11.

Crap thing 4: The taskbar can no longer be pasted at will

I think the new taskbar is great, but a lot of people on the editing team don’t: they want the top instead of the bottom or even the side. However, with the tools on the board, you can only set whether the thing is stuck in the middle or aligned to the left. By default the icons are in the middle – and even if that drove me completely crazy at first, I think it’s only now. But I’m not all. So I can understand when people get upset.

With Windows 10, you can stick things in all directions. With a little registry tweaking, you can raise the bar relatively easily in Windows 11, and there are tools that do this with a single mouse click; For example Start11 or StartAllBack. The latter can be installed simply via a script shell – in Windows this command prompt is called: winget install startallback.

The tool can also paste the old tiles back into the start menu, as it was in the past; If anyone really wants that.

But: with such modifications, there is of course always the risk of something going wrong during Windows updates; Which is why I only install something like this in an emergency. It would be better if Microsoft simply changed the taskbar alignment again on its own.

Petty Thing 5: The News Gadget That Can’t Be Hide

I was actually upset with this in my initial Windows 11 test: the so-called widget window doesn’t show many clickbait elements by default, but hiding sources doesn’t work reliably. Here, for example: I’m not interested in any sports news, so I hid Spox – also written here in black and white in Manage Topic. However, there are some soccer elements from Spox here. Manu, Microsoft!

So, those were my five biggest criticisms. do you have more? Comments are welcome – and of course click “Subscribe”. thanks, good bye!

Moon 3003 It is c’t youtube channel. The videos in c’t 3003 are independent content and are independent of the articles in c’t magazin. Editor Jan Kino Janssen and video producers Johannes Bornsen and Şahin Erangel post a video each week.

(jkj)