7 ms·

Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it

by jmkni 9y ago

Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it yourself from scratch, and then spend a little time disabling the ads, bing crap, telemetry, etc. Once you do, it's rock solid, but it should be OOTB and it annoys me that it isn't. It leaves those not familiar with Windows with a bad first impression, and those tech savvy enough to install Linux just don't come back.

Kipters 9y ago
There's an option in Windows Defender settings that automatically wipes the hard drive and reinstalls from scratch, without the manufacturer's bloatware
- vini 9y ago
  Tried this on a Lenovo notebook and it will reinstall the Lenovo bloatware anyways. I think this restore the initial windows image state, but the image that came in the notebook is customized by Lenovo.
  - ClassyJacket 9y ago
    I believe it's even more sinister than that. I recall reading about a feature of Windows 10 where it will automatically install OEM bloatware from separate storage on the board, even if you install from a generic Window disk/USB. I'm trying to find a source. Edit: I cannot find a source, so take this with a grain of salt, however I do clearly remember reading it.
    - g_p 9y ago
      I believe the one you're referring to is the "Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT)" feature, which has a slot in UEFI where an exe can be put, which is run by Windows during an install. Couple of refs for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29544745#p29544745 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29544745#p2954...
      - tinus_hn 9y ago
        It actually runs on every boot, even worse. This is how overbroad nanny software like Computrace works, you can remove it but Windows will just reinstall it at boot. Kind of a glaring security issue.
  - Santosh83 9y ago
    Yes, the 'refresh Windows' feature actually reinstalls from the image OEM provided, which contains all the bloatware. You need to create a fresh install media from Microsoft (their media creation tool) and reinstall from DVD and delete the OEM recovery partitions to finally be rid of them.
- tinus_hn 9y ago
  So only Microsoft’s bloatware is left. With the ads and ‘telemetry’ spyware.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  This is actually useful. Does it preserve user data?
  - discreditable 9y ago
    IIRC you have three options: (1) wipe OS/programs, preserve user data, (2) wipe OS and data, and (3) securely wipe OS and data (for if you're selling the PC).
croon 9y ago
> Once you do, it's rock solid, but it should be OOTB and it annoys me that it isn't. I was very happy with an Asus Zenbook I bought that had the PURE (+ sometimes a number) suffix on the model name. Those laptops come with a clean windows install + any needed drivers. It only saves an hour or two for yourself, but I wish more (or really all) manufacturers supplied these models.
- jmkni 9y ago
  A co-worker of mine recently got a Surface Laptop. Very nice piece of kit, but even that came loaded with ads, and would search Bing and the app store every time you searched the start menu. It's little things like this that make Windows so much worse. It takes ten minutes in Group Policy to turn it off, but the majority of users will never go near group policy, and will just assume that is just the way Windows works.
Crontab 9y ago
I liked version 7 but I believe Windows has taken a downturn since then.
- Already__Taken 9y ago
  The UX improvements to window management, multiple monitors and virtual desktops since 7 is immense though.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  I was about to defend it, but on reflection, windows 10 is a real mixed bag. Pros: - It's fantastically fast, I dislike going back to win 7 - Some of the utilities are nicer Cons: - Random scheduled tasks fire in the background at really annoying times. I installed a completely clean install of win 10 and some fail and then constantly re-run as they've not been marked as completed (e.g. .net 32-bit optimization service, some sort of memory optimization service). On my desktop I don't notice, but on my laptop if I leave it unattended the fan often starts going crazy. I've tried fixing the broken services but never really got to the bottom why. What's most annoying is the when you then try and disable or replace these services with dummy exes, windows update will "helpfully" "fix" them and re-enable them. There are also various scheduled tasks that automatically re-enable themselves on restart. It was also constantly trying to run one windows update that kept failing and it never told me, but would go through the whole rigmarole of doing incredibly expensive windows update trying to install this one driver. - New start menu is bad, it's simply just not as usable as win 7, you end up always searching where win 7 seem to just be easier to quickly find things without typing anything - Tiles are generally annoying - New windows apps are annoyingly fancy and touch screen centric, for example there's no reason a calculator should be semi-transparent, it's actually really visually distracting - Telem crap is incredibly user-hostile, invasive and almost impossible to get rid of - Ctrl-alt-delete is partially broken and no longer works seamlessly. You have to do some crazy stuff like create a new desktop to get off a crashed program - Explorer (file explorer) just seems to have become a real mess since XP and searching is agonisingly slow. Especially if you're doing it on a folder that contains bower or npm folders, in 2017 windows still struggles with long file paths
  - 9y ago
tinus_hn 9y ago
Well, I remember 30 years ago you didn’t have to disable ads, Bing crap and telemetry. In fact 5 years ago all you needed to disable was shitty drivers and some trial software.
- baldfat 9y ago
  5 years ago it was horrible we all just forget the bad things and mostly remember good. From 2012: https://www.itworld.com/article/2718342/consumerization/here-s-all-the-crapware-that-comes-with-new-windows-8-pcs.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2718342/consumerization/here...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    That's all OEM junk though. If you installed from official media on a PC you built yourself (or at least a wiped disk), you didn't deal with that stuff. With Windows 10, that is unfortunately not true anymore because MS is the provider of a lot of the crapware.
    - baldfat 9y ago
      That was what I was responding to. A person recommend that the proper way to install Windows on a new Laptop was to wipe the drive and install a fresh Windows. One person said it wasn't needed 5 years ago :)
  - yndoendo 9y ago
    May be 5 years ago for PCs but still year 0 for Smartphone crap-ware bundling. At least PCs have the ability to remove it with keeping the hardware warranty intact.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
"It leaves those not familiar with Windows with a bad first impression" But an accurate impression. Windows main focus is Microsoft and partners product sales and ad delivery. No matter how much you remove after install, they're likely to override your very obvious wishes not to be bothered in a forced update.
- gargravarr 9y ago
  It's for this reason that I have sworn off never, ever managing Windows again. The fact that they have turned many Win10 machines into billboards - and this is an OS you have to pay for! - really makes me sick. You cannot get away from advertising built deep into the core of the OS. And MS have deliberately taken away a lot of the control admins have over their own LAN. Even Enterprise editions of Win10 don't have control of the telemetry. And yes, I've seen first-hand the updates steamrollering your preferences and setting them to nice, MS-friendly 'please target me with marketing' options. I gave up Windows in 2008, was Mac full-time until 2015 and now I run Ubuntu exclusively, at home and work. Canonical aren't perfect, but they're a bit more open about their commercial expectations than MS will ever be.
- banderman 9y ago
  On multiple occasions I have seen Windows 10 revert the default browser preference to Edge because "an error was detected" with no explanation of the error, and Chrome still functioning normally. I have also seen IE on Windows 10 revert the default search engine to Bing. I'm sure it's all just in the best interest of the end user...
gegenschall 9y ago
> Windows has gotten a lot better [...] Remember when we used to say the same thing about Linux? Funny how times change.
- pwdisswordfish 9y ago
  Regarding gaming - Linux went backwards now that new gadgets like VR headsets and high refresh synced monitors are required for serious gaming. Feels like 2002 all over again without any games.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    TBH, the hardware manufacturers could write drivers for their stuff.
    - rocky1138 9y ago
      Or at least write open documentation so free software can do the work.
      - rbanffy 9y ago
        So that people can do their work for free. Is writing proper docs so bad not even getting these fine people working for you for free makes it worth the effort?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      They might do, if Linux wasn't so hostile to the concept of proprietary drivers and had a stable driver ABI. Not that I necessarily disagree with their position on the matter, but you can't escape the consequences.
      - vetinari 9y ago
        Well, there would be another kind of consequences. See Android, where there are proprietary drivers and most of them are buggy crap thrown over the wall. There is also a reason, why Apple won't ship hardware or drivers, that they don't have source for.
dm319 9y ago
> Once you do, it's rock solid, but it should be OOTB and it annoys me that it isn't. Really? Which version are you using? On a clean install of Win 10 Pro, I fell foul of several known issues. A failing update to Anniversary edition required reinstallation, and the Creator's update only made it through after initially crashing mid-update. The fast shutdown (which I wasn't aware of) caused me a problem with network connectivity on moving the machine which was hard to troubleshoot because it was unexpected. Then to top it all off once I got it running properly, the start-menu was still full of ads. Maybe if I could get hold of the enterprise edition, with all the ads/telemetry disabled by default, it'd be a better experience, but my faith in the updates has truly gone and as a result we now just leave the Win10 install of the dual-boot alone.
- jmkni 9y ago
  I’m using Enterprise on an XPS 15, and I’ve turned the advertising/crapware etc with group policy and it is solid. I wouldn’t use any other version of Windows, Enterprise is the only usable version. You shouldn’t have to do that, though, especially on Enterprise!
sjellis 9y ago
"Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it yourself from scratch, and then spend a little time disabling the ads, bing crap, telemetry, etc." The funny thing is that Microsoft know that the normal OOTB experience is bad, and created the "Signature" effort to offer people PCs with clean Windows installations. Then they seem to have forgotten that, and started putting their own passive-aggressive "value-adds" into Windows 10.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
> and those tech savvy enough to install Linux just don't come back. It isn't a matter of tech savvy, and pretending that it is is part of the problem with the Linux Desktop community, which is the worst part about using a Linux Desktop if you ask me. The system has a whole lot of issues, many of them somehow even worse that dealing with Windows 10's bullshit, or else I'd have switched myself by now. Even Linus calls out the Linux Desktop for being pretty crap. Developing for it is a nightmare too, especially in regards to distribution. I'm trying not to go on a rant here. Point is, there are plenty of reasons to not want to use a Linux Desktop aside from not being "tech savvy" enough.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  I feel like you are arguing the same side. The reason you have to be tech savvy is that the Linux Desktop isn't great (note: I currently operate only on linux at home and work). You have to know some tech just to get a decent amount of things working. This is getting better every year, but we are still dealing with issues that the average user has no idea how to diagnose or fix.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    "Average User" is a strawman. We really need to stop using that term in software development, but Linux Desktop people especially need to stop using it because to them "Average User" is some drooling moron who uses the CD tray as a cup holder. To the extent that "Average User" ever existed, he has largely moved on to using a phone or tablet anyway. Also, I disagree that it is getting better every year. Individual pieces may work better once they're properly configured, but on the whole the system is becoming more and more of a complicated kludge of intertwined, abstracted, obfuscated, and otherwise non-transparent mechanisms. I personally don't see much hope for it as long as that trend continues.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
chmln 9y ago
> Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it yourself from scratch, and then spend a little time disabling the ads, bing crap, telemetry, etc. You're just scratching the surface on how user-hostile Windows can be. The ads, bing crap, and telemetry are simply horrific considering it's a paid product. Windows Update is still a mess. It takes me less than a couple of minutes to pacman -Syu, while windows updates can take HOURS. Some random windows service can still suddenly ramp up disk usage or cpu to 100%. There are two control panels. File Explorer is still terrible. The list goes on.

by jmkni 9y ago

Kipters 9y ago

There's an option in Windows Defender settings that automatically wipes the hard drive and reinstalls from scratch, without the manufacturer's bloatware

vini 9y ago
Tried this on a Lenovo notebook and it will reinstall the Lenovo bloatware anyways. I think this restore the initial windows image state, but the image that came in the notebook is customized by Lenovo.
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  I believe it's even more sinister than that. I recall reading about a feature of Windows 10 where it will automatically install OEM bloatware from separate storage on the board, even if you install from a generic Window disk/USB. I'm trying to find a source. Edit: I cannot find a source, so take this with a grain of salt, however I do clearly remember reading it.
  - g_p 9y ago
    I believe the one you're referring to is the "Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT)" feature, which has a slot in UEFI where an exe can be put, which is run by Windows during an install. Couple of refs for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29544745#p29544745 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29544745#p2954...
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      It actually runs on every boot, even worse. This is how overbroad nanny software like Computrace works, you can remove it but Windows will just reinstall it at boot. Kind of a glaring security issue.
- Santosh83 9y ago
  Yes, the 'refresh Windows' feature actually reinstalls from the image OEM provided, which contains all the bloatware. You need to create a fresh install media from Microsoft (their media creation tool) and reinstall from DVD and delete the OEM recovery partitions to finally be rid of them.
tinus_hn 9y ago
So only Microsoft’s bloatware is left. With the ads and ‘telemetry’ spyware.
rbanffy 9y ago
This is actually useful. Does it preserve user data?
- discreditable 9y ago
  IIRC you have three options: (1) wipe OS/programs, preserve user data, (2) wipe OS and data, and (3) securely wipe OS and data (for if you're selling the PC).

croon 9y ago

> Once you do, it's rock solid, but it should be OOTB and it annoys me that it isn't. I was very happy with an Asus Zenbook I bought that had the PURE (+ sometimes a number) suffix on the model name. Those laptops come with a clean windows install + any needed drivers. It only saves an hour or two for yourself, but I wish more (or really all) manufacturers supplied these models.

jmkni 9y ago
A co-worker of mine recently got a Surface Laptop. Very nice piece of kit, but even that came loaded with ads, and would search Bing and the app store every time you searched the start menu. It's little things like this that make Windows so much worse. It takes ten minutes in Group Policy to turn it off, but the majority of users will never go near group policy, and will just assume that is just the way Windows works.

Crontab 9y ago

I liked version 7 but I believe Windows has taken a downturn since then.

Already__Taken 9y ago
The UX improvements to window management, multiple monitors and virtual desktops since 7 is immense though.
mattmanser 9y ago
I was about to defend it, but on reflection, windows 10 is a real mixed bag. Pros: - It's fantastically fast, I dislike going back to win 7 - Some of the utilities are nicer Cons: - Random scheduled tasks fire in the background at really annoying times. I installed a completely clean install of win 10 and some fail and then constantly re-run as they've not been marked as completed (e.g. .net 32-bit optimization service, some sort of memory optimization service). On my desktop I don't notice, but on my laptop if I leave it unattended the fan often starts going crazy. I've tried fixing the broken services but never really got to the bottom why. What's most annoying is the when you then try and disable or replace these services with dummy exes, windows update will "helpfully" "fix" them and re-enable them. There are also various scheduled tasks that automatically re-enable themselves on restart. It was also constantly trying to run one windows update that kept failing and it never told me, but would go through the whole rigmarole of doing incredibly expensive windows update trying to install this one driver. - New start menu is bad, it's simply just not as usable as win 7, you end up always searching where win 7 seem to just be easier to quickly find things without typing anything - Tiles are generally annoying - New windows apps are annoyingly fancy and touch screen centric, for example there's no reason a calculator should be semi-transparent, it's actually really visually distracting - Telem crap is incredibly user-hostile, invasive and almost impossible to get rid of - Ctrl-alt-delete is partially broken and no longer works seamlessly. You have to do some crazy stuff like create a new desktop to get off a crashed program - Explorer (file explorer) just seems to have become a real mess since XP and searching is agonisingly slow. Especially if you're doing it on a folder that contains bower or npm folders, in 2017 windows still struggles with long file paths
- 9y ago

tinus_hn 9y ago

Well, I remember 30 years ago you didn’t have to disable ads, Bing crap and telemetry. In fact 5 years ago all you needed to disable was shitty drivers and some trial software.

baldfat 9y ago
5 years ago it was horrible we all just forget the bad things and mostly remember good. From 2012: https://www.itworld.com/article/2718342/consumerization/here-s-all-the-crapware-that-comes-with-new-windows-8-pcs.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2718342/consumerization/here...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  That's all OEM junk though. If you installed from official media on a PC you built yourself (or at least a wiped disk), you didn't deal with that stuff. With Windows 10, that is unfortunately not true anymore because MS is the provider of a lot of the crapware.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    That was what I was responding to. A person recommend that the proper way to install Windows on a new Laptop was to wipe the drive and install a fresh Windows. One person said it wasn't needed 5 years ago :)
- yndoendo 9y ago
  May be 5 years ago for PCs but still year 0 for Smartphone crap-ware bundling. At least PCs have the ability to remove it with keeping the hardware warranty intact.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

"It leaves those not familiar with Windows with a bad first impression" But an accurate impression. Windows main focus is Microsoft and partners product sales and ad delivery. No matter how much you remove after install, they're likely to override your very obvious wishes not to be bothered in a forced update.

gargravarr 9y ago
It's for this reason that I have sworn off never, ever managing Windows again. The fact that they have turned many Win10 machines into billboards - and this is an OS you have to pay for! - really makes me sick. You cannot get away from advertising built deep into the core of the OS. And MS have deliberately taken away a lot of the control admins have over their own LAN. Even Enterprise editions of Win10 don't have control of the telemetry. And yes, I've seen first-hand the updates steamrollering your preferences and setting them to nice, MS-friendly 'please target me with marketing' options. I gave up Windows in 2008, was Mac full-time until 2015 and now I run Ubuntu exclusively, at home and work. Canonical aren't perfect, but they're a bit more open about their commercial expectations than MS will ever be.
banderman 9y ago
On multiple occasions I have seen Windows 10 revert the default browser preference to Edge because "an error was detected" with no explanation of the error, and Chrome still functioning normally. I have also seen IE on Windows 10 revert the default search engine to Bing. I'm sure it's all just in the best interest of the end user...

gegenschall 9y ago

> Windows has gotten a lot better [...] Remember when we used to say the same thing about Linux? Funny how times change.

pwdisswordfish 9y ago
Regarding gaming - Linux went backwards now that new gadgets like VR headsets and high refresh synced monitors are required for serious gaming. Feels like 2002 all over again without any games.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  TBH, the hardware manufacturers could write drivers for their stuff.
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    Or at least write open documentation so free software can do the work.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      So that people can do their work for free. Is writing proper docs so bad not even getting these fine people working for you for free makes it worth the effort?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    They might do, if Linux wasn't so hostile to the concept of proprietary drivers and had a stable driver ABI. Not that I necessarily disagree with their position on the matter, but you can't escape the consequences.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      Well, there would be another kind of consequences. See Android, where there are proprietary drivers and most of them are buggy crap thrown over the wall. There is also a reason, why Apple won't ship hardware or drivers, that they don't have source for.

dm319 9y ago

> Once you do, it's rock solid, but it should be OOTB and it annoys me that it isn't. Really? Which version are you using? On a clean install of Win 10 Pro, I fell foul of several known issues. A failing update to Anniversary edition required reinstallation, and the Creator's update only made it through after initially crashing mid-update. The fast shutdown (which I wasn't aware of) caused me a problem with network connectivity on moving the machine which was hard to troubleshoot because it was unexpected. Then to top it all off once I got it running properly, the start-menu was still full of ads. Maybe if I could get hold of the enterprise edition, with all the ads/telemetry disabled by default, it'd be a better experience, but my faith in the updates has truly gone and as a result we now just leave the Win10 install of the dual-boot alone.

jmkni 9y ago
I’m using Enterprise on an XPS 15, and I’ve turned the advertising/crapware etc with group policy and it is solid. I wouldn’t use any other version of Windows, Enterprise is the only usable version. You shouldn’t have to do that, though, especially on Enterprise!

sjellis 9y ago

"Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it yourself from scratch, and then spend a little time disabling the ads, bing crap, telemetry, etc." The funny thing is that Microsoft know that the normal OOTB experience is bad, and created the "Signature" effort to offer people PCs with clean Windows installations. Then they seem to have forgotten that, and started putting their own passive-aggressive "value-adds" into Windows 10.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

> and those tech savvy enough to install Linux just don't come back. It isn't a matter of tech savvy, and pretending that it is is part of the problem with the Linux Desktop community, which is the worst part about using a Linux Desktop if you ask me. The system has a whole lot of issues, many of them somehow even worse that dealing with Windows 10's bullshit, or else I'd have switched myself by now. Even Linus calls out the Linux Desktop for being pretty crap. Developing for it is a nightmare too, especially in regards to distribution. I'm trying not to go on a rant here. Point is, there are plenty of reasons to not want to use a Linux Desktop aside from not being "tech savvy" enough.

CaptSpify 9y ago
I feel like you are arguing the same side. The reason you have to be tech savvy is that the Linux Desktop isn't great (note: I currently operate only on linux at home and work). You have to know some tech just to get a decent amount of things working. This is getting better every year, but we are still dealing with issues that the average user has no idea how to diagnose or fix.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  "Average User" is a strawman. We really need to stop using that term in software development, but Linux Desktop people especially need to stop using it because to them "Average User" is some drooling moron who uses the CD tray as a cup holder. To the extent that "Average User" ever existed, he has largely moved on to using a phone or tablet anyway. Also, I disagree that it is getting better every year. Individual pieces may work better once they're properly configured, but on the whole the system is becoming more and more of a complicated kludge of intertwined, abstracted, obfuscated, and otherwise non-transparent mechanisms. I personally don't see much hope for it as long as that trend continues.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

chmln 9y ago

> Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it yourself from scratch, and then spend a little time disabling the ads, bing crap, telemetry, etc. You're just scratching the surface on how user-hostile Windows can be. The ads, bing crap, and telemetry are simply horrific considering it's a paid product. Windows Update is still a mess. It takes me less than a couple of minutes to pacman -Syu, while windows updates can take HOURS. Some random windows service can still suddenly ramp up disk usage or cpu to 100%. There are two control panels. File Explorer is still terrible. The list goes on.