8 ms·
Why doesn't Windows have an "expert mode"? (2003)
- firexcy 3y agoIf Windows could’ve been dialed back to be as not manipulative as it was at the time of the post’s writing (ie 2k & XP), I would be glad to hold the temptation to self-claim as an expert.
- meatjuice 3y agoA batch file that turns on all the "geeky features" will do
- alexeiz 3y agoThis is what I find the most annoying thing about Windows. Without the expert mode when you have a problem there is no easy way to figure out what is wrong. You google for the symptoms of the problem and all kinds of suggestions and "recipes" turn up. You quickly realize that nobody known anything either. Instead of getting to the root of the problem and applying a precise fix, you have to resort to trying all those "recipes" one by one hoping that you stumble across the one that fixes your problem. So, by not having an "expert" mode in Windows, Microsoft made Windows neither newbie-friendly nor expert-friendly.
- eth0up 3y ago[flagged]
- xnzakg 3y agoTechnically "developer mode" in win10 is kind of a similar idea?
- xerox13ster 3y agoThis was DOS back in the day, no? TBH I wouldn't overly mind a version of Windows that really was just a terminal on top of the kernel, with the option to use the Windows shell or whatever other shell I want or build one if that's what I desired. Much like that most proselytized of Linux distros. It would still be Windows, but I would feel in control of it to some degree. But it would have to be something other than PowerShell, and I think that's a nonstarter for Microsoft.
- userbinator 3y agoTBH I wouldn't overly mind a version of Windows that really was just a terminal on top of the kernel, with the option to use the Windows shell or whatever other shell I want or build one if that's what I desired. WinPE is literally that. A highly stripped-down version of Windows that boots to cmd.exe as a shell.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 3y agoWindows Server Core.
- tw04 3y agoThey have that, it’s Windows server core. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/server-core/what-is-server-core https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrat...
- layer8 3y agoYou can configure Windows to boot into a custom shell: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell
- wongarsu 3y agoThe Windows kernel is genuinely great. I wouldn't mind if somebody managed to make a better shell that runs on top the commercial Windows kernel.
- layer8 3y ago> I don’t know squat about Active Directory. Damn, if even Raymond Chen doesn’t understand AD…
- userbinator 3y agoAFAIK he worked mainly on the GUI side in Windows, so that's not really surprising.
- eurekin 3y agoBrings back old memory on a AD lab, where our professor was presented with "contact your local administrator" dialog upon closing some simple configuration dialog. He had set-up the AD himself and had no idea where it came from
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoAh yes, the good old < Contract your system administrator. > I am the system administrator!
- mtVessel 3y agoaka you are the brute squad!
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoYeah, I appreciate it in both ways I've said it: Both "I'm the sysadmin, I'm in charge here, shut up and do what I said", and also "yeah, I'm the sysadmin and I have no idea what you're trying to tell me". In both cases I'm a bit put out with the machine, but somewhat different tones. I guess there's also the "oh, right - sudo make me a sandwich", but that's less notable in my experience.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoHe may have learned a bit in the last 20 years
- actuallyalys 3y agoI completely agree that there are different types of expertise, but I'd expect experts to know their own expertise and not touch parts of a hypothetical "expert mode" outside their particular expertise.
- ninth_ant 3y agoWhat you describe does not match my personal experience providing technical support, both professionally and socially. At all.
- BillyTheMage 3y agoTouching things outside of the arbitrary box others have placed them in is exactly how people become experts in the first place.
- RachelF 3y agoIt's called the registry. A very long linked list data structure designed to scare experts into using another OS. This process takes time as despair finally wins against hope.
- layer8 3y agoThe registry is not that different from a file system, actually. It even allows mounting other “file systems” (registry hives).
- ratsmack 3y agoAnd over time, it becomes a huge garbage dump that slowly degrades the performance of the computer.
- Zuider 3y agoBut the festering garbage is entangled with essential material so that attempting to take out the trash can brick the OS.
- poisonborz 3y agoThis makes little sense without saying what an "expert mode" is. What is "geek settings turned on?". You can already configure ~everything and more via the windows registry or gpedit.msc. There are thousands of "expert settings" apps and special iso-s for anyone wanting more user friendly tweaking. Any OS that is enterprise-ready does not need any "I'm geek" checkbox.
- out_of_protocol 3y ago> You can already configure ~everything E.g you can't remove these annoying "remind later" things (without disabling integrity protection and patching OS files), and they are everywhere. Enshittification of windows is going strong, there are more and more things you can't configure anymore
- RulerOf 3y ago> Enshittification of windows is going strong I remember fondly the days when I thought Windows was getting better all the time. The thing that's funny about that is I suspect it's a different epoch for different people.
- ChainOfFools 3y agoAn optional console view of the kernel boot log and driver configuration stages Etc. all the stuff that you have to find out after the fact by retrieving a log through one of the alternate boot methods like the recovery console. Assuming you can even get to one of those. Why can't this just be something you can tab over to instead of that stupid blank startup screen with occasional disingenuous, ambiguous feel-good messages on it? Why do Windows crash dump and recovery screens have to be still largely stuck in the cryptic and unhelpfully threadbare state they were in 20 years ago when there is so much more memory available to store say, a scrollable stack trace or even a large text table of meaningful errors or exception states so you don't need to go Googling around for these or checking your notes at 4:08 am on a Monday? The bane of anyone who's ever had to get a production system back up and running from a non-bootable state and you're sitting there staring at spinning circles and featureless colorblock screens sometimes for minutes on end, wondering just what the hell is going on.
- meiraleal 3y agoBecause MS makes more money out of users than competitors/power users
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI asked for basically the opposite of this for MS Office products. I use Excel for specific purposes, and it would really make it more usable if I could easily hide a bunch of features (especially alternate click context menus that I accidentally engage during the middle of a huge select or copy-paste sequence, requiring me to start over). While still having those unused features available via some drop-down menu.
- YaBa 3y agoHe's wrong. We do need an expert mode, at least to remove UAC in a simple way and allow us to mess around at will. Let's see, UAC is nice for your grandmother who might click on something that it shouldn't, yet, we, advanced users are constantly annoyed by those cof,cof "security" features who get in the way when doing something. Yet, your grandmother will eventually get ransomware or malware despite the UAC and other features, so, what's the point!??! At the moment I just remember UAC, but there are plenty of features that we want to turn off with a simple button and we can't, unless we play around with the registry or 3rd party apps. And this is why power users love Linux, we can do whatever we want, if we break it, it's fine and we can learn with it. At this rate, your computer will no longer be "your" computer, Microsoft will own it and you will like it.
- dist-epoch 3y agoUAC is the Windows equivalent of sudo. Do you disable sudo on your Linux box or run everything as root?
- Longhanks 3y agoYou can absolutely log in as root and run anything with no questions asked. Where’s that login for windows for those who want that?
- jkrejcha 3y agoYou can login as Administrator if you enable the user account. You can also just turn admin approval mode to "never ask" in the Control Panel. While you can't login as SYSTEM (since it's not really a user account), you can trivially open a shell under it's account (and you can do everything you need as an administrator anyway, so there's really no point).
- RulerOf 3y agoI used to use a PowerShell snippet for adding SeBackupPrivilege and SeRestorePrivilege to an app or explorer window. That will let you read/write anywhere on disk.
- Hydraulix989 3y agoThe expert mode is "Linux"