Windows 11 is so bad. It's worse than Vista. Microsoft took everything decent about Windows after the Windows 8 debacle and decided if it works it needs to break.
It's unfortunate. Microsoft had the talent to have premier products but is stuck in second or third on everything.
Microsoft could easily make one of the best general purpose OSes. They have a lot of cool stuff in Windows, especially for devs. There's native git integration in file explorer coming, PowerToys has great utilities (peek, fancy zones, command palette), WSL & WSL w/ graphics, terminal, native SSH now, sudo, winget & automation with it using DSC from a simple yaml file, and some of the best backwards compatibility in the industry.
Yet they squander it all by violating their users trust and consent, and consistently ignoring their users feedback.
That's what makes Windows 11 so frustrating for me, even though I've already switched to macOS ever since the M1 air. I would go back to Windows in a heart beat if they got their act together. I always liked Windows. It's been my main OS for a long time, even though I've always kept a Linux machine around and macs here and there, Windows was my go to.
Normally I would say all MS needs to do is focus on putting out a good OS, keep focusing on all the dev QOL stuff they put in and dump the user hostile behavior, but I think its too late for them at this point. They've burned every bridge.
I've been a Microsoft user since DOS days and diehard Windows fan since it first came out. All through the years I've installed, ran, broke, reinstalled, tinkered and administered countless Windows PC's for myself and clients. Was even on track to be MCSE NT certified through my employer until the Internet bubble burst and got laid off. Played with so many others like Linux, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, etc as well but always at end the day just wanted my Windows and get stuff done. I was known as the "PC Guy" in my circles.
Where Microsoft is now and what Windows 11 has slowly become, I have really started to think their Windows division is just a nuisance for them and they don't care. Every month I seem to be reading another anti-user friendly decision and ANOTHER switch I have to find to turn off at every install or visiting family. A default install of Windows 11 is an assault of Constant locked-down install, forced account adding or worse grabbing it from Edge or where it can, ad-based data slurp with so much stuff running in the background and other enshittification of the OS. WHAT IS GOING ON??
Even the Pro version MEANT for business and domain PC's has Xbox stuff on it and game bar running by default, now CoPilot on as well by default, screen snapshots. Instead of a nice light install for business and hardcore users that you then ADD to to make your desired setup, it is the opposite of having it all installed and you spend an hour removing everything.
I am ready to jump ship for first time in my life.
It’s like they say, only alternating versions of Windows are actually worth using.
It’s almost like they follow a software version of Intel’s old tick-tock pattern. A version that’s super experimental, but unstable and flaky (95, Me, Vista, 8, 11) and a version that irons out the wrinkles to make a solid OS (98, 2000/Xp, 7, 10).
I'm not sure I'd consider Windows Me to be very experimental, except perhaps an experiment in sadism...
However I do love that its Wikipedia article includes the sentence "Retrospectively, Windows Me is viewed as one of the worst operating systems of all time".
There is a better cycle for this. LTS. You don't force people off LTS until next LTS version has had time to iron out its wrinkles. This is really basic stuff. You'd expect one of the largest companies in the world to at least get the basics.
The difference I believe was that past failed windows versions were not intentionally bad, they were well intentioned but failed to achieve the goals, with windows 11 it's like they are deliberately making it worse.
Secondly, they're preloading the executable resident in memory to accelerate click to open, similar to what Chrome Browser does on Windows (and websites when browsing)
I don't perceive this as "fixing bad performance, given explorer has never been slow to open for me, but rather further optimizing the experience.
"We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View. Looking forward to your feedback! If you do encounter any issues, please file them in the Feedback Hub under Files Folders and Online Storage > File Explorer Performance, or Files Folders and Online Storage > File Explorer."
Seems like trying to solve poor performance with caching, not that all caching is bad, but it's often more rewarding to make the thing so fast it doesn't need caching if you have control over the code in question, which they very much do in this case.
Damn, Microsoft really needs someone who cares to run Windows. Feels like they haven’t had that since 7. Seems like every change for the last 10+ years has just been to take high quality existing applications and replace them with modern junk that has half the functionality and none of the polish. Task manager, explorer, calculator, anything in control panel, even solitaire!
> We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View.
Not a big deal. I use Windows only a few times over an RDP connection (VMs of a customer of mine) so it's a bit slow anyway and this optimization is not going to make it much faster. A more impactful change:
> We’ve moved Compress to ZIP file, Copy as Path, Set as Desktop Background, and Rotate Right, and Rotate Left into a new Manage file flyout. [...] Note, the name Manage file may change in a future Insider update.
The File Explorer in Windows has so much tech debt behind it.
It's quite obvious to see which parts are still Win32 and which are XAML. The two different context menus are a well-known example, but one that really annoys me is the Home view vs. the This PC view.
If you make Explorer open with the This PC view by default, you get a blinding flash of white every time you create a new tab in dark mode. That doesn't happen with the Home view which has been updated to XAML.
It's one of the many things you experience day to day that really makes me disappointed in the level of quality in modern Windows.
Have you seen those movies where a small town in the US holds a festival or carnival with heavy floats on top of a car? That is the UI they've implemented in Win11, one interface mounted on top of another, therefore overwhelming slowness, a botched job that only shows disinterest, perhaps with the aim of forcing users to upgrade by investing as few resources as possible in it.
Linux is the antithesis of this, with a long history of slow file explorers/managers that finally stand out today in terms of speed and features, fortunately. (this is to support the other user's comment about Dolphin (my choice when Linux) and Nautilus.
Yep, explorer.exe has always started up in the background. Pure speculation here, but this change likely involves preloading the UI surfaces and supporting bits such as disk free space, network share status, thumbnails etc.
Explorer.exe is not file explorer, it is the Windows UI system. It’s harder to see on modern Windows versions (since Windows will reload it automatically), but if you go into Win98 and kill the process, you’ll see your taskbar, desktop icons, right click menu, etc disappear.
File explorer is a part of that process, but consists of additional dynamic libraries and COM components that are loaded on-demand.
Old desktop replacements (like Litestep) specifically modified Windows to block explorer from loading the desktop to replace it (though, would still spawn it for file explorer).
Did you even read the blog post? It's almost a direct quote
> We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it.
explorer.exe is both the shell and the file explorer which is an unfortunate state of affairs.
There's long been an option to make it multi-process, but the cost of that option has increased with every release since 95. If I remember correctly, back in the 95 days that would spawn a new explorer process per window.
These days, probably since tabs or so, when you check this option it spawns exactly one other process, even for many windows. The second process has over 100 threads, the shell process normally spawns around 40 when you open a window, only 20 of which exit immediately when you close the window, the rest stick around for fairly arbitrary periods of time.
Note though about 2/3rds of the threads on my system are rooted in the nvidia driver thunks, I really don't know why so many - is it a side effect of the xaml port?
anyway, no idea what the preloading exactly will be doing, but it does sound like a hack over debt. it'd feel better if there was more process isolation being added to the desktop environment, but you know, it's an old desktop OS, so if one window wants to screw with another window, YOLO! On the flip side making stuff like komorebi is trivial on the platform and there is some nicety to that as long as you trust everything you ever run.
Explorer.exe is technically the Windows UI. File Explorer is a part of that, but has additional COM and other components that it consists of. Those are loaded on demand, now the OS is keeping them resident.
Windows 11 is so bad. It's worse than Vista. Microsoft took everything decent about Windows after the Windows 8 debacle and decided if it works it needs to break.
It's unfortunate. Microsoft had the talent to have premier products but is stuck in second or third on everything.
Appropriate, if funny: https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_o...
It's sad, really.
Microsoft could easily make one of the best general purpose OSes. They have a lot of cool stuff in Windows, especially for devs. There's native git integration in file explorer coming, PowerToys has great utilities (peek, fancy zones, command palette), WSL & WSL w/ graphics, terminal, native SSH now, sudo, winget & automation with it using DSC from a simple yaml file, and some of the best backwards compatibility in the industry.
Yet they squander it all by violating their users trust and consent, and consistently ignoring their users feedback.
That's what makes Windows 11 so frustrating for me, even though I've already switched to macOS ever since the M1 air. I would go back to Windows in a heart beat if they got their act together. I always liked Windows. It's been my main OS for a long time, even though I've always kept a Linux machine around and macs here and there, Windows was my go to.
Normally I would say all MS needs to do is focus on putting out a good OS, keep focusing on all the dev QOL stuff they put in and dump the user hostile behavior, but I think its too late for them at this point. They've burned every bridge.
Every cool feature you listed is windows gaining more Linux like features. Which begs the question…
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It really is sad! Truly
I've been a Microsoft user since DOS days and diehard Windows fan since it first came out. All through the years I've installed, ran, broke, reinstalled, tinkered and administered countless Windows PC's for myself and clients. Was even on track to be MCSE NT certified through my employer until the Internet bubble burst and got laid off. Played with so many others like Linux, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, etc as well but always at end the day just wanted my Windows and get stuff done. I was known as the "PC Guy" in my circles.
Where Microsoft is now and what Windows 11 has slowly become, I have really started to think their Windows division is just a nuisance for them and they don't care. Every month I seem to be reading another anti-user friendly decision and ANOTHER switch I have to find to turn off at every install or visiting family. A default install of Windows 11 is an assault of Constant locked-down install, forced account adding or worse grabbing it from Edge or where it can, ad-based data slurp with so much stuff running in the background and other enshittification of the OS. WHAT IS GOING ON??
Even the Pro version MEANT for business and domain PC's has Xbox stuff on it and game bar running by default, now CoPilot on as well by default, screen snapshots. Instead of a nice light install for business and hardcore users that you then ADD to to make your desired setup, it is the opposite of having it all installed and you spend an hour removing everything.
I am ready to jump ship for first time in my life.
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Original link, by original artist: <https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts>
Much obliged!
Every other windows version is terrible. Therefore, I bet windows 12 will be pretty decent, as far as windows goes.
I dont understand their system requirements. At this point 1Ghz processor is BS, 8GB of RAM minimum and SSD is required
I've been looking for this picture for ages! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
It’s like they say, only alternating versions of Windows are actually worth using.
It’s almost like they follow a software version of Intel’s old tick-tock pattern. A version that’s super experimental, but unstable and flaky (95, Me, Vista, 8, 11) and a version that irons out the wrinkles to make a solid OS (98, 2000/Xp, 7, 10).
I'm not sure I'd consider Windows Me to be very experimental, except perhaps an experiment in sadism...
However I do love that its Wikipedia article includes the sentence "Retrospectively, Windows Me is viewed as one of the worst operating systems of all time".
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There is a better cycle for this. LTS. You don't force people off LTS until next LTS version has had time to iron out its wrinkles. This is really basic stuff. You'd expect one of the largest companies in the world to at least get the basics.
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The difference I believe was that past failed windows versions were not intentionally bad, they were well intentioned but failed to achieve the goals, with windows 11 it's like they are deliberately making it worse.
First this is a very editorialized title, the original is:
"Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7271 (Dev & Beta Channels)"
Secondly, they're preloading the executable resident in memory to accelerate click to open, similar to what Chrome Browser does on Windows (and websites when browsing)
I don't perceive this as "fixing bad performance, given explorer has never been slow to open for me, but rather further optimizing the experience.
The whole text regarding this reads:
"We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View. Looking forward to your feedback! If you do encounter any issues, please file them in the Feedback Hub under Files Folders and Online Storage > File Explorer Performance, or Files Folders and Online Storage > File Explorer."
I would imagine the people complaining are also the first to mouth off empty platitudes like "empty ram is wasted ram" in any other context.
I recently found there’s an active community modding Windows to be more like older Windows, including modifying Explorer.
Some examples:
* Restoring the Explorer navigation bar: https://windhawk.net/mods/explorer-frame-classic
* Making Explorer behave more like Vista/7: https://windhawk.net/mods/aerexplorer
* Fixing the white flash on a new Explorer tab in dark mode: https://windhawk.net/mods/fix-explorer-white-flash
* Restoring old-style context menus: https://windhawk.net/mods/disable-immersive-context-menus
* Even using classic non-Aero themes in Win11: https://windhawk.net/mods/classic-theme-enable
I haven’t tried this myself yet. I’m unwilling to inject code into system processes on a work VM.
But I can’t help wondering if a better path for performance for Microsoft would be lighter code, not trying to preload it.
Microsoft Will Preload Windows 11 File Explorer to Hide the Impacts of Bad Performance.
Seems like trying to solve poor performance with caching, not that all caching is bad, but it's often more rewarding to make the thing so fast it doesn't need caching if you have control over the code in question, which they very much do in this case.
Wait a minute, they’re preloading “explorer.exe” ???
Performance wasn’t an issue 20 years ago. Now it is ???
That takes effort!
Technically the file system hosts more files now than 20 years ago. Not a great excuse though lol
Damn, Microsoft really needs someone who cares to run Windows. Feels like they haven’t had that since 7. Seems like every change for the last 10+ years has just been to take high quality existing applications and replace them with modern junk that has half the functionality and none of the polish. Task manager, explorer, calculator, anything in control panel, even solitaire!
> We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View.
Not a big deal. I use Windows only a few times over an RDP connection (VMs of a customer of mine) so it's a bit slow anyway and this optimization is not going to make it much faster. A more impactful change:
> We’ve moved Compress to ZIP file, Copy as Path, Set as Desktop Background, and Rotate Right, and Rotate Left into a new Manage file flyout. [...] Note, the name Manage file may change in a future Insider update.
So it's an extra click to compress files.
The File Explorer in Windows has so much tech debt behind it.
It's quite obvious to see which parts are still Win32 and which are XAML. The two different context menus are a well-known example, but one that really annoys me is the Home view vs. the This PC view.
If you make Explorer open with the This PC view by default, you get a blinding flash of white every time you create a new tab in dark mode. That doesn't happen with the Home view which has been updated to XAML.
It's one of the many things you experience day to day that really makes me disappointed in the level of quality in modern Windows.
It is even worse than that.
Have you seen those movies where a small town in the US holds a festival or carnival with heavy floats on top of a car? That is the UI they've implemented in Win11, one interface mounted on top of another, therefore overwhelming slowness, a botched job that only shows disinterest, perhaps with the aim of forcing users to upgrade by investing as few resources as possible in it.
Linux is the antithesis of this, with a long history of slow file explorers/managers that finally stand out today in terms of speed and features, fortunately. (this is to support the other user's comment about Dolphin (my choice when Linux) and Nautilus.
Dolphin and Nautilus work without a hitch. Maybe they should just expand WSL2 to allow for GUI apps and fork?
They could implement something, say, let's call it Beer. It'd be like Wine but for running good Linux apps on Windows.
WSL already supports GUI apps.
I haven’t tried this myself but this claims to fix it: https://windhawk.net/mods/fix-explorer-white-flash
Didn't all Windows from 95 onwards preload explorer?
Yep, explorer.exe has always started up in the background. Pure speculation here, but this change likely involves preloading the UI surfaces and supporting bits such as disk free space, network share status, thumbnails etc.
Explorer.exe is not file explorer, it is the Windows UI system. It’s harder to see on modern Windows versions (since Windows will reload it automatically), but if you go into Win98 and kill the process, you’ll see your taskbar, desktop icons, right click menu, etc disappear.
File explorer is a part of that process, but consists of additional dynamic libraries and COM components that are loaded on-demand.
Old desktop replacements (like Litestep) specifically modified Windows to block explorer from loading the desktop to replace it (though, would still spawn it for file explorer).
Did you even read the blog post? It's almost a direct quote
> We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it.
explorer.exe is both the shell and the file explorer which is an unfortunate state of affairs.
There's long been an option to make it multi-process, but the cost of that option has increased with every release since 95. If I remember correctly, back in the 95 days that would spawn a new explorer process per window.
These days, probably since tabs or so, when you check this option it spawns exactly one other process, even for many windows. The second process has over 100 threads, the shell process normally spawns around 40 when you open a window, only 20 of which exit immediately when you close the window, the rest stick around for fairly arbitrary periods of time.
Note though about 2/3rds of the threads on my system are rooted in the nvidia driver thunks, I really don't know why so many - is it a side effect of the xaml port?
anyway, no idea what the preloading exactly will be doing, but it does sound like a hack over debt. it'd feel better if there was more process isolation being added to the desktop environment, but you know, it's an old desktop OS, so if one window wants to screw with another window, YOLO! On the flip side making stuff like komorebi is trivial on the platform and there is some nicety to that as long as you trust everything you ever run.
Explorer.exe is technically the Windows UI. File Explorer is a part of that, but has additional COM and other components that it consists of. Those are loaded on demand, now the OS is keeping them resident.
Surprised it’s not branded something like copilot 365 files (formerly explorer)
AI-accelerated file browsing.
(New)
So, instead of making sure the code is optimised they just decided to use more memory?
Again, the end user pays for it, through hardware and power needed for this "solution".
Could MS Just fix explorer.exe crashes when dragging directory windows between a 1080p display and a 4k display in a multi-monitor setup? Please?
Is this what you get when you hire prompt engineers instead of actual software engineers? lol.
IIRC they started preloading Office application recently as well.
They have done that for at least ten years, I believe, with "Click to Run".
I was thinking of this: https://www.theverge.com/news/637469/microsoft-office-speed-...
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The headline is about preloading into memory, not onto the hard disk.
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