Tag: Windows

The Hell that is OneDrive

My PC — the PC I bought for precisely one game — came with Windows 11 pre-installed. Now, I hate Windows, and I expect it doesn’t like me much either, and that’s fine. For the sake of a game or two, I can live with it. One of the more annoying things I’ve found with Windows is their implementation of cloud storage, with their OneDrive.

I decided to make the effort to “break it” so that everything would just live on my local hard drive, and it made a dog’s breakfast out of the folder structure. It was only after this that it was revealed that folders like “Documents” actually live under a folder hierarchy with “OneDrive” in the path, and I don’t want to try to clean it up for fear of losing files. I don’t have anything worth keeping except the mods for ESO, but it would be a shame to lose them if Microsoft decided to lose its mind here.

First, I’ll admit that there is something to keep straight on Mac’s with iCloud storage enabled. On my MBP, I have this:

There are two locations for “Documents”, but one is “Documents – Local” and one is “Documents – iCloud.”

On my corporate Windows laptop, I have this:

I have two sets of folders mixed into the same namespace. I have no idea which is which. I have multiple links to Desktop’s and OneDrive’s.

Even worse, in the larger folder pane, EVERYTHING listed here is under ANOTHER “Desktop” folder, and ANOTHER “OneDrive” sits at the same level of “My Computer.”

How is anyone supposed to navigate this? How is anyone supposed to find anything? Windows search has NEVER worked. EVER. What were they — what was anyone — thinking!? This is madness.

UPDATE: I spent an hour and cleaned this mess up — only to have it get re-messed-up when I logged into another computer, of course. And now that I deleted the extraneous folders and duplicates, the script that did this — which is still running every time we start the computer — is throwing an error. So I got that going for me.

Windows Startup Buggery

I have a PC. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I have a PC. I bought it for one and only one use: to play Elder Scrolls Online. To that end, I bought a SCUF Envision Pro controller. It does not work unless its Corsair iCUE software is running. The software will not start with Windows. There’s a checkbox in the software to make it do that, but it doesn’t work. I’ve tried toggling it back and forth several times. It just won’t work.

Frustrated with the situation, I decided to finally fix it.

The “startup” thing you can find in the Windows options only has toggles for programs that have registered with it. iCUE is not there. So I search for where the actual startup folder lives now. I have to google that, and find a howto to run “shell:startup” from a Windows Run box. This is stupid, but now I have the old-fashioned startup folder to put a link to the program.

So, now, where’s the program?

I search for the application in the Windows start menu. All this will give me are links to web pages talking about the application. (Launched in Edge, naturally, and I don’t care to see if I can fix that, because I know they’ll just change it back with the next update.)

I have to click another button to get to the actual list of applications installed on my system, and it’s not there either. That’s right: a proper link to a properly installed program simply doesn’t exist on the system.

I have an icon on the taskbar to run it. I thought you could right-click on a taskbar shortcut, and see where the program that it runs actually lives on disk. Nope. So I google again, and find where the taskbar shortcuts live. It’s buried under AppData under Internet Explorer. No, actually, I find where they live on Windows 10. Despite Windows 11 having been released for 3 years now, all my searches still bubble up references to Windows 10.

I finally find the new location. It’s been moved under Roaming, but it’s still related to the folders under Internet Freaking Explorer. I find the shortcut. The properties do not point to the executable, but there’s a right-click link that takes me to the application folder under Programs. This is a regression in usability. On the old shortcuts, you could put flags on the command they would run. But I digress.

I try to link the launcher application in my startup folder. The default action is to MOVE the file, which is about the last thing I want to do, but, hey, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and this isn’t my first rodeo. I press the modifier keys to find the one that makes a link, but it doesn’t work. I try again. Nothing. I link the actual application. That works.

For my own reference, I linked C:\Program Files\Corsair\Corsair iCUE5 Software\iCUE.exe in C:\Users\david\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

After all this, I reboot on the spot to see if this will even work. It does. Whew. Twenty minutes of frustration after frustration to make crap software work the way I want it to on a crap OS. Something that should have worked by default. Something that, failing the previous, should have worked within the software’s options. Something that, failing both of these, I should have been able to figure out in Windows startup options. Something that, failing all 3 of these, I shouldn’t have needed a bunch of googling to figure out.

Why is this still a thing? Why is this “operating system” even still around? How is this the best we can do? This feels like something from 25-30 years ago. It’s utter nonsense, but this is what people have been conditioned to accept.

I moved to Macs about 10 or 11 years ago now, and I just can’t believe that people still put up with this crap. While I’m typing this out, my work laptop has just popped up a useless message about some “feature” in Teams that I will never use. Good grief! The popups now. Everyone in the Windows world is using them now. Open an application or go to a web site? Get 3 or 4 popups with a “tour” of features that — if they had designed the software intuitively and didn’t bury the icons and menus to begin with — you wouldn’t need in the first place. It’s all just so maddening.

I should just uninstall and reinstall the software. That’s the Windows way, right? But I’m afraid I’ll lose my settings. You wouldn’t think so, but, then again, I wouldn’t have thought I needed to do ANY of this.

UPDATE: Trying to figure out why my $200 controller couldn’t map one of the programmable buttons led me to finally discovering Corsair’s help forums. Among other things is a big thread about how the iCue software won’t launch at system start. Someone figured out that this stupid software just doesn’t put a link in the Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run like it should, and pointed out how to do that. Almost mercifully, my last comment about just giving up and reinstalling is moot, because it appears that wouldn’t have worked anyway.

For future historians, the problem with remapping is that the one button I bought the entire controller for — to remap the right index finger button to D-pad left, in order to put the ESO bar swap on a button I don’t have to take my thumb off movement for — doesn’t work, despite a dozen tries to reconfigure it. The G keys are mapped to keystroke combos, and they work fine. I don’t know if that’s because only these kinds of assignments work, and button remappings don’t, and I’m not going to figure that out. Anyway, and again for my own reference, it seems that:

Hooking up the controller with a USB cable gets the button remapping working again.

Windows Being Windows, Shills Being Shills

Windows stays prominent because Microsoft caters to corporations which abuse the poor, defenseless OS into doing things like locking users out of changing the desktop background and the sleep timeout. Until Apple offers power-hungry corporate IT middle managers the same level of user-hostile malfeasance in the name of “security,” Microsoft will hold the high ground in corporate deployments.

This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of not-so-micro-aggressions, as the corporate use of Windows continues to skew all the Microsoft-bought-and-paid-for industry polls that show how much more prevalent Windows is over OSX, and self-justify corporate America that they’re doing the right thing by continuing to stick with it. This, in turn, leads to an entire sub-industry of corporate “security” software which must be installed on Windows, because, well, the bought-and-paid-for auditors told them they had to.

Thus, I wind up with a corporate laptop with 3 different “endpoint” security products installed on it, and something like 30-40 different scripts and checks that run almost by the hour to make sure that the inherent weaknesses of Windows hasn’t compromised our precious meeting PPT’s, which #CorporateIT apparently considers as sensitive as the US nuclear arsenal codes.

Apple offers an alternative to this madness, and I’m very glad they do. In my experience, almost no one runs Windows personally, except for gaming purposes. Numbers like StatCounter vastly over-report Windows usage, because everyone working for a large corporation and in the government is forced to use Windows.

I wish someone would produce a market share report that 1) separates corporate purchases and 2) includes phones as primary computing devices. I think we would see that the “computing world” is vastly different than Gartner would have us believe.

Introducing Surface Pro 10 for Business and Surface Laptop 6 for Business | Microsoft Devices Blog

AI-powered PCs built for a new era of work We are excited to announce the first Surface AI PCs built exclusively for business: Surface Pro 10 for Business and Surface Laptop 6 for Business. These new PCs re

Source: Introducing Surface Pro 10 for Business and Surface Laptop 6 for Business | Microsoft Devices Blog

I just love how Microsoft sticks “FOR BIZNESSSSSSS!” on the end of things. “Skype FOR BIZNESSSSSSSS!” “Teams FOR BIDNESS!” “Outlook FOR BIZNAAAAAS!” Sigh. How can you take this stuff seriously? Anyway.

Windows stays because Microsoft caters to corporations which abuse the poor, defenseless OS into doing things like locking users out of changing the desktop background and the sleep timeout. Until Apple offers power-hungry corporate IT middle managers the same level of user-hostile malfeasance in the name of “security,” Microsoft will hold the high ground in corporate deployments.

This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of not-so-micro-aggressions, as it continues to skew all the Microsoft-bought-and-paid-for Gartner polls that show how much more prevalent Windows is over OSX, and self-justify corporate America that they’re doing the right thing. This, in turn, leads to an entire sub-industry of corporate “security” software which must be installed on Windows, because, bought-and-paid-for auditors told them they had to.

Thus, I wind up with a corporate laptop with something like 3 or 4 different “endpoint” security products installed on it, and something like 30-40 different scripts and checks that run almost by the hour to make sure that the inherent weaknesses of Windows hasn’t compromised our precious meeting PPT’s, which corporate IT considers as sensitive as the US nuclear arsenal codes.

Apple offers an alternative to this madness, and I’m very glad they do. I would rather they stay as they are rather than corrupt their ecosystem in this way to make some corporate sales, and I will happily continue to use my personal MBP to do as much of my work as I can.

Dell/Windows Display Malfeasance

Apparently, no power in Heaven or Earth can make a Dell Windows “mobile workstation” display 4K@60Hz on an external monitor, using any of its ports, cables, connectors, or adapters, despite every piece in the chain assuring me that it can.

Who do I bill for the last half hour?

Bonus points for Windows losing its patience through the process, and not allowing me to resize the graphics options window after some point.

UPDATE: In desperation, I dug around in all my storage, and found the tiny USB-C-to-USB-A/HDMI adapter that came with the laptop. BEHOLD! That one works. I guess my “certified” Anker converter was not, in fact, up to spec.

Starfield’s Steam rating falls to “mostly negative,” can Bethesda still save its RPG? | TechSpot

Starfield, an RPG that excited gamers for years before release with the promise of being Skyrim in space, is ending 2023 with its Steam Recent Reviews rating at Mostly Negative. Even the overall rating is Mixed, which will doubtlessly disappoint Bethesda and Todd Howard.

Source: Starfield’s Steam rating falls to “mostly negative,” can Bethesda still save its RPG? | TechSpot

I was definitely salty when Bethesda was bought by Microsoft. Like so many others, I’ve been a long time fan of Fallout and Elder Scrolls, and was really looking forward to this one. However, as a PS5 player, I realized that Starfield and TES VI would never be coming to Playstation.

I eventually bought a new PC for the Elder Scrolls Online, and tried the digital deluxe pre-release version of Starfield on Steam. I refunded it after 12 hours. While I could see all the criticisms people are talking about with regard to the game, my particular problem was that inventory management was the worst of any open-world game I’ve seen. After this amount of time, I had collected enough “stuff” to require me to start building bases to store them, so that I could eventually build the interesting items, and start working on ships.

I discovered, to my dismay, that unlimited storage containers do not exist, as there are in Skyrim and Fallout 4. Not only that, but it was going to take precious resources to build containers that were — at their largest — still pitifully small. By the time I realized what was happening, I only had enough resources to build a single-base’s limit of storage containers, and it barely made a dent in my inventory.

The whole thing came crashing down at once. The exercise of breaking down and storing my junk — which had become a very efficient and quick abstraction in Fallout 76 — was going to be many, many more hours of work to tame, and it would never not be a chore. To me, there was simply no excuse for this.

So not only do I now view Bethesda suspiciously (even though I continue to play ESO), but I also hate Microsoft from “back in the day,” because I’ve been a fan of Linux since the start, and I watched them buy up any and all competition in the 90’s, and then use the courts and their bought-and-paid for trade press to try to kill Linux.

And above all of this, I hate the trend towards nation-state corporations having more power than governments, and I hate the reduction in choice and increased price by such moves, all while they funnel all the profits from becoming more and more integrated straight to the top.

I’m not trying to start a fight with Windows and Xbox fans. I just say all of this to preface saying this, in response to this news:

And I hope they have a terrible time with The Elder Scrolls 6 now, whatever it will be called.

iOS 17 Includes ‘Grid Forecast’ Feature to Let You Know When ‘Cleaner’ Energy is Available

Source: iOS 17 Includes ‘Grid Forecast’ Feature to Let You Know When ‘Cleaner’ Energy is Available

This makes about as much sense as Microsoft automatically setting all the power options in Windows to be the most conservative and least performant, including — in an absolutely baffling move — to automatically turn off Bluetooth after a minute. Say what!? Yeah, my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard would suddenly stop working after about a minute. I searched for and found updated drivers. I upgraded Windows. I reset things. I rebooted. And rebooted.

There was a lot of hair pulled before I figured out the power saving setting was the problem, because there isn’t any scenario in the entire world where I would think this would even have been an option that someone was told to take the time to code, make a UI for, and merge into Windows. The only possible reason would be to save literally one penny of electricity, over the course of a year, at the expense of making Bluetooth… COMPLETELY USELESS. Well done, guys.

Now I see the insanity is spreading. It’s not enough that we have to go over every device with a fine-toothed comb for security, opting out of spying, and blocking ads. Now we have to go through the options to make sure that they’re not “helpfully” being invisibly and silently hobbled against their intended, normal usage by companies who want to report to their investors that they’ve saved a collective X number of kilowatt hours by their pernicious power settings.

Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google

I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend. There I was minding my own business in Chrome before tabbing back to a game and wham a pop-up appeared asking me to switch my default search engine to Microsoft Bing in Chrome. Stunningly, Microsoft now thinks it’s ok to shove a pop-up in my face above my apps and games just because I dare to use Chrome instead of Microsoft Edge.

Source: Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google

When I was in 8th grade, one of my teachers was out sick, and the principal took over the class for the day. He talked about frames of reference. To illustrate the point, he asked if we had seen the movie, E.T. Of course, we all had. It was the Star Wars-level blockbuster of the summer of 1982. He asked if we remembered the bus scene. None of us could. “You know, ‘Uranus?'” Oh, right. Yes, we all remembered that line. Then he asked us if we could remember what any of the other kids were doing on the bus. Nope. Nothing. They were standing, yelling, throwing things, and generally being disruptive. He said, as a principal, this anarchy on a school bus horrified him. It never even registered with us.

This lesson continues to reverberate with me over 40 years later.

Technical people like me “govern” our computers and devices as much as we can, so when these things happen, they stick out like a sore thumb, and we set about stopping them from happening again. Even after 30 years of “being on the internet,” I am RUTHLESS about spam. When one show up in my inbox, I deal with it, so that, by and large, every email that comes through is of interest and needs my attention.

The people who use Windows because it’s the cheap, default choice are the kind of people that have 10,000 unread emails in their inbox, all of which are spam for services and offers they agreed to be spammed by, because they couldn’t be bothered to at least tick the opt-out box (which only works half the time anyway). When the vast majority of these users see a popup like this, they simply click the button to dismiss it, just like hundreds other digital annoyances they put up with all day long, which they do not understand, and which they do not know how to turn off.

It doesn’t matter that we get upset about this. It’s already been proven several times over that we cannot influence this situation. The incentives just don’t align between users of Windows and Microsoft’s management. You’d expect that they would care about what “power users” like developers would think, so I guess it’s telling how small that community of users is compared to the rest of the people who use Windows.

The real surprise here is that The Verge wrote a piece that is overtly negative about Microsoft.

My Shame is Ever Before Me

Here We Go Again

A couple years ago, I broke free of playing Elder Scrolls Online, for the second time. I had quit before, in frustration of not being good enough to run the end-game content. It annoyed me that there were parts of a game I was paying for on a monthly basis that I effectively could never take advantage of, so I quit.

Then I picked it back up again for a little while, mentally bargaining with myself that this situation was acceptable because there is so much to do in the game besides the vet-level dungeons and trials. But, as a massively-multiplayer online game, it tends to suck you in, and dominate your leisure time, so I decided to quit again. And, since ESO was the only thing I was using it for, I literally threw my 12-year-old, Athlon-XP-based dinosaur of a PC in the trash, as a sort of “burn the ships” move to prevent going back to playing it. Playing ESO on a Mac is basically a non-starter due to crappy performance, so it wasn’t a realistic option.

Then I developed a medical problem that causes me to live with constant pain in my abdomen. That’s a whole book’s worth of another story, but the relevance to this story is that I now spend basically all my extra time playing games. I mean, I was a pretty heavy gamer before, but this is a whole other level.

Bored with everything else, I tried going back to Fallout 4. I couldn’t stand it on the PS5, because it only runs 30 FPS. Bethesda recently released a refreshed version of Skyrim on PS5 with all the Creator Club content, and running at 60 FPS, and it was like a whole, new game. I replayed it all over again, and love it. But I can’t go back to 30 FPS for Fallout.

I decided to buy an Xbox Series X, for several reasons, and waited for Starfield. Then, after the Redfall launch fiasco, Bethesda admitted that Starfield would also be capped at 30 FPS on console. Like I said, I can’t go back to 30 FPS.

So I sold the X, and bought a new PC.

I know, I know.

This one is a loss-leader from Microcenter. Realistically, it’s a $1,000 build, which you can get for $700.

The amount of friction from trying to run Windows again is astounding, and everyone just glosses over it because it’s so pervasive. I’ll be complaining about these things in later posts.

Employee claims she can’t use Microsoft Windows for “Religious Reasons” : Reddit/r/AskHR


And they let her! You mean, all this time, I could have requested Linux on my corporate laptop for religious reasons!? BRB. Going to HR to explain my actual, deeply-held beliefs on this…