Microsoft accidentally leaks internal tool that can enable hidden Windows 11 features
Microsoft accidentally leaks internal tool that can enable hidden Windows 11 features
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Imagine doing free QA for a multibillion dollar corporation. I hate Microsoft so much.
We getting to the point where some Linux distros are objectively better systems... all around. Having way less issues with PopOS than I did with Win11
True, I've been using NobaraOS and have no problems at all, I moved my mom from windows to ZorinOS and she only noticed because her laptop no longer "freezes up" randomly, and I'm talking about a surface book that runs better on Linux than on Windows. Gotta love the irony
Hah, same here. Nobara for me and Zorin for mum, works like a charm. If only mainstream OEMs pre-installed Linux and promoted it more... But I guess this is fine too. One day, when I have enough capital, I'll launch my own Linux Desktop company and be the change I want to see.
Yep! Co-worker had 2 old laptops, threw a SSD into one of them and put Zorin OS on it for his daughter to do schoolwork on. Not one complaint or question about how to do anything, and it's been a year. The other one was very very underpowered so I threw CasaOS onto it and got him setup with Home Assistant and Adguardhome.
I once installed Zorin for my gf's ancient laptop, it was so much faster and she loved the color schemes for xfce
Yup, just moved to Mint on my laptop since I’ve been getting some issues with Windows draining the battery quick despite it being in “good health” according to Dell, and just general performance hiccups across Windows.
Super low CPU and RAM usage, snappier performance for word processing and surfing, and a longer battery life? With no tracking features to boot? All for free? Hell yeah I’ll move over to Linux lol.
We've been past that point for awhile.
Arch Linux has been an objectively better system for years.
If I didn't use my pc primarily as a gaming pc I would absolutely be running Linux. Hopefully one day we can get there with compatability and performance.
I use mine for gaming and shit posting... only anti cheat triple AAA does not work like new BF and CoD, everything else runs great or fine.
Check if your games run on Linux here, you may be surprised: https://protondb.com
What games are you playing?
I’m tempted to try vfio but for now I just dual boot -_-
Currently demo-ing Mint, and might actually switch.
Mostly because almost every non-UWP app works fine and good alternatives exist for things that don’t, and partially because the PC doesn’t sound like it’s taking off when it starts up.
Same, switched to an easy Mint install and immediately felt more in control of my computer again. Some professional software does still cause problems though so a 100% switch sadly isn't possible... yet.
Amen, pop here too
My keyboard and trackpad often don't work on resume in PopOS but otherwise I really like it.
Are those “hidden features” just more ads?
Could also be tracking and monitoring, I think those counts as Microsoft features.
Actually it uncovers the fact that space cadet pinball was actually a covert mind control and indoctrination tool developed by the NSA.
I KNEW IT
That would explain some shit ngl
So what are the hidden features? The article doesn't say and I scrolled through all the comments and nothing popped out at me other than a bunch of comments of people bashing windows and sucking their own dicks over Linux?
sucking their own dicks over Linux
This one trick explains why people who use Linux love it so much!
It's the main reason I use it... I thought that was the point :)
Is there a hidden tool for that?
Shit I must be missing a kernel module
So, hum... sex workers hate this one trick ?
I mean, if using Linux made that possible for the masses, it'd be the most popular operating system in history.
Unfortunately for regular people, it isn't that simple ☹️.
Average lemmy thread
You're god-damned right.
The hidden features are flags that Microsoft enables or disables for random users as part of A/B testing. The article contains a link to the various flags that can be enabled depending on your edition and version of Windows.
This is what i came for, i wanted to know what these features are. Thanks for saving me a click
Afaik it's a tool to interact with an API to override A/B testing in an official way.
Apparantly some tool already exists that does it. Just not the official way.
Usual info-free article with clickbait headline. Tinfoil-heads will call it a "troll / honey-pot", designed to attract and identify 'troublemakers'.
And from that comment section, it's working.
Yeah. It's called windows 10.
I think you're misremembering. It's called Windows 7.
I think you're misremembering. It's called Linux. (I use Arch btw)
I just want it to stop self-destructing every two hours when I’m running it as a VM under Linux.
Maybe that's one of the features you can enable.
Ah, you must have it set to Windows Millennium Edition mode
Assuming it's precisely at the 2 hour mark, do you have snapshots enabled for that VM? If so, try turning them off.
Nope, no snapshots. The bugchecks in the logs vary with the last two being 0x0a and 0x3b - drivers and memory - but this is on both Stable and Latest virtio drivers and memtest86+ comes up clean on the hardware. I’ve never taken a snapshot of this VM since it’s on my workstation and not for production use.
What I have noticed, though, is an increase in memory utilization in the VM at idle, likely due to recent group policy changes and application updates (it is domain-joined). I’ll see if increasing the amount of memory allocated will take care of 0x3b.
Wait, what? What happens when you hit the two hour mark? I'd it like one of the router simulators that forces a reboot?
BSOD for whatever reason. Doesn’t matter, I can resume what I was doing pretty quickly, but it is mildly inconvenient.
I just use windows 10 for VM, it hasn't crashed for me but I don't use VMs for more than one or two hours
The biggest thing I want is to just move the task bar to the top of the screen. I can't use my finger on my Surface tablet unless I remove the keyboard. Such idiocy..
Use StartAllBack. Not only does it restore the old Taskbar features, it also lets you do even more things, like have the Start button on the left but keep the icons centered, and customize the transparency level (among other things). You can even use your favorite era of Start menu (7, 8.1, 10). Personally I'm using Win7's Start Menu with Windows 11-related buttons added in (like Settings).
(Edit: It does cost $5 after a 90 day trial, but that's less than the cost of lunch, and with all the features you're getting I'd gladly pay 10x the amount.)
My favourite is when I'm trying to click a notification tray thing and shit like teams messages keep popping up on top. Who the hell designed it so notifications come up on top of tray pop ups? So fucking stupid.
This angers me so, so much and every messenger app does it.
Dude right??? I've been losing my fucking mind. My home computer, work computer 2, and work computer VM are all top bar mounted. Work computer 1 for upgraded to 11 and it's pissing me off. Every week I check for a way to change it back.
I think side is the best. When almost all monitors are wider than they are tall it makes more sense to put it on the short edge to use up less space.
You can do this with TaskbarX
Jesus Christ, just reading about Microsoft developing something called Moments made me nope out of that article.
Obv there’s worse things in this world, but goddamn it if Microsoft isn’t reclaiming its crown slowly. I think people forget/zoomers never knew, but Microsoft was once, rightly, one of the most hated corporations on earth. They were taken to court, in the United States!, for monopolistic practices. You gotta be doing some insaaaaane shit to get hit with that type of case in the US post-Reagan administration.
Microsoft’s name was basically equivalent to dogshit from the mid-90s until maybe the mid 2000s. Maybe 2010? Hard to put a finger on it. Windows 7 certainly did a lot to get people to calm down from a steady hate-boner.
I just wish, I fucking WISH, that if MS is gonna do this weird “make your pc your phone too! Dur hrr!” shit that they’d offer a Windows Lite ™️ edition where you can opt out of the little stupid assistant thing. No, Clippy, I don’t need help, fuck you very much. Let me opt out completely, without having to fuck with reg editor and CLI, from all types of ads, tracking, “offers for free shit,” all that shit. Just provide a barebones OS, let me add the programs I want, stop popping up telling me the .exe is a trojan sent to murder my dog just because you want me to download shit from your precious proprietary store, just stop all that shit. Something akin to Windows XP or Windows 7 type era. Neither OS was perfect and certainly many features in modern OSes are nice, but the simplicity found in them just because at the time they kind of HAD to be simple in order to function, is something I’d love for MS (and Apple too for that matter) to embrace.
But since none of that will happen, the next best thing I can hope is developers start making more and more programs run natively on Linux distro. Linux has come very far in my lifetime and I’m honestly excited that I can now use Linux basically for everything and only keep Windows installed as dual boot for a few specific tasks. I just hope it keeps growing in coming years. Hopefully demand from gamers for the steam deck and such drives more and more support for Linux. I can you one thing though… if my Windows updated and tells me “set up Moments! Click here!” I’m nuking that shit from orbit immediately. I don’t care what it does, I will never use any of that shit Microsoft packs into Windows. Probably sounds grump old man or whatever, but I just refuse. Stop adding dogshit no one asked for! This goes for basically all devs! Rant over, but I’m still pissed!
Microsoft’s name was basically equivalent to dogshit from the mid-90s until maybe the mid 2000s.
I'm old enough to remember well the Microsoft hate. It's not so much they've changed their ways, but Google has now taken the trident and diverted attention away from them.
if my Windows updated and tells me “set up Moments! Click here!” I’m nuking that shit from orbit immediately.
Why wait? You seem to be fed up already. Reconsider the importance of those specific cases. I haven't missed anything really after moving to Linux full-time. Forced to use Windows at work and that's a daily reminder how bad it really has become.
I do use it use linux for most things and especially for light usage such as web browsing/chatting. Many games also work now thanks for new interest due to the steam deck, which is cool. Gone are the days, it seems, where you gotta read 14 forum pages on why your specific distro won’t boot this specific game. It’s honestly in the hands of the software devs at this point though. They gotta break from the standard for the last 20 or so years of catering only to Windows. I’m hoping the steam deck pushes more teams to embrace the Linux world. I’d also love for Valve to officially release a standalone desktop version of steamOS (or whatever their name is for their distro). I know people have kinda made hacky versions, but an officially supported version with real support for stuff like nvidia drivers (which is another thing… nvidia needs to get away from that shit) would be very cool and would certainly push other companies outside the steam universe to get on board too. It just seems like a matter of time thing now which is certainly better than “this will never happen” that it felt like a decade ago
At least you have wsl now. M$'s late to the party attempt to EEE.
Other than games, run windows in virtualbox or with kvm if absolutely necessary while using Linux for everything else.
You gotta be doing some insaaaaane shit to get hit with that type of case in the US post-Reagan administration.
Yeah, they bundled a web browser with their operating system! Insaaaaaane!
Sounds like windows isn't for you so why are you using it lmfao fucking Americans and their mental health issues 😭
Nice try, Microsoft, trying to get people to use Windows 11. Just focus on fixing Windows 12 and cut your losses.
Does it make Windows 11 not total dogshit?
Oh wait, no, it's still Windows 11.
Back by popular demand! Right click on task bar for task manager!
But none of the other stuff. Thanks, Microsoft.
Regression of features = future.
It says that the tool is being shared around online but I can't find it, anyone know where to get it? Just curious is all.
definitelythatcoolmicrosoftutility.exe
Isn't this the same as BMW locking away functionality that exists in the product you purchased?
Not at all. It's to by-pass the A/B testing of features part of the early insiders ring. And as the article says, there are already unofficial tools to do the same thing. Now we just have the 'official' command line tool made by MS, nothing more.
Does the calendar taskbar flyout count as a hidden feature? Perhaps it would be more useful to leak a tool that can disable windows features. Ads, internet-spam, gutter-news, etc.
But mainly I just want the calendar agenda back in the taskbar.
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
This will fix a lot of windows 10/11 bloat.
I never thought of this. I, too, would like this feature!
The tool that disables bloat is the LTSC edition. You can get windows 10 enterprise LTSC right now. Windows 11 LTSC is scheduled to leak in the second half of 2024.
Windows as an immutable OS will completely trap you within it's own walled garden. It's been done and you really don't want their take on it.
I think in this particular instance "torture dungeon" is more apt
Can I kill efficiency mode and get Chrome working again?
using chrome in 2017 was embarrassing. using chrome in 2023 is just sad.
Why use chrome when edge is just better
Or, use Firefox 😈
Maybe he prefers to hand over his data to Google rather than Microsoft.
Well that's a sentence I never expected to hear
My work emails all run through the google suite of applications and I have two of them plus drive etc so having chrome allows me to have multiple profiles for each work account and they are remote managed by the company.
I couldn't find the setting "don't give websites the permission to play sound" (mutes all audio unless enabled per-site) in Edge, or Firefox. Chrome has that setting.
You'll get a lot of hate here for saying it, but you're not entirely wrong. When they offered free GPT to people running edge I went ahead and loaded it out with my normal compliment of plugins to try it as a secondary browser.
I'm not exactly sure what all they did to it, but it's not just Chrome with the different skin It's notably faster and lighter on the memory footprint.
The reason why I'm not willing to convert to them completely as I don't trust Microsoft with all my data. I'm already keeping as much telemetry from them as I can.
These days I float between Firefox and Brave. Firefox isn't likely to sell my data, and Brave will sell my data but their anti-fingerprinting is pretty solid so they're at least not just letting everyone track me for free.
Why can't more commands have a /reset switch?!
Like how to get publicity when you're using windows media, or delete all non subscription software from the system, or how to make the CPU run at 15% when idle(oh no it's already a windows 10 feature)...
They really think ppl give ah fuck?
I wish they release a tool for their system to work properly. Like connecting to Bluetooth headphones or no full cpu load out of nowhere.
Those are premium windows 14 features.
Imagine they skip 12 and call it 13 like they did with W10
Instructions unclear, advertisements added to start menu 
That "system interrupts" is extremely important.
Time to collect and send that snap shot to mircoshit so daddy satya nadella can inspect, you know for the children.
Whole thing has to get thrown out and rebuilt, its an ancient bloated mess underneath, but they waited too long and now the entire world relies on it.
Am I crazy or are they just reskinning old windows? Go deep enough and old windows things pop up in a disjarring manner.
It blows my mind that system file checker isn’t just a scheduled task that works during idle time. Same with DISM.
You can easily schedule it yourself but I wouldn't. I have used sfc /scannow about 10 times. It did fix an issue once - a VM repeatedly locking up doing Windows updates.
You don't need to check fs with NTFS.
My Bluetooth headphones work just fine. Except every time the connect the automatically set the volume to 100%.
I wish they would make their configuration better. At this point even MacOS easier in that regard. And that is saying something. I constantly find myself googling how to open the old configuration pages because it’s either impossible to find where some of the configuration options went or they don’t exist on the new UIs in the first place. It’s a real down grade. They are trying to go the MacOS route but stopped half way through. Windows 11 feels like a real downgrade compared to Windows 10.
They’ve been trying to kill Control Panel since 2012 bahahahaha
Ah sudden background updates, how I hate them.