Windows just changed my desktop wallpaper and re-added the search bar without my permission after an update

Oh, didn't you know? It's not really your PC any longer.

Fortunately, it's actually mine, cuz I use Fedora with Gnome, which doesn't do these magic tricks 😁
- Tricks are something Microsoft does for money.
- The PC might be yours, but that virtual machine is Microsoft’s little bitch
- I used to use Fedora on my Asus gaming laptop, and loved it. More recently I've chosen to switch over to Manjaro, because I wanted something based on Arch that was more lightweight than Garuda. Gotta love that Linux life.
- I guess Lemmy is mostly tech nerds like myself, but it's still cool as hell to see another Fedora user around :)
- Oh, let me tell you why your [sic] wrong for not using Arch and Ice Weasel! /s 😉
Just shuddered at a possible future where someone’s PC locked up with the following notice:
“We have locked your PC because you no longer have sufficient MS funds. One of our technicians will be by shortly to retrieve it. Sit tight, we are downloading its contents. Turning off the internet during this time will lead to strict legal action against you. Thank you for using Microsoft! Be sure to check out the new Surface Ultra and sign up to receive free rewards such a Panago and Ivey Cream!”

Well yea, you turned off the windows search/Cortana/Bing bar, but now it's called copilot/recall bar which you haven't turned off yet.

/S

Soon I won't have to anymore. This is the last Windows virtual machine I have that sometimes I have to use 😀
- I have a virtual machine with WinXP and one with 98, for when I'm feeling nostalgic :)
  Sorry to hear you have to use Windows... I'm still stuck on 10 but I've been enjoying the hell out of Mint Xfce and I'll complete the move soon enough!

I wonder how many people confuse him for the comedian.
- I just did
- I assumed it wasn't the comedian, but bought that he might be angry enough at Windows to make it happen.
I used a similar tool in the past. When I wanted to re-enable something, I forgot which tool I used to disable it, and I couldn't actually get it working ever again

OUR desktop wallpaper, comrade

They don’t do this shit in Linux.
Come join us, Comrade.
- Hmm, on one of the KDE plasma updates, my wallpaper did change to their infamous teletubby wallpaper. Mind you, I was still using the default wallpaper at that time, and this was their new default wallpaper, so that's probably why.
- Tell that to Fedora that keeps resetting the Firefox homepage back to a Fedora news site.

I hate that goddamn searchbar

Tell me about it. Useless. The whole start menu is fucked honestly. Can’t ever find anything you’re looking for. WHY THE FUCK WOULD I WANT BING WEB SEARCH RESULTS HERE!?!?
- Just booted? Better wait 45 seconds and many failed searches, because DNS isn't resolving.
  Doesn't matter that you are trying to launch a local program, it absolutely must delay the user experience until it can successfully resolve a DNS query.
  Disgusting

Dont say it... dont say it.... dont saaaayyyy iiiiitt!!!

Have you considered Linux Mint?

Damn... sorry.. was I the first to suggest it this time?

You were, but it appears OP is running Windows in a VM on Linux.
I already use Fedora Linux, and this Windows is in a virtual machine because sometimes my school requires me to use software that simply doesn't run on Linux
- That's where Windows belongs now, in a VM.
- I bought a cheap laptop for school just to run their windows anti cheat crap. Do you have to run something similar?
You're right though. I recently installed it and it is so much more user friendly and does everything I need it to.

Your computer? You mean Microsoft's bitch box?

Face it, they can do whatever they want with your computer and you're powerless to stop them. They've also been looking through your photos and adding them to their AI model.

Face it, they can do whatever they want with your computer and you’re powerless to stop them.
Not my computer. They can't do shit if it's not installed.
We have to face the reality; Microsoft has got the majority of users by their balls. People don't like M$ per say, but rather the applications,the compatibility, and ubiquitousness of their platform.
Till people get their favourite apps on their desired platform, M$ could start charging $10 a month to access Windows + malware + ads, and people would still rush to buy them.
at this rate the only good versions of windows that are supported are windows 10 LTSC and IoT editions since these are versions of windows used by most corporations schools and goverments thus they need to only get security updates
well there is one thing you can do to stop them

It even did the same thing with enterprise customers. All our machines suddenly started asking us to enable search. Like why do I need another thing when opening the Start Menu and typing is the same fucking thing?? And to fuck with my group policies and undo the customization I had is mega infuriating.

Test updates before deploying
- They didn't say they deployed it, also enterprise operating systems are generally expected to not suddenly change manually-set policies for users...

When they tell you they're walking back Recall and it's "off by default", remember that they constantly do this shit.

"We've installed malicious spyware on your computer without you asking for it, but don't worry, it's off by default."
"No." (Installs GNU/Linux)
I'd love to meet the engineers who work on these "features". How do they go along with this shit and sleep at night?

Somebody set up us the bomb!
We get signal.
What!
Main screen turn on.
It's you!!
How are you gentlemen!!

don't look now but they've probably installed a new version to Teams along with everything else, lol

I have two versions of Teams installed on my work PC. The regular old Teams that is apparently not long for this world anymore. And New Teams, which is exactly the same as old teams but on a different tech stack (?) That will replace the old one. MS has lost the plot, they have somehow a worse product management than Google.
- There's a third Teams
  Teams Classic
  Teams NEW
  Teams Personal
- Someone else in another thread I read recently, I think they worked for Microsoft at some point, said that it's due for different departments all competing for corporate attention. Doing the big new thing to keep their job. Rather than just fine tuning for performance or longevity. Something like that.
- It was for legal reasons. They split personal teams and work teams to try to dodge an antitrust iirc
But the old one will still be installed so you will just repeatedly get popups to switch

This is why you should not trust them regarding Recall. They will not let it go. It will be forced on you eventually.

All it did to you was cosmetic.

Windows 10's "feature" updates consistently also re-enable the "fast startup" option on my machine when they install. Which, on my particular motherboard and SSD combination, causes Windows to take about 30 minutes to boot when left enabled for reasons I have never been able to comprehend. A regular cold boot only takes like 20 seconds, so... I definitely tend to notice when it does this behind my back yet again.

It also does it so that you no longer hit the bootloader. My one last dual boot machine is normally a Linux setup, but every so often I have to use the real MS Office tools (some collaborator or publisher demands it), so I boot windows. Then windows patches and stops actually hitting grub so it acts like a windows only machine until I fix whatever Microsoft fucks up yet again.
It's time to move to a VM for this garbage. I just don't neet it more than once every other year so I never seem to get around to nuking it.
- How’s gaming on Linux working out lately? I have a newer Windows 11 machine and looking to jump ship, asap.
My favorite part is how it broke the Intel wifi card during my Linux install until I booted back into windows just to turn fast boot off. Maybe some hackery to skip initializing wifi hardware or something?
- Dude, you enlighten me, that happened to me too but it was during the time I jumped between win and Linux and one day did the wifi card just stop working and I couldn't figure out why, I tried many things without luck but some days it magicaly worked again and I haven't been in windows since and have never had that problem again. I don't know if I turned off fast boot (but I have done that many times so it is likely), so it could have been an update that turned it on. I will remember this if it happens to someone or myself again. Thank you!

no no no, it asked your permission. It's just that the "we added back the search bar, is that ok" dialog defaults to "yes" after some short time. Extremely fucking annoying change

the dialog:

article: https://www.c-amie.co.uk/technical/windows-10-patch-for-october-2023-kb5015684-re-enables-the-taskbar-search-box/

I had no dialog
- The dialog goes away after a short time defaulting to "yes I want the useless search bar"
  It happened on all my PCs, I was infuriated
- According to the screenshot the question is only asked embedded in the start menu. Windows 10 does that all the time without actually asking. Win11 is better at actually keeping the configuration.

And they've made Bing your standard browser and activated Copilot.

It's a nice wallpaper though for what it's worth.

your background? Since when is this Windows computer your computer? Microsoft has been very clear that we no longer own our computers if we choose to use Windows.

It's Microsoft Windows' computer. Must've missed that little apostrophe.

Sweet wallpaper though

VirOS
- That one was programmed by Vir Cotto, and Lennier

My windows vm runs Cairo shell as the desktop and I've replaced the file manager with Dolphin and the command prompt with Konsole and notepad with Kate and it almost feels like a usable operating system

Kindows

Get used to it. It is not your machine, its Microsofts.

They're trying to tell you to go outside

At least it's a virtual machine.

I love to extol the virtues of ReviOS. You’ll never have to worry about windows doing things ever again as it rips the guts out of windows. Seriously check it out.

It’s real easy to install.

Also what Linux and theme are you running there?

I've steered away from these as a hangover of trust issues back from the old XP 'lite' ISO days. However since Microsoft is clearly the main source of malware on windows these days I think its time to let that go..
- Well thankfully it’s an open source playbook now and not an ISO anymore. Plus it’s got a decent discord server to chat about it
I think I might have to check this out.
- I use it on my VMs, my bootcamp and my main gaming pc.
  You download the AME tool, load in the Revi playbook and press go. Just need to disable AV for it to do its magic.

I wish there was an easier way to tell people about Ameliorated and give it a try. Having Windows update and edge removed has already been so much better.

Now I do have to mention that I still run the iso they offered back on version 21H1 which I prefer because installing Windows takes roughly 2 minutes until it's ready to do whatever

Nice, looks really cool. Wanted to do a clean install anyway, will give it a try.

They've absolutely gone mad with power

Isn't this just normal Windows behaviour? I feel like I've been reading these kinds of posts forever.

What VM software are you using?

"Boxes" from Gnome shipped by default with Fedora

Is this via a VM on a Mac?

- I mean it's pretty easy to tell that it's just gnome with different icons if you're ever used linux. doesn't even look that much like mac
  oh god maybe I'm a nerd too

Time to switch to Windows 11 as Microsoft is going to make your experience as bad as possible

If you need Windows I would create Samba AD DC and then join the machine to the domain. From there you can configure it with group policy

- True but the AD can be useful for other things and is separate from the install

I just run Windows 11 Enterprise and don’t see any of this crap

Do tell about this. Are there any downsides? Any compatibility issues with hardware or software?
- Only downside is it tends to be a bit behind on feature updates which is probably a good thing. All hardware and software is completely compatible. The other bonus is it gives more fine grained controls over telemetry that home and pro don’t.

Why do you subject yourself to this? Cast off your chains, become a free $USER.

It's clearly a VM
- Shh you're no fun.
Because it's not our fucking choice, you imbecile. Corporate does as corporate wants. I can't install your precious penguin on my work machine, okay??!
- Skill issue, get a better job.

Hey, got a link to the wallpaper for your main OS? Not the windows one, the red and black one we see part of in the image. Thanks!

It's one of the Gnome default wallpapers
https://zebreus.github.io/all-gnome-backgrounds/
The colors make me think it's one of the Ubuntu default wallpapers.

The good old, “If it’s not your source, it’s not your computer.”

This shit is probably worse on windows 11, I'm still sticking with 10 for years even after it's life cycle. And even after it gets hard to use im switching Linux. When my computer dies dies.

Damn, even as a Linux user I get tired with all these "windows bad" posts. Yes, we all know it sucks. No lemmy user wants to use windows.

Hahaha you worry about that but they sent ALL your private information to their systems all the time… it’s a disgusting OS and org. I use Linux

Pretty sure they are not sending all my files. I would definitely see it in network traffic

Poor you!

Yeah, I don't view changing your desktop background when you were using the default as an issue lol.
- The fact Microsoft keeps re-enabling features users are disabling isn't something to just ignore. Imagine if they were the silently turn on a feature like Recall.
- I agree with you here. As soon as you change something, that should be respected but as long as you use the default theme/wallpaper/… that could just as well mean that you prefer tracking the default or don't care at all.
  Now bringing back the explicitly disabled search bar really is atrocious
- I do, it's userspace. Expectation is that they keep their paws away after user set it up.

I'm not sure how you messed up, because this has never happened to me, and I stay up to date.

Oof, blaming the victim.
- Nah, just calling out bullshit when I see it.
maybe you need to try again.
Instructions:
install any windows 10 version released before october 2023
disable the search bar
install KB5015684 (or wait 2-3 days for it install automatically)
windows has added back the search bar "for your convenience"
- This definitely doesn’t happen to everyone. I’ve never once had this happen and I’ve kept my windows up to date.
- Weird, because I surely installed windows 10 before that date, turned off the search bar, and have definitely installed that update, but the search bar never popped back up for me. Maybe I'm just lucky.
Probably could’ve worded this better.
Maybe a “What have you all setup to remove these features, how are you running windows, etc “
Best to lead with pure curiosity and questions than to lead with assumptions. We don’t know what we don’t know, and that also means that the depth of what we don’t know could be surprisingly deep.
Stay curious!