I seem to think most of Windows 11 Problems are different cases for everyone,
everyone has a different experence. It seems that people even have different
menus in the Windows 11 Settings off the Desktop.

It's to my understanding that, the biggest issue is that people just don't like
how different it is from Windows 7. Even Windows 10 went back to the
Windows 7 Design, when Windows 8 was a failure. However, Windows 11
does not do this, it just keeps chucking along with people disliking it.

I get that there are people who like it, I personally don't.


The Laptop I am using for GOG has Windows 11 on it,
it came pre-installed as a brand new Laptop, it was not used,
but it was only like about $200, so I didn't care. It was cheap.

They don't care that you post on forums about not liking it. They care that you use it, that shows up in statistics, and as long as the number of users grows, they're doing things right, achieving their goals.

As I posted in a similar thread...

... I have a friend who both builds computers and has a background in a hardware-related field and...

... a W11 update both erased his data and almost bricked his new system.

He couldn't fix it and with the aid of a local shop got it to limp forward only to...

... do the SAME THING on the next W11 update!

He's ready to go to MAC and / or sue MS.

When this first happened, I looked around for a "fix" online and found an MS Support thread entitled...

... "Windows 11 broke my PC!"

Seems a lot of people -- although not a majority -- are having the same issue and MS hasn't come out with any reason or realistic fix.

I almost went to W11, but after reading this Support thread and seeing the problems my friend is having, I refuse... at least until later in the lifecycle.

I keep forgetting: why is Win10 good, but Win11 bad?

I still use both side by side and the only real difference I feel is that by default you can't create the first (admin) user as an offline user in Win11 (the other users after that can be offline users). To me that doesn't matter much, I used my default outlook-user, already used it in Windows 10.

For security reasons, I've anyway created also a non-privileged user for Windows 11 which is what I daily use, the online admin user is mostly unused. If I need to install or do some other admin stuff, Windows 11 asks for the admin user pin code anyway.

For me the worst mainline Windows since XP was Windows 8. With it it was far too obvious MS wanted to turn Windows home users into (Surface) tablet users who buy their games and applications through the MS Store, similar idea as with iOS and Android.

The very worst Windows versions for me have been the ones where MS has pushed that idea even further, even blocking users from installing normal offline Windows applications. Like Windows RT, Windows 10X, Windows 10S and what is there...

How can Windows go from good to bad every generation? That would be going from your perceived good to bad to worse to even worse, etc. lol. Anyhow, I hated Windows until 95. I liked 98, but missed out on the 2000 and Me iterations and went straight to XP and that glorious NTFS file system. From there, I went to Vista, but Dual booted with XP for the older features. Never tried 7. I thought 8 was horrendously ugly, inefficient and too tablet based. I loved Windows 10 (after they fixed it...mostly. I love Windows 11( Actually still Windows 10 but with more security features). So, imho...the go from good to better in most cases, but have minor hiccups along the way. I got no beef with Gates. Windows has brought computing into the average dummy's world.

Be glad to never have experienced Windows ME, which was very short lived and rightfully so. Compared to 98SE it was an insult. 2000 was great. Win 8.1 got rid of the Windows 8 start menu already, long before Windows 10, but Win10 in my opinion so far had the best menu. You had the traditional file view and could also freely position icons and resize them. I'm happy with Win11. They still didn't eliminate all problems with the new UI pipeline and the file explorer is too dark and grabs the focus once in a while, but they are on a good way. It's slowly going where the direction was set with Windows 8 and the settings are much much better organized than they were in Windows 10, where you could not find shit (and they also have better functionality, a lot more is integrated into the new UI system than it was in Windows 10).

I recall one extra hindrance in Windows 11 menus now.

If you install e.g. 7-zip, it takes one more right-click to get to the 7-zip context menu options (like "Add to archive" or "Extract to here" etc.) as it did in Windows 10 or earlier. Now there is this extra "See more options" or whatever it was called in the right-click menu of Windows 11, and only then you get to the 7-zip context menus.

Yeah, that is actually a bummer if you are doing lots of tasks with 7-zip archives, always one extra click in all operations. Otherwise I agree I don't see much of a difference doing stuff in Windows 11 vs 10, as long as you aren't against creating an online user (I am not, plus all the additional users (after the first one) can be local users, no online Outlook account required for them).

Gates stepped down as CEO of MS in 2000, gave up his full time role in 2008 and stepped down from the board completely in 2020...

Not having a good statistic yet, although i think the majority of the buyers are getting Win 11 "for free" because it will come preinstalled on almost any new hardware, and there is NO choice because (almost) no one is offering Win 10 preinstalled anymore, Indeed, if you got Win 10 preinstalled then you can upgrade to Win 11 if you dare... this is no issue. Although, MS does not enjoy this "freedom-act" and is trying to completely wipe out Win 10 from the market. So in this term, there is no new copys provided anymore, no matter in what form. And any new system will be forced to use Win 11 and the old Win 10 owners can upgrade to Win 11 at any given moment. This is not because of the "nice attitude" of MS, but rather because MS is trying to "increase the support from the industry for their new OS". In term there is to many users NOT using the new OS... this will be a issue to MS. So... MS is trying very hard in order to push the support for the new OS, in any way possible. So this it the main reason you can always upgrade for free... because it is worth a lot of cash for them in term the industry is feeling the urge in order to ultimately support the new OS, and in optimal circumstances... this new OS ONLY. So, MS can enforce all the rules and DRM on any matter related to this system because it will be unavoidable.

If you are a system builder.... only in the very beginning there will be Retail-versions who are somewhat with lesser (but not none) restrictions considering hardware-changes. At some later point... maybe 3-4 years from the start of a new OS... they will sell no Retail anymore; OEM only because the assemblers are asking for it, it simply is a industry demand. However, at some point even the OEM versions will not be provided anymore, no matter "how hard they keep asking for it".

Just to understand how it works and it surely does not work the way many of the customers are enjoying it; it is rather "enforcing hard rules considering any kind of support".

From the standpoint of "technology change": The move from Win 7 to Win 10 was, in gaming terms, a bigger one because of the new DX 12 features (for example Raytracing) NOT provided by Win 7 anymore. So, many of the new games simply may not work at all. This issue is not happening if you stay on Win 10 because there is no new DX which can be critical to gamers, So, in this term, Win 10 potentially can last even longer than Win 7... and so far, there is zero good reason for me why to switch to a new OS... Win 10 works even better for PC use... Maybe if i use a handheld Win 11 may have some benefits, but toward a PC? I see no chance... it is in almost any term nothing more than a downgrade... sadly.

What is even more important than maybe 1-5% more performance... is the compatibility matter. Win 10, at the current condition, is offering a great compatibility toward the probably highest amount of games and even hardware (taking into account the newest games as well). Win 11 can only be worse and Win 12, if the architectural changes are even bigger than this... the compatibility will decrease even further... which is indeed a major concern. The industry and many good and old programs simply can not "catch up so quick" anymore and there is actually no great reason doing so... because the old Win 10 works fine. It simply need to be upgraded to the newest standards... i see no reason why to "trash it"; this is a bad move.

And of course, i enjoyed the Win 10 menu (actually close to the way how Win 7 is handling it with some nice features) and how you can manage the programs in a great way... it is far more confident for PCs to manage than on Win 11 which is totally focused on mobile-demand.

Gates is currently "only" the probably biggest shareholder of MS but his influence is not going further than this, because he is not actively involved with MS anymore. Maybe he may start to moan if his shares are losing to much of value, but as long as MS is doing fine he is not acting at all... just "investing". Actually he always was an investor and way better at this sort of action than at any different matters.

Thanks for that little tidbit of I-don't-give-a-damn trivia. lol It's totally irrelevant as we we're talking Windows from the beginning until now...and how it performs./ed He was involved there in some way at some time. Total Karen. lol

Do current versions of 7zip not support the new context menu? A few other programs I use (including WinRAR) do it.
Btw, you can go direclty to the old context menu by holding the shift key while clicking.


Until a few days ago it would also always open if you use the keyboard to call the context menu.
While I don't really mind the new menu per se, I went back (registry entry) to the old one anyway, since when you open it, the new menu does not have the keyboard focus, so you can't navigate through menus using the arrow keys. Since I do most of my work with they keyboard, that was the final push that got me to use the old one again.

If there was not Microsoft, some other company would have stepped into that path. It all depends on "who is achieving the biggest support at some critical point of a development, kinda like Steam ruling it all" and in the beginning there was competition... at some point they was slowly "fading away".

Even on other spots... there is rarely a true competition because at some point a single entity may ultimately win. AMD vs. Nvidia? Not really... Nvidia is still owning around 70% GPU market share... AMD is without chance. Regarding CPU market... it SEEMS AMD may have catched up but looking at the sheer size of Intel as a company, Intel is still way bigger than AMD. AMD can only compete with Nvidia if it comes to the sheer "market value", good CPU or not.

Regarding Intel, their CPUs seems NOT be able to beat AMD at the current time, yet... they still got around 80% market share it seems... still "the king"... nearly untouched. It is rarely a matter of good products... it is a matter of support and who is "owning the ropes".

Sure, Apple is ruling it all but Apple is a totally different market... Apple is not fighting for gamers, they are mainly different customers. Most money is nowadays done in the mobile-market: Apple know the deal.

Besides, in my mind Nvidia is only "supreme" at the flagship GPU, 3090 TI... 4090... things like that. And the 3070 and up on the notebook-class is great too. All the other stuff i would rather go for AMD because Nvidia really got a VRAM-issue and is always very cheap in handing out sufficient VRAM. This is nothing new... this is a very old and proven Nvidia-policy because it makes old GPUs slowly "obsolete", no matter the power. If you have lower than 8 GB you are pretty much doomed on the newest games. However, any notebook-GPU lower than 3070 got less than 8 GB RAM... so for many gamers, this stuff is pretty much "over", on purpose it seems because Nvidia is always cheap on RAM with the exceptions of the flagship and maybe some other top models.

With AMD it is generally easyer with VRAM... but it is not helping them much getting more buyers. Maybe the price is still to high (even AMD was increasing the prices a lot... sadly)... although most likely better priced compared to Nvidia, yet... still not good enough it seems.

And it does not matter how much main RAM you got, any gamer machine need sufficient VRAM... (not lower than 8 GB, but 16 GB or more is perfect) gamers may lack to understand this matter because only the VRAM is fast enough and this is a critical RAM for any gamer machine.

OF course, if there is low VRAM, most games may try to use lesser of it but it will always come at the cost of performance. A few games may even crash... but this it not common and some failure at VRAM management.

The development for more VRAM will not go down because the newest consoles are using 16 GB of high performance RAM and because games mainly need exactly this high performance RAM, those console will be robbed of their ressource until the very edge, They got a very "light system"; so most of the RAM can be used as VRAM. It will even affect the PC market which will, in optimal circumstances, be able to provide the same VRAM a new console is able to provide as a unified main-RAM, not so hard to understand. PCs are wasting way more ressources for system use, but at least it can be stored on the main RAM. Yet, some copy of the VRAM have to be made in the main RAM as well, due to the nature of the "dedicated design", so a unified design is more effective when it comes to total RAM use; yet, it will need high performance RAM for all it is able to provide.

Besides, for anyone running a system lower than Windows 10/11 they will be out of luck on Steam somewhere in 2024, because the launcher may not support it anymore and without a launcher those games usually can not be played anymore. How it works on GoG i do not know, but as long as games are available as a setup it is only affected by the game itself, which is indeed helpful. No DRM seems to be a good thing, but not valued to much.

Although i do recommend Win 10 at the current time, because it is simply the OS able to handle the highest amount of games.

I assume, Valve may even try to enforce Win 11 only... if MS is paying them a sufficient amount of digital shinys, however.. they most likely seem to worry "the anger of the users" because the majority is still using Win 10, even on Steam, and maybe every second system is barely able to handle Win 11, which got some higher requirement.

This is DRM, if people fail to understand the meaning.
Sure, the majority of the people are like sheeps; they do not really worry their rights or whatelse... what they really care is simply that they are "part of the shepherd", which is pretty natural. There is always lesser of the stubborn wolves and it will always stay like this. Because wolves are dangerous, there can never be to many of them... humans naturally fear them... this will never change.

This is as well my answer to those words that might be valid; although i do think "sheeps can still go the way of high resistance and even kill themself by jumping over a cliff". Although, for this to happen they need to feel a lot of fear and i already told... true fear have to be sufficiently close to the sheeps... it can not be executed from something that is failing to reach them. It simply means "they have to worry...".

So, yeah... in general, certain matters will most likely never change and some etablished "forces" will stay almost forever. Yet, we all know, nothing can last forever; so there is always room for hope and room for diversity. Because life, no matter how hard we try going the path of a easy going shepherd... is constantly changing.

Interesting and informative, thanks. This gets to the root of my original post though, because I've never done a single thing with a 7zip or rar file other than double-click it to extract the files. I didn't even know there were right-click options for it.

Again my point is for what I use Windows for there's really no difference between 10 and 11... or even 7 and 10 for that matter. However I fully understand people people exist who do more with it than play games, surf the web and watch videos. I just wonder how many of you there are compared to the number of users, and if that might be why there's little sign of people giving up Windows for Linux or whatever else.