These ad slingers do seem to be getting rather desperate.

Hey Ad Slinger... Let it be known that "I WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM AN AD SHOVED INTO MY FACE"

I know that I'm not alone in that.

"I HATE ALL ADS". That comes from working for Yellow Pages before they became irrelevant.

So MS go FSCK yourself and be quick about it.

The solution is to stop sucking at Redmond's teat.

Other teats are available, with different flavours that taste less of donkey balls and advertiser hubris...

Always remember the single-paragraph, fundamental truth of the advertising industry: advertisements shoved into faces – "exposure" – exist only for there to be a concepts of "ad exposure" to sell to gullible advertisers. Hit rates or conversions to actual transactions are intensely and extremely irrelevant.

Advertising has nothing to do with actually selling a product or service. That was once called a "hit rate" or something but everyone realised pretty quickly that advertising hit rates were always and always would be ridiculously low – well below any kind of noise floor. Advertising is all about selling ad space or potential "exposures".

That's why algorithmic feeds and content farms exist. They aren't there because they provide utility. They're there because they represent potential exposures to sell to fools. "Engagement" metrics exist to make those seem valuable – the more time wasted, the more potential "exposures" there are to sell.

Advertising is the antitheses of a "collective action" problem and that's why ad-blocking went ignored for so long. Ad-blocking represented "collective action" in opposition to advertising by the wrong group of people – the users – and those in power didn't care about that because the only action that would threaten them would be if the idiots paying for the ad space acted against it – which they did not. Google, Microsoft et al can still sell their "exposures" to fools even if the users who might actually click the fool's ads block them. Again, the hit rates and conversion stats were so low and meaningless, the effects of ad-blockers were immeasurable. (YouTube being the one exception to this, admittedly. I honestly don't even...)

Microsoft can go swivel on that score. If there is one thing that gets my goat ( there are actually quite a few things, I'm getting to that age!!), is folk pushing ads to tell how great stuff you don't want is! Get the message guys if I want something I'll go research it and then choose the app I want, no amount of advertising is going to make me go to Windows store and download apps I don't need. Even if I did I'probably download it from the publisher website so I have a copy of the installation files and certainly not via the store!

Running Win 10 Enterprise and it will be back to Linux before I install Win 11

A great many things in the Microsoft store no longer or never did have an option to be installed from anywhere except the Microsoft Store. (And of course the Apple App Store is almost the exclusive place to get applications on a Mac, which Microsoft wants to happen for Windows, and Apple is doing everything they can to ensure it remains that way on iOS.)

The problem is really that nothing they recommend ever actually has anything to do with what I'd want to install on my computer. I only install things when I find I have a need, then locate an application that fulfills that need. I don't just see random games and utilities in ads and decide to install them even though I've never had any need or desire for that type of thing in the past. And almost everything on the MS Store is "spur of the moment" stuff, not things you actually seek out (unless MS has paid the developer of something popular and desirable to switch over to it being a Store app only).

"If you want to turn this off, go to Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off the toggle for Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."

Commit that to muscle memory: I'll bet subsequent updates will turn it back on for you and you'll need to repeat this process regularly. Welcome to the brave new world.

Nah, in the next version that option will be split into three - tips, app promotions, and "more" (advertising), be moved to different screens, and all three will default to on.

I prefer O&O's Shutup10 (also works for 11, but they've kept the name the same) to keep me up-to-date on Microsoft's shenanigans of resetting settings' choices and when adding and splitting settings from time to time. Oh, and all the bullshit in Edge too.

https://www.oo-software.com/shutup10

I usually run it on the middle setting (yellow) and haven't found it to break anything I've noticed.

At least they allow them to be disabled, for now, but of course they lump the ads together with whatever other things they might have put into the "recommendations" section which COULD conceivable be other types of things that some people would have wanted to see, like Tips. So it's a requirement that if you want the useful functions, you also have to let them show you ads. Calling them "recommended apps" doesn't change the fact that they're ads and not an operating system feature.

There's lots of space in the file explorer, the user's desktop and the task bar to add additional advertising venues! You could combine it with the requirement to type in an affirmative message on the login screen outlining your favorite brands. I think Microsoft is leaving money on the table here and has plenty of room for further innovation

> There's lots of space in the file explorer, the user's desktop and the task bar to add additional advertising venues!

"We can sell 80 percent of the screen WITHOUT inducing seizures!" - Ready Player One

"We can use another 10% of the screen to sell our new Seizure-Be-Gone app, in the Windows Store now!" - Microsoft

I've got quite a list of registry keys in a custom reg file, to remove various annoyances. I run it on every new Windows install (home users, not enterprise).

It seems that I'm adding to the reg file every couple of months now.

The reg file to clean up ends up being larger than the actual Registry file.

Ads bother me if they pop-up, block pages, interfere with my browsing experience, etc., but what really burns me is forcing me to watch an ad on a platform that I have paid for. If MS can't make enough money without ads in the OS, then charge a bit more for the product. Otherwise, show me ads but give me Windows products for free.

This is the same beef that I have long held with cable companies showing me ads in the same fashion as free 1 OTA television.

1 In CA there are no TV licencing fees, you just need an antenna.

If Micros~1 think that I am going to install Windows 11 on my only PC that needs it (my gaming PC), they can eat my shorts!

Why the holy crap would I want to install an operating system which has become a surveillance and advertising platform, instead of an operating system?

Maybe when they kill Windows 10 for real, I will finally be forced into migrating to a fully Linux based gaming machine and kick out all the games which won't play nicely with Linux. I have a feeling that when that happens, it will be a pleasure and will leave me basking in the warm glow which comes from finally banishing anything developed in Redmond from my home.

I exclusively use Linux Mint now, have done for over a decade. For gaming I've got a PS5. On the plus side the controller is much more ergonomic than trying to use a keyboard for gaming. Don't know if you can get game controllers for a Windows PC? Not something I've ever looked into.

I've been using Debian for 20 years. For gaming: apt install steam. Select the setting to run all non-native games in Proton, find that 90% of them run flawlessly, successfully refund any that don't.

Even VR games work fine. Usually the only barrier is 3rd party DRM / evil anti-cheat rootkits, which I wouldn't want on any platform

Yes, you can get game controllers for Windows and Linux. I have a steam controller, but don't use it much. I prefer a keyboard and mouse personally

>Why the holy crap would I want to install an operating system which has become a surveillance and advertising platform

"Become"?

Much of this stuff is in Windows 10 too, hence the reluctance many of us felt to move off Windows 7.

Sadly, on the basis that we the users aren't the customers - we're increasingly, the product - Windows 11 has taken the concept and turned it up to, well, 11.

My wife: Do you like Salmon?

Me: No

My Wife: Too bad that’s what I’m cooking.

I had got windows 11 running mostly OK on my main desktop, with a local account, via windows update. I had most things turned off with shut up 10 installed and had got it looking almost like windows 10. However a couple of applications had become very flaky, but I persevered, reasoning that I would eventually have to use it permanently and had begun looking for alternatives.

Now that M$ intend to infest the OS with ads I have restored windows 10, from my latest disc image, happy in the knowledge that everything is working as it should for now. I will run it until October 2025 when I will then decide which OS to use, unless M$ do the decent thing and extend it. I wont hold my breath.

Instead of ads they should fix the Kb5034441 screwup.

I did try Linux Mint which installed easily and I quite liked it, but had a problem finding programs to replace the windows ones.

"curated developers" probably meaning "developers who've signed up to give us a cut of their sales money in exchange for shoving adverts for their product in people's faces". This is obviously another step in the journey to making the Windows desktop identical to the many websites that are unreadable due to the amount of animated ads that move about to grab your attention if you don't block them. Eventually you'll have to struggle to squint at a tiny portion of your spreadsheet amongst all the flashing ads for crypto, dating and gambling that are constantly moving about your screen. The logic of trying to monetise every last possible cent out of you by flinging ads everywhere makes that inevitable.

Its not the ads themselves that so concern me.... but the way they are presented and what they are for.

eg I'm using the works computer to design fixturing, programs and the general wizardry that turns some crazed designer's fevered imagination into bits of metal.

an ad or 2 going "Use super whizzo tooling" or "solve your staffing problem by hiring from "we dont supply morons" agency" might be a bit intrusive , but sort of tolerable , however knowing mickeysoft it will be some stupid game with the sound volume set at 11 and unskippable (see casual games on the default startbar for examples of this).

Why cant m$ concentrate on supplying a secure stable OS along with office and be satisfied with the huge income stream from this..

I have already ditched Microsoft completely, and switched to Linux, even for gaming (on Steam). If game makers don't support Linux, that's their loss, not mine. I used to even use the Microsoft Launcher on my Android phone - that has gone the way of Windows, in the Trash Can. This from a Windows user from Windows 3.0 to Windows 10. It all just makes sad reading. Is the Microsoft C-suite really this desperate to be like Apple? Obviously, yes!

Reading this sort of news these days just makes me feel sorry for those who NEED to use the pseudo-OS that is Windows.