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Windows 11

My conclusion for now after doing the clean install:

- it feels much better now, everything is faster and it feels snappier
- my ThinkPad runs cooler? No idea, the fans are much quieter now.
- HDPI scaling is still borked, but that was to be expected

Also a sidenote: WSL 2 is fantastic, my development environment was up and running again after some minutes. I'll really miss that when I switch back to MacOS.
 
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dazlicous said:
Installed on my new XPS and having issues with wifi sometimes it shows connected with internet access but I don’t have internet. I have to switch wifi off and back on.

Seems the Killer wifi adapter many are having issues with Win 11
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internet is not a good thing at times-but you need that to post?
anyways
did you download the XPS BIOS thingeeee?
since i did a upgrade instead of a clean install everything works out wifi-bluetooth wise.
the battery is horrible (even after calibrating) and opening downloads slows file explorer.
i might switch back to 10 because that OS is better and less bubble gum.
windows11 is great, but not my style, like BigSur or even catalina.

Dell is horrible at helping their customers, and won't pinpoint exact minor problems.
(I'm trying to get the exact replacement battery on their site, no luck!)
which i knew while the clerk was handing me the XPS box
but the laptop is incredible and sturdy.
 
Romain_H said:
True. But I try to avoid reinstallation - I just spent a day and a half installing the thing; no desire to do it all over again 😬
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Pretty sure you can upgrade via USB. It's relatively quick anyway compared to MacOS.
 
mi7chy said:
Pretty sure you can upgrade via USB. It's relatively quick anyway compared to MacOS.
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Yes, but that still means reinstallation from scratch I suppose (haven‘t done much on Win lately). Plus Windows is just an afterthought on this machine, Kali Linux being the primary OS. Dunno how things are today, but in years prior the Windows installer liked to overwrite Linux bootloaders.
 
Update: I managed to update to Win 11. As expected, it screwed up the boot sector; luckily I was able to configure grub2 to start up Kali and re-installed grub/configs.

Everything is finally back up and running. MS is still evil though
 
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I just got an update, showing build number 22489. The icons have gotten even more skeuo. Nice. Other than that, nothing noticeable, other than a new watermark indicating it's an 'evaluation copy' on the lower right.

Noticed changes:

1. Sidebar/widget drawer icon is now in color, instead of greyscale

2. Microsoft Meetings, which oddly and ironically resembles an old iChat icon

3. icons have a tiny bit more 3D depth, saturation is turned up.

Permanent watermark indicating:

Windows 11 Home Insider Preview
Evaluation copy. Build 22489.rs_prelease.211023-1816
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It seemed to do a seamless update, as my PC didn't full on reboot, and Edge was still running where I left it after login.

I'm not impacted by bootloader issues but I'm the type who keeps two separate HDDs for dual booting.
 
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using the latest stable build of 11. longer uptimes have made the system unstable (which is kinda stupid to say, but it bugs me) and i have to restart my system every once in a while. also, this OS doesn't work out for me right now. going back to 10, i suppose...
 
k24a1 said:
using the latest stable build of 11. longer uptimes have made the system unstable (which is kinda stupid to say, but it bugs me) and i have to restart my system every once in a while. also, this OS doesn't work out for me right now. going back to 10, i suppose...
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It's not worse than 10 for me, but it's also very much not worth the major version bump it got. I'm still so disappointed by Windows 11.

It's also annoying af, that the stupid taskbar is in the pitiful state it's in. How did this feature even manage to pass the first stages of qa, I don't get it. :( Let alone the fact, that it's part of the final release.
 
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What's wrong with the taskbar?

I never understood why everyone suddenly loves the old fashioned, Windows 7 style start menu, or heaven forbid, Windows 10's version with Windows 8's tiles mixed in with the normal start menu. Back when Windows 95 launched, everyone HATED the start menu, mainly because it took longer to find stuff if you had enough apps installed, and it'd be mostly in nested menus and if you moused outside the menu you were in, it would close and you'd start over again.

So far, Windows 11 has all my commonly used apps right front and center, one click away, and that's for those few that I haven't pinned to the taskbar. It's more like a modern Windows 3.1 Program Manager, and I love it. I also never understood why anyone fills their desktop with tons of icons. My grandmother has one for each website magnified 10X because she can't understand typing in a web address. Literally, she can't fathom typing in 'www.google.com'. Has to double click a shortcut. At work, the PC runs Windows 10 (talk about ugly since I've become accustomed to both Linux and Windows 11) and there's like 30+ icons across two monitors, and the boss only understands Internet Explorer. She's gonna be in trouble once they remove her favorite browser. She hates Chrome, and she doesn't 'get' Edge. Also worse, the CCTV system (UNV) only runs on I.E.

As for uptimes, and this might be cause this is a gaming rig with 32GB of PC3000 DDR4 SDRAM, and a Ryzen 5, and large SSD, but I can leave it all week or more and it's barely touching 10% the RAM.
 
It’s unfinished, lacks features and is partly broken. I still can’t use an automatically hiding taskbar on multiple monitors. It’s only coming up on the main monitor.

My start menu is a slow and weird search now, that’s limited to way too few pinned apps. Even on a huge screen.

And instead of building a sufficient and improved modern replacement, I got a stupid widget panel from the 90s, rounded corners and features that should have been in Windows 10 for years.
 
I have been getting internet dropouts on my PC the last few days. I think I have isolated it to W11. I have my PC on during the day but mostly use my MBA when working. It seems to be when the PC sleeps and I wake it. On occasion the internet connection (wired) does not seem to connect, it even causes the router to do something as my Echo stops playing music intermittently other devices such as iPhone and iPad lose connection.

Very odd but definitely only happens when waking the PC, not a coincidence. And I have not changed anything on the PC.
 
Playing music from YT Music non-stop and no issues. I had issues when my NetGear Nighthawk ($499 of wasted money!) started to die (it was so hot you couldn't touch it!) and when I replaced it with some cheap little $49 router (Linksys) it's been much better. This PC, my Apple TV/Fire TV, and one smartphone in particular kept getting booted off the network. In fact, if more than TEN devices tried to use the wifi, the router hard froze and it was extremely hot. I just ended up tossing it.

Just goes to show you, a more expensive router with dual-core and 2GB RAM doesn't equate to stable connectivity. Windows is very bad about demands on your network and it can expose any weakness, especially if you're on Wifi.

In my case, I think IP addresses were being 'stolen' by the router from devices still on the network to give to any device connecting, and they fought each other.

Also, keep in mind that if you got auto-updates on, that can take a large amount of bandwidth. If I were watching 4K content now, and tried to so much as open Edge, the Fire TV would stop to rebuffer. That's just trying to use a browser while watching TV. Now compound that with updates downloading willy nilly and you got problems. One thing my NetGear did do better when it did work, was handle multiple streams.

I got auto updates disabled (yanked all permissions from Windows and System32 and only allow myself access to it, and deleted anything pertaining to Windows Update) The only way the system can update at all is if I tell it to.
 
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My Yoga 6 is back on Win 11 after the latest update. Performance is now better than it was under Win 10. And it generally looks and feels much nicer than Win 10 (which always felt like a half-step from Win 8.x).

It'll take a while to get accustomed to the UI changes. The first snag I'm hit with is...

Am I supposed to be able to right-click on a taskbar icon and unpin it? I'm not referring to "system" icons like search and widgets, but app icons that I put there.
 
sracer said:
Am I supposed to be able to right-click on a taskbar icon and unpin it? I'm not referring to "system" icons like search and widgets, but app icons that I put there.
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1636027946327.png
 
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LeeW said:
View attachment 1902331
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Thanks. That pop-up wasn't available. Right-clicking on the icon didn't show anything. Also, the notification center didn't appear when I clicked on the indicator in the lower-right corner.

I ended up having to run a powershell command to re-register the notification center (which did a bunch of re-registering).

After running the script and rebooting, the notification center now appears and the pop-up menu appears on icons located in the taskbar.

For anyone interested, this is the command (run in powershell as administrator):
Code: 
Get-AppxPackage | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppxManifest.xml" -verbose }
 
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Another question, my installation of 11 is fresh and clean, but my explorer still crashes and restarts multiple times a day.

Does anyone else experience this issue?
 
grmlin said:
Another question, my installation of 11 is fresh and clean, but my explorer still crashes and restarts multiple times a day.

Does anyone else experience this issue?
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If I recall correctly, you have a ThinkPad. If so, make sure that you've installed all of the drivers and firmware updates.
 
sracer said:
If I recall correctly, you have a ThinkPad. If so, make sure that you've installed all of the drivers and firmware updates.
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yeah, that's correct :) And the system is basically just as stable as 10, but it has some weird glitches and quirks. Mainly everything taskbar feels off and buggy

and yeah, I use Vantage and I'm up to date.
 
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