Let me, for once, not mince words here: Windows 11 is a travesty, a loose collection of dark patterns and incompetence, run by people who have zero interest in lovingly crafting an operating system they can be proud of. Windows has become a vessel for subscriptions and ads, and cannot reasonably be considered anything other than a massive pile of user-hostile dark patterns designed to extract data, ad time, and subscription money from its users.
I ran into the same type of problem trying to reset the forgotten MS password for a friend. In her case she could log in to her PC with a PIN but not her password. Outlook was still accessible from the PC but not her phone.
Attempting to change the password resulted in an “SMS service not available” message 90% of the time over a period of days. The few times the service was available and it said we successfully changed the password, the new password would not work, even when we were positive it was entered correctly. The SSD wasn’t anywhere near full.
Microsoft then turned the days already wasted because of their incompetence into a week. As a last ditch effort we tried Microsoft’s 24 hour turn-around password reset questionnaire three times. After going through the process the new password was still rejected both on her PC and phone every single time.
We eventually had to give up. If her PC or her Outlook app ever asks for a password she’ll lose all access and that’s apparently just fine with Microsoft. When she does buy a new PC it’ll be an Apple.
When she does buy a new PC it’ll be an Apple.
an apple? Because of this? why? why is it not an option to use a computer without an online account?
Microsoft is making it impossible to use Windows PCs without an online account. Obviously there’s Linux, but I’m not willing to be her only source of tech support. That leaves Apple.
in the consumer versions, yes. but more generally that will still remain an option for some time at least.
for now, there’s windows 10 LTSC, updates until 2032. I would get her this. after that she could still use windows 11 LTSC releases, which don’t receive surprise function changes because businesses use it for critical things.
https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
same site also has an open source forever activation tool
2025-09-18
What’s up with the old reposts today?
Edit: And it looks to be just you doing that, @lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com, so what’s up?
Well, I found some nice blogs and enjoyed reading a few articles today on my weekend and I though “maybe, others enjoy those, too”, so I shared 3 of them. They got around 900 upvotes in total, so I think, that was not a bad decision (for me, it’s not about internet points, but about discourse / seeing what others think / strengthen lemmy).
I also couldn’t find past posts of this article in @technology@lemmy.world, so it shouldn’t be a duplicate -> https://reddthat.com/search?q=dark+patterns&type=All&listingType=All&communityId=9232&page=1&sort=TopAll&titleOnly=false
Lots of people miss posts and there’s always a main character who’s oh-so offended because if they’ve seen something before, obviously everyone else has too. Thanks for reposting(?) this.
Not offended in the slightest. Their response already allayed my worries that it was someone from Reddit thinking karma farming works here.
I’m a big fan of Xkcd #1053 myself. ;)
Dark patterns killed my wife
For unknown reasons, I stopped reading the headline at this point for about 3 seconds…
Yeah I did the same and thought I was about to read an extremely dark conspiracy theory blog post
All my computers are now Linux. My next phone is going to be fairphone cuz fuck all this shit.
The only course of action most Windows users would take at this point is a full reinstallation.
I think most users would either hire someone to reinstall Windows for them or would decide to buy a new laptop. The fun part is that as soon as they log into their MS account after a reload/purchase the sync would happen again and they would be right back where they started.
Perfect opportunity to install linux instead of the joke that win11 is
TL;dr New Samsung phone syncs 280GB of photos to OneDrive that in turn fills the laptop storage . At some point something has become corrupted with attempting to log in and change password when the laptop disk is full.
Yes, all of that happened but it happened because Samsung uploaded the photos without clear authorization and Microsoft downloaded all of the files without authorization after One Drive was automatically reinstalled after the user deliberately removed it.
This same issue can happen if your bios is updated by Windows in some cases as the bios resets, security is considered changed so your pin is set as invalid… Despite it being Windows which caused the issue. AHH Microsoft, incompetence defined.
AHH?
It is comforting, in a dystopian way, to see that the world continues to operate as expected. Remember when Bill Gates started being cool and sending people Xboxes on Reddit ands everyone was like this guy is pretty cool for a mega-rich and those of us who have been around were like yeah this is really weird and I don’t trust it.
Then it turns out the guy was a sex pest and a friend of Epstein and we were all like… okay yeah this all makes sense again.
Similar thing.
We learned our lesson about not trusting the “cool” billionaire after Bill Gates, though. Well, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Well, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and SBF. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, SBF, and Sam Altman.
As in Aaaaaahhh!!
Oh. Ahh!
What a long winded way to tell us something we already know: don’t use onedrive.
I believe the last time I had to do a Windows re-install, I was nagged THREE times to enable OneDrive. Each time, the opt out button was increasingly difficult to locate, and the verbiage more & more resembling “you’re an idiot if you don’t enable this”.
Even after refusing to use it x3, once Windows was installed, OneDrive was still sitting down in the system tray, ready to fuck shit up.
They weren’t using OneDrive either
Clearly they were, even if accidentally. It currently doesn’t load stuff to the internet if it doesn’t have an account to bill for storage.
Dumb
You’re not wrong, but it still shouldn’t be possible.
This is also a case where EU still sleeps; that you have to agree to some end user agreement and possibly log-in to some account to even start using your smartphone.
Edit: to clarify, while the vendors services are usually optional (with multiple scary warnings) in the initial setup dialogue you can’t skip, Google’s are not, even if you don’t use the play store.
Yikes! That was pretty messed up. Goes to show that you can’t really trust Microsoft or Samsungto handle things for you.
Weird, I recently bought that same phone and did not have that problem. Why?
“Do you want to transfer your files from another device?”
No.
Just no. I don’t need your help, I can do this myself. Previous phone is backed up to my NAS, I can restore what I want from there.
I see a new phone as an opportunity to leave stuff behind. It’s on the NAS if I REALLY need it.
