Windows 11 - not impressed

[Anonymouse]

Okay, I got tired of Chrome saying it's not going to be updated, plus the Win 8.1 laptop is showing its age. So I decided to get a new one, PC Specialist again. It duly arrived, I started installing stuff on it - and on day one it died on me. The offending software was Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 - yeah, yeah, I'm old-fashioned, but I tried APE 15 and I didn't like it at all. Might try GIMP.
I emailed PC Specialist; they gave me advice. Took it, but it didn't work. Next bit of advice - sounded good, but I needed to find and delete the current partitions to reinstall Windows, and nothing was showing at all.
Finally on further advice I altered something in the BIOS, and it worked - the partitions showed and were deleted. I reinstalled and everything seems fine so far.
This time, though, once the laptop was up and running I created restore points, so I have a baseline if things go wrong again. I learn from my mistakes.
Which must mean I'm utterly wise by now...
There's a fundamental truth I'd forgotten, but in self-defence it's been years since it was an issue. In my 40+ years of IT I've noticed that computers are getting more and more reliable, compared to the dinosaurs of the '80s. But the unfortunate corollary of this is: as the tech becomes less and less likely to fail, when it does fail...it fails badly.
Anyway, this is all beside the point. Windows 11 is not a great improvement on 8.1:
There's too much emphasis on security. Admittedly there used to be barely any, which is one reason viruses et al are so prevalent. But I think they're overdoing it.
Doing away with the context menu (unless you remember to hold down Shift as you right-click) was a very bad idea. It makes numerous operations too fiddly.
Sticky Keys, which I detest, will NOT stay dead.
If you create a folder template and tell Windows to apply it to subfolders, it doesn't always do it.
It's not as fast as it should be IMO, running on more modern hardware as it is.
There's way too much bloatware; some you can uninstall, some you can't.
Without a third-party app to force redirection to your chosen search engine (whisper it: 'Google'), it defaults to Edge and Bing whether you want it to or not.
But my worst gripe is with creating themes. It used to be a matter of setting the background image, clicking to Personalise and saving the theme, and that was that. Now you need several clicks to save it, as the Save dialog only comes up in one place. It's so fiddly I've cut down my theme use to a couple of dozen favourites...I can't face doing it 200+ times.

Okay. Rant over. I do like the backlit keyboard.

[peanut]

Like all the others before it you'll soon get used to it. There's plenty of tips online to configure 11 to suit your needs etc. But I do prefer Win 10 by far.

[Jaymoss]

Next time you reinstall windows set the language to English World once install is finished no bloat installed. Set back to English UK once finished

There is a simple reg hack for the context menu

My Sticky keys are off and stay off

It is easy to change the search engine to Google in Edge

I kinda see what you mean about themes

[Anonymouse]

There's a hack for context? How? And how did you kill Sticky Keys?!

[Jaymoss]

elevated command prompt run this command. reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve


Settings/Accessibility/Keyboard just turn off Sticky Keys

[peanut]

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

elevated command prompt run this command. reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

I just can't find a way to incorporate Winrar into the context menu when I do the hack so I've had to put with default. Any ideas?

[Jaymoss]

In the version I had the option was in the install

Try this

Open Winrar Options settings Integration make sure Integrate Winrar into Shell is ticked

I am guessing though it is because you have it in stock context.

It has always been part of my context menu

Might be worth uninstalling and reinstalling or I could link you to the version I use. Another option would be to try 7zip

[peanut]

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

In the version I had the option was in the install

Try this

Open Winrar Options settings Integration make sure Integrate Winrar into Shell is ticked

It has always been part of my context menu

Yeah I've tried all of that. It refreshes as all the icons on desktop so you'd expect it to work but just doesn't. Its been annoying me for a while now.

Will try 7zip again with the hack and see if that works as that would do for what I need. Thanks.

[Anonymouse]

New gripe: I can't paste files any more - the Paste icon has vanished from the context menu, and Paste shows as greyed out. Apparently this is a known bug. I've tried several solutions - nothing's worked so far. The only way I've found around this is to: copy files to a USB stick; do whatever needs doing on the Windows 8.1 laptop; copy the files from 8.1 to the stick; copy the files to Windows 11.
This is not satisfactory, but at least it works.

I am seriously considering downgrading to Windows 10.

[Jaymoss]

The only reason I can see paste being greyed is if nothing is in the clipboard. Have you tried CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste? CTRL+X is cut iirc if files are on different physical drives you could drag and drop or you could add copy too to the context menu

---------- Post added at 07:55 ---------- Previous post was at 07:52 ----------

There is a reg file on this site that adds copy to folder and move to folder to context menu

https://www.partitionwizard.com/part...-in-win11.html

Not checked but you can view the reg file in notepad to make sure it is innocent. Or you cam manually add the entries

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

Okay. Rant over

I hear ya buddy.. I dont like the newer OSs,ya cant do what ya want!!

I am grateful to be on Win98se (My favourite OS)

I cant do some stuff but I dont do it anyway....

[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

The only reason I can see paste being greyed is if nothing is in the clipboard. Have you tried CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste?

CTRL+V doesn't work. Oh, the file is copied to the clipboard, yes - but I can't paste it!

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

CTRL+V doesn't work. Oh, the file is copied to the clipboard, yes - but I can't paste it!

how incredibly odd. You could try the copy to and send to option

[Taf]

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/ctrlc...ing-in-windows

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by Taf

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/ctrlc...ing-in-windows

Right Click paste with the mouse is not working so do not see it being the keyboard