Windows 11 crept up on me while I was busy, Family stuff, the game I was playing most was going through updates and fixes, the Screen I used was changed to a 'much' larger one and I installed a 4070 and 64 rams on a recently acquired PC (already had win 10 home on it), and so when it started to misbehave I was fooled, then I noticed that my 'thisPC' icon kept moving away from where I put it (up top left)
The 'Start windows' icon and 'search bar' was bottom centered instead of to the bottom left, and I was beginning to realise something was very wrong, after having to type in commands and quieries I found my way to discover that Windows 11 had installed itself 14 days earlier... beyond the 10 day grace period!
I was, and to a point still am Fuming!
I even considered getting another NVME SSD and reinstalling a version of Win 10, but remembered being told that the chip/board* is the identifier for Microsoft so it would be pointless.
To say I hate Microsoft for this would be pointless, just as it would be pointless to hate the Wino I given money to for a bus fair when he spent it on booze!
*I don't know which, can't remember and I'm not that savvy, I know just enough to f*** it all up!
So it just auto-updated you to Win 11 without the update being confirmed?
I'd backup my stuff and reinstall Win 10. Make sure you DON'T let it connect to the internet during the install (ie. do an offline install). When you're done, use slimming/debloating programs.
I always forget if I do all the drivers & Windows updates 1st and then debloat or if I do debloating 1st, then drivers/updates, then re-go through debloating (since all the updates will change and add things) but, ya, I highly recommend that.
There are also some fantastic and safe custom Windows 10 slim ISOs.
There's also Windows 10 Enterprise / LTSC. It's not a custom install; it's downloaded directly from Microsoft so no need to be worried about others implanting malware. It's, by far, the lightest version of the three (Home, Pro, Enterprise/LTSC). It comes with very little bloat. It will continue to get Microsoft support for years to come (unlike Home & Pro). I still use debloat programs to remove & disable things like telemetry, security stuff, most apps, wasteful background features, processes, and services, etc. but there's wayyy less of it to begin with with Enterprise/LTSC.
The only thing with Enterprise/LTSC - or it may be due to some other things I did to Windows post Windows install - is that I can't get the Microsoft Store to install. This is generally how I want my system ie. no Microsoft Store, so it means almost nothing to me; it's only because I was going to try Forza Motorsport 8 but, oh well. There's probably a way to get it installed & working but I never cared enough to look into it.
Been running Enterprise/LTSC Win 10 and 8.1 for years. Easily the best version of Windows.
I only moved from 8.1 to 10 because of 2 reasons:
- lots of drivers like for motherboards, audio, ethernet, etc. stopped being offered by motherboard manufacturers and you'd have to dig through sites and forums to get ones - sometimes custom ones - that'll work. Having said that, using SDIO (Snappy Driver Installer Origin) would have probably taken care of this problem but I was unaware of it at the time
- some features are not available in Windows 8.1 compared to 10. If I remember correctly, some of these are DX12, HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling), ReBAR (Resizeable BAR), Nvidia's DLSS, and ray tracing.
Until the same thing happens to Win 10 that happened to Win 8.1, I won't be even close to touching Win 11.
Why install a crappier, slower operating system. I never understood why people do this...unless, like in the case of Win 8.1 VS 10, there are underlying functions/features not available (eg. DX12) but that's not the case with 10 VS 11, well besides auto-HDR but that can still be done with 10 - and much better - using Special K (and ReShade too now?).
