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Oh wow, still on 7? It was the best Windows, IMHO. Good days. It's been all downhill since then. I started using it when it was just a public preview and it was 100% usable even before the official release. Microsoft deteriorated in major ways since then. I delayed my switch from 7 to 10 and then from 10 to 11 by couple of years, skipped 8, but some of my games, apps and hardware eventually needed 11.

My current Windows 11 build even has Windows 7 like looks, btw :)

Screenie 2026-01-18 18.49.04.jpg

8.x was pretty bad, some liked it though. 10 was OK'ish, but MS retroactively added a lot of crap to it after 11 was released.

I'd not feel safe staying on something that old now though, and many apps no longer run on anything below 10. I'd rather switch to Linux than go back to older Windows now.

Debian is good, its stability is legendary, unless you have an NVIDIA GPU, then it's PITA, like most distros, or worse actually. But you might come across hardware and software that just won't work under Debian due to older packages.

Good luck!
 
Xbox Mode is just a Windows gaming mode. It's called Xbox since MS is stupid and recycles the same brand everywhere. It's like how movies & music is named Zune, but there is no more Zune player.
 
Oh wow, still on 7? It was the best Windows, IMHO. Good days. It's been all downhill since then. I started using it when it was just a public preview and it was 100% usable even before the official release. Microsoft deteriorated in major ways since then. I delayed my switch from 7 to 10 and then from 10 to 11 by couple of years, skipped 8, but some of my games, apps and hardware eventually needed 11.

My current Windows 11 build even has Windows 7 like looks, btw :)

View attachment 15754

8.x was pretty bad, some liked it though. 10 was OK'ish, but MS retroactively added a lot of crap to it after 11 was released.

I'd not feel safe staying on something that old now though, and many apps no longer run on anything below 10. I'd rather switch to Linux than go back to older Windows now.

Debian is good, its stability is legendary, unless you have an NVIDIA GPU, then it's PITA, like most distros, or worse actually. But you might come across hardware and software that just won't work under Debian due to older packages.

Good luck!
8.1 was actually very good but had a lot of hate behind it. There has been plenty of videos showing the strength of 8.1 on other windows liberations. 8.1 pasted most of them.

It's unfortunate because they were on the right track but after the hate they got they had to change things up.
 
8.1 would be a great OS, if they simply kept the W7 Aero desktop. But nooooooo, One Windows to Rule Them All (which was based on the Windows Phone UI).
 
Uh oh... This new NVME driver breaks NTLite. My NTLite working directory is on an NVME SSD. I can't integrate any large cumulative updates. Smaller updates work fine, but any large update fails within few seconds with a fatal hardware error.

I reverted to the old disk.sys driver and NTLite works fine again and I can integrate large cumulative updates again.

I'm gonna go back to the old driver on all my machines, since there is no way to tell what else might be affected.

With the new NVME driver:

Screenie 2026-03-12 22.09.52.jpg

After reverting to the old driver:

Screenie 2026-03-12 22.43.11.jpg
 
Many softs (especially monitoring soft for SMART) are not yet updated for this "new" driver.
The same is likely true for other soft like NTLite
nuhi
 
Many softs (especially monitoring soft for SMART) are not yet updated for this "new" driver.
The same is likely true for other soft like NTLite
nuhi
Oh yeah, I knew there were risks. This was not even approved by MS for desktop use. So it's "experimental" and needs to be treated as such.
 
The fact that it must be installed post-setup should have raised flags.
This is just a reg tweak to enable a driver that already exists in 25H2. The driver was added late last year. You're not installing anything. You can even add this reg edit to your custom image, which is not advisable. I didn't because of the risks involved and I just wanted to try it out.

But yes, it was a known fact that this is not official and should be used with care. Every article that mentioned this advised caution.
 
So, looks like my troubles aren't over yet. After using my computers for a few days, since those updates, I'm seeing issues and glitches popping up here and there. Camera and Clock apps not working (other UWP and WebView apps work), weirdly unstable Explorer, very laggy Explorer on Dell laptop, can't kill crashed apps in Task Manager, can't unpin icons from the Taskbar, etc. Little things, but something is clearly broken.

I guess it's time for a fresh install after all. I'll do another build and will try to keep as close as possible to vanilla this time, minimal removals.

If that doesn't solve much then, I don't know, likely to go back to an older version. Maybe even go all the way back to 23H2 like Necrosaro said. Though, is that a solution? For how long? I can probably stay on that for couple of years. Will things improve meantime? I doubt,

We'll see, I guess.
 
So, looks like my troubles aren't over yet. After using my computers for a few days, since those updates, I'm seeing issues and glitches popping up here and there. Camera and Clock apps not working (other UWP and WebView apps work), weirdly unstable Explorer, very laggy Explorer on Dell laptop, can't kill crashed apps in Task Manager, can't unpin icons from the Taskbar, etc. Little things, but something is clearly broken.

I guess it's time for a fresh install after all. I'll do another build and will try to keep as close as possible to vanilla this time, minimal removals.

If that doesn't solve much then, I don't know, likely to go back to an older version. Maybe even go all the way back to 23H2 like Necrosaro said. Though, is that a solution? For how long? I can probably stay on that for couple of years. Will things improve meantime? I doubt,

We'll see, I guess.
I got tired of trying to make newer builds work optimized and took too much of my time up. Will I try some day again.....sure but not for awhile.

It didn't take me long to get 23H2 to the way I like compared to the newer ones. I just got one last thing left to do but unsure if it would ever be fixed by me.

It's the ethernet usage in task manager that shows 8-32kbs consistently being recieved. It bugs the ever loving heck out of me but all builds do that for some reason.
 
It gets me tired too, the last two builds were exhausting. But there is always that "one last thing" and then the "one more thing" and by the time you know, a day went by.

I just don't know when to stop, always unhappy with the results. I need to finish this one and just be done with it for a while.
 
They can keep splitting the baby.

MS VP: Windows requires a MS Account to install.
Windows dev: Leave BypassNRO.cmd in place, where everyone on Earth already knows about it.
 
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