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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • I picked up an old Dell server some time ago and wound up finding firmware that made the RAID card passthrough so that TrueNAS could have direct access to disks for ZFS

    That server was all SATA based so I’m not sure what options you’ll have, but it’s worth looking into.

    Ultimately, my thinking is that just because there’s something “better” out there doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work with what you have.



  • The KB5066835 Windows Update, left untreated, sliced AC Shadows frame-rates from 33 percent to over 50 percent. Determining exactly which other games have been affected is not easy or obvious, mostly because Nvidia has opted not to broadcast its own findings for us to test and confirm

    But this scenario certainly has us scratching our heads as far as what kind of testing regimen and communication with GPU makers take place on at Microsoft these days. Did Microsoft’s October update expose a huge flaw in GPU drivers that OEMs needed to fix? If so, why was Microsoft unable to steward that information more responsibly to companies like AMD and Nvidia with weeks of woeful performance existing in the wild?

    It doesn’t seem realistic to me for testing to include every possible hardware configuration with every single piece software in existence, let alone varying levels of function within those software.


  • The KB5066835 Windows Update, left untreated, sliced AC Shadows frame-rates from 33 percent to over 50 percent. Determining exactly which other games have been affected is not easy or obvious, mostly because Nvidia has opted not to broadcast its own findings for us to test and confirm

    But this scenario certainly has us scratching our heads as far as what kind of testing regimen and communication with GPU makers take place on at Microsoft these days. Did Microsoft’s October update expose a huge flaw in GPU drivers that OEMs needed to fix? If so, why was Microsoft unable to steward that information more responsibly to companies like AMD and Nvidia with weeks of woeful performance existing in the wild?

    It doesn’t seem realistic to me for testing to include every possible hardware configuration with every single piece software in existence, let alone varying levels of function within those software.


  • That’s quite a headline they’ve got there!

    After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 [KB5062553], various apps such as StartMenuExperiencehost, Search, SystemSettings, Taskbar or Explorer might experience difficulties.

    This will occur for the following: First time user logon after a cumulative update was applied. All user logons to a non-persistent OS installation such as a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or equivalent as application packages must be installed each logon in such scenarios.

    If you are wondering, provisioning essentially is the way admins configure devices as they automatically deploy various settings and policies on a client PC. So while the issue is in office PCs, considering a huge number of enterprise PCs are Windows, this is probably a very big problem.


  • Or perhaps it could be something other than malice?

    This person is putting up with a misbehavior they don’t have to live with. They’re presenting the perception that it’s due to the nature of the operating system.

    My Toyota engine dies when I idle, therefore all Toyotas and fundamentally flawed.

    Flawed logic, no? And yet, when it comes to tech, plenty of folks apply the same type of thought pattern.

    You’re right that one would think the issue is as it seems on the surface. Computers are actually a bit more complicated than that.

    One fail mode of memory is the occasional bit flip silently corrupting data in the background. As time goes on and new data is written to a disk, things can get weirder and weirder over time.

    We don’t know if Windows and Linux are sharing a physical disk (I hope for their sake they aren’t) and we don’t know how old the Linux deployment is, so it’s possible it hasn’t had the opportunity to get progressively messed up enough yet.

    Another key variable is that the Linux environment might not be interacting with every single piece of hardware, or that the structure of those interactions could result in symptoms manifesting differently or not at all.

    I’ve had situations where a MacBook’s keyboard and trackpad were completely functional in Linux and Windows, but absolutely dysfunctional in any MacOS based environment. The fix? Replacement trackpad cable.

    At the end of the day, the situation they’re describing is not common for the OS and indicates something is very wrong.

    There’s plenty to complain about with Windows, but if this were a typical experience people would not be putting up with it.

    A device with those symptoms coming through my shop is statistically likely to be leaving with replaced parts, a component level repair, or at the very least a complete OS and Driver reinstallation after passing extensive diagnostic testing and behavioral isolation.



  • There is no way to ‘downgrade’ a fresh installation. Only an installation that was done as an upgrade from Windows 10 can be downgraded, it has to be done within 10 days of the upgrade and that is possible thanks to the Windows.old folder that gets retained for that period.

    In your case, you’re looking at a clean install. Once you’ve got your installation media ready, you can make your life substantially easier by using DISM to extract the drivers and integrate them into the WIM file. I’ve had a few laptops end up with no network drivers, no keyboard / touchpad drivers, and no USB drivers - leaving OOBE inoperable.












  • Windows 10 didn’t “die”

    Microsoft isn’t offering support for it, but their help was barely useful to begin with.

    There’s a few small hoops to jump through to enroll in the Extended Security Updates program, after which Windows 10 devices will continue to be functional and secure for at least another year.

    Ultimately, I’m all for folks going out and dabbling in Linux. Unfortunately, most consumers are interpreting this situation as a requirement to rush out and buy a new Windows 11 PC and that’s bad.


  • There’s plenty wrong with Microsoft and their messaging around this transition, but IMO Windows 11 really is more of the same, it just has some cosmetic changes and under the hood security features (related to TPM 2.0) that bring it up to speed with MacOS.

    ads being introduced to the OS

    “Ads” for first party Microsoft products (365, Game Pass) were present in 10 as well. Not aware of any ads for third party stuff, other than maybe the placeholder app icons for stuff like TikTok and Facebook on a fresh install - in both 10 and 11.

    shedloads of telemetry

    Also in 10

    constant UI changes (Start menu, Settings app)

    Not sure what you mean here, these things have remained pretty consistent since Windows 11’s launch in 2021

    nags for OneDrive

    Trivial to disable, and I’ll never be against reminding users to have some kind of backup. Ultimately, Windows 10 was also like this.

    I do wish the article mentioned Linux as an alternative to upgrading / buying new hardware. Equally irresponsible is the omission of Windows 10’s ESU enrollment option, which currently delays this whole ordeal by another year.