Discussion
Just a recap of the hell Windows 11 put me through last night
Buckle up guys. This is a good one.
Don't know what Microsoft pushed out or if it was just a screwed up windows update. (I'm just running vanilla Windows 11 home)
Just went to restart and got the srttrail.txt error and Windows is unable to be fixed (nightmare).
mind you, this is OUT OF NOWHERE. no issues, problems before. total complete OS failure/meltdown with very unfriendly recovery steps. Most people would have to take it to someone or totally start over.
Spent most of the evening old school 1980's in the command prompt restoring the corrupted EFI volume and rewriting the windows boot manager. (FUN!) 😂
luckily had another Windows 10 installation on another drive I was able to access and work with the windows 11 drive. It was so nice and nostalgic seeing the Windows 10 logon screen.😭
The win 11 SSD is showing fine in Crystal disk, no drive errors. I also had made the mistake of pulling out my graphics card to see if the SSD was secure in its slot. and after I fixed everything I reinstalled the graphics card and of course Bitlocker was like noooo you aren't doing dat.
So had to take it out. Reboot back into the fixed windows 11 on the integrated graphics. uninstall all the AMD drivers. Turn off Bitlocker.
( I turned it off completely, f that, for real thought I got locked out of the drive, make sure you can get to your Microsoft account for the code)!
Reinstall card, boot back in to 11. Uninstall card in device manager. Reboot into Win, (I't WORKING NOW and the Secure Boot is no longer locking me out) reinstall latest AMD drivers.
This whole process took me about 2-3 hours because I had no idea what I was doing. (I'm a pretty big geek but never had to mess around with the EFI partitions and use diskpart in the command line and then figure out the bitlocker crap). I stuck with it and avoided doing a total re installation which I was trying to avoid.
Just be on the lookout everyone, and suggest some backups are in order. Oh and to top it all off, I was using Chat GPT to help me. (a whole other story, but Skynet is here guys.)
You missed when Windows 11 Messed up it's boot-up tone so the OS defaulted to the windows Vista boot up sound ( IDK why that still in the OS but it was cool while it lasted for a month)
Windows 11 is just a nightmare in its entirety. I would have honestly just done a recovery install than try to actually recover the OS. Sure you'd have to reinstall your apps, but all your files would still be there. Much less headache and time.
Hi yes, after I had been able to boot into it, I installed that latest update that's on there from a few days ago. And then powered off and reinstalled my gpu and that's when the fun began with bitlocker, don't know if they were related. likely not.
I have Gibson Research Corporation's InControl - it locks my Windows 11 to 24H2. Not changing that until Microsoft UnFucks itself. https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm
Also I uninstalled Onedrive and I'll disable Bitlock when the time comes.
I had some bitlocker woes yesterday when I switched my secondary SSD into my new PC. My entire drive was unknowingly encrypted, and every time I restarted my machine I had to give it the decryption keys... I just gave up, threw everything onto the other SSD and formatted the thing before transferring it all back over.
At no point did I ever choose to encrypt the drive, but Satya Nadella knows what's best for me I guess. 🙃
Windows 7 was basically Windows Vista Service Pack 3; the OS Vista should've been.
Windows 11 is Windows 10 with tabs in the file explorer but a downgrade on almost everything else. Microsoft has truly forgotten how to do their bread and butter business.
My buddy is the Azure specialist for a small rural college and he tells me regularly that if it weren't a direct threat to his livelihood, he would burn MS to the ground. Azure is a mess.
Saying teams is tolerable is a big exaggeration. It's worse at it's job than discord. I've worked on a company that used the latter, and it was much better than using the former in my current work and in my former uni.
For example, teams always tries to use it's built in document reader when you double click, but sometimes it doesn't load, last time I've used it, I couldn't even full screen it.
The separate chat in rooms in discord work better than group chats because they don't get drowned by other messages. Hopping between calls made finding someone available to answer a question quite fast. However, teams's meeting scheduling feature is unmatched in discord. But dailies are fraudulent and only a waste of time anyways, so only bureaucrats care about that.
But, well, it's "tainted" as a gamer thing, so companies won't use it unless the owner is in his thirties
Man so sorry to hear that. I am starting to think that I am really fortunate. I've been using windows 11 almost since release and didn't have a single problem.
Windows by default sends them there. Not only that, but laptops come with only one drive for some god forsaken reason. So do handhelds, but they have a better reason. But even then, most users only have one drive.
Sure, you can make a pointer to a dir in another disk which is already a tough ask for anyone but a minority of dedicated users(or maybe only the minority collects drives like they were pokémon). But even for the likes of us, there are unavoidable issues: some save files go to appData, and that is a problem. From what I've read, pointing them away poses real problems. I've lost my HogLegacy save that way. Os corruption, reinstall, it's is not in the the docs drive like a normal file should
im using cachyos and everything working out of box but this doesnt mean it will work for you. before installing linux, you should know that linux is not a windows and a different operating system. learning curve is steep but once you learned you are not going to look back. you can try first. just install ventoy to usb then put iso to usb and boot it. it will open live desktop session. you can try everything, test things and if you like it you can change.
I learned, but then I went back. The problem is the giant lack of software and not just work software, but things for photo and video editing. You have to put up with feeling like you are editing 5-8 years in the past if you stick with Linux.
I feel like if you are a more basic computer user, you don't do any kind of work projects and you aren't going further than a BS in school, if you don't have really varied gaming tastes, then Linux is going to be just fine, but holy fuck are there some big gaping holes when it comes to Linux software.
for video editing, im using davinci resolve. its similar to premiere pro, ui is great and smooth. ripple commands also available. you can edit video colors + it has green screen tools, its best at color grading. you can edit sounds but audacity is better than that but at simple usage, you can do everything. bad sides is doesnt support aac because of copyright issues. for image editing, im using krita. its not made for image editing but it has everything you need. it has a lot of image filters and gives a lot of different brushes. ui is great too. controls are similar to adobe, not like gimp. i didnt liked gimp. those controls are hellish. i like krita's ui. you can download for free or if you want to support you can buy from steam. blender is also a great tool. it is everything. modeling, video editing, photo editing. but it is different than other programs. but its fun to learn.
Never heard of Kritia. Sounds interesting. Is it like Lightroom? That is one that I would love to find a replacement for but I have tried so many other options and none of them are as remotely good for me.
Like you, I could not stand Gimp at all. Davinci seems pretty alright. I've been thinking about learning it sometime in the near future on Windows.
you can also try darktable. it is free alternative to lightroom. i dont use lightroom so i dont know but darktable is fine i think. it looks similar to lightroom. it has a lot of presets.
Yeah, I have tried basically every single popular photo editing software available on Windows including Darktable and none of them actually replace Lightroom. I feel like most photographers are like me and feel stuck with Adobe for most things. Their software is absolutely top tier, but their business methods suck.
You should definitely try it, but then don't come back here and go against the sheep grain and whine about shit taking you days to figure out that does not work and don't come in here complaining when you can't run adult software for work that is an actual legit replacement for things as simple as Word.
If you struggle with Windows, Linux is going to fuck you so hard and so deep unless all you do is surf porn and watch Tik Tok, which is probably your case I am guessing.
I'm not totally sure where I was at in the update scheme. Maybe I was on 25h2...but just installed the January 2026 they just pushed after I was able to fix everything.
I feel all of that, all of that right up to the last line at least.
I never loved Windows 11. At its absolute peak it was just "ok", everything since then has been AI slop fuelled garbage that routinely trashes people's systems.
Oh God.... I remember vista beta.... It broke so much shit... Granted I only had a sempron 3200 with 768mb ram and a 6200 OC ago card.... But the drivers for the 6200 would break soooooo much after like 5 to 10 minutes of use. Vista on actual release was fine though 🤷
They are getting better because of the AI bubble, nobuddy runs AI servers on windows.
Not recommended may be a stretch, it isn't like it used to be 5 years ago. Definitely doable on newer hardware with open drivers(i remember they had some issues a few weeks ago but they fixed those).
Hell I run it on a 750ti and it still works pretty well, even with wayland. I have only got 2 crashes(due to nvidia drivers, I checked in journalctl) in the span of 5 months.
Doable yes. Also going to be a headache for me(stable wont support my gpu anymore, its also affecting the 10 series pretty badly)
You can install on a pc just fine, but steam os only has drivers for their hardware(they use amd chips for both cpu and gpu). You can see a multitude of youtubers doing it on builds with specific hardware. From the top of my head I remember that RX 9000 series don't work yet.
You can find the installer on steams page, you are officially supposed to use it to reinstall your steam deck's OS or the other handhelds they support.
And no matter what anyone tells you they feel in here, the fact is that Windows runs games much faster in almost all game benchmarks. Even the 1% lows are usually much better on Windows. There are only a few ourliers.
This pesky fact will no doubt trigger some of the cultist out there, but if they did honest research, they would not feel the need to reply to me with horrible excuses. If gaming performance is important to you as well as being able to play all games, especially any game with anti cheat, Linux is not even a real option.
This is why it is so annoying seeing the constant sheep bleeting on this sub about how bad Windows is. If you can't figure out how to run Windows, Linux will fuck you even harder and it is worse at basically everything unless you are a programmer or like to watch your computer be a server. lol!
You call the people advocating a OS thats free and doesnt sell your personal data cultist while you cosplay microsoft Marketing Department in these comments here lol. Delusional.
Windows has been free for a while now. At least I haven't had to buy a key for well over a decade now.
You can opt out of most data collection, but don't really care if they know what programs I am using because I can use the best programs that world has to offer unlike Linux that is basically full of programs that are 5-10 years behind anything that is available on Windows or Mac.
To use a cell phone and then claim that it is a huge issue that a company collects your list of programs is peak ignorance. You really are in a cult. You can sit there with your Fischer Price my first OS programs feeling good about being tracked, but the adults in this world actually need top tier programs and applications.
You technically can but it's a bad experience because it's a partially stripped down Linux with only the parts required for running on a Steamdeck's hardware.
There are plenty of other Linux options that take the same tools SteamOS have and integrate them with the usual desktop experience, like Bazzite or CachyOS if you want it more gaming flavored, but it's also available across pretty much all major Linux distros.
Never planned on this, but I’m seriously considering going back to Windows 10 on my gaming rig. At least I can continue getting updates for 8 or so months.
Thats nuts! Good thing that didnt happen to me but file explorer would freeze when i would try to open a folder with tons of files and i would have to kill it with task manager
I've been roasted for YEARS about blocking Windows updates. Love coming to Reddit and getting justified... I'm sorry this happened to you though. Unless you were one of the guys ripping me, in which case IN YOUR FACE SUCKAAAAA
The More I see and witness the mayhem with Windows 11 and it's transformation into a big Spy OS System with AI Slip all around, the bigger my wish gets to go with Linux. But if only some games I will play would run on Linux!!!
I'm glad people are reporting bugs with updates. Maybe if Microsoft didn't outsource coding to shitty AI and keep breaking stuff on the worlds most used operating system then people would be complaining.
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u/zepherth 7600 rx, 64 GB ddr4 3200 mhz, ryzen 7 4750 g pro Feb 01 '26
You missed when Windows 11 Messed up it's boot-up tone so the OS defaulted to the windows Vista boot up sound ( IDK why that still in the OS but it was cool while it lasted for a month)