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Windows 11 is nagging users to try OneDrive to "fully backup" your PC (www.windowslatest.com)

submitted 5 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Windows 11 and Windows 10 were recently updated with “Windows Backup”, which has now become a system app. While the feature initially appeared as “optional” or something that could be easily dismissed, Microsoft is slowly getting aggressive with its new OneDrive backup campaign on Windows 11.

Windows 11’s “Windows Backup” uses OneDrive to back up many of the things that are important to you. This may include your credentials, settings, pictures, documents, videos, files, themes, or even audio settings. Microsoft wants the Windows Backup app to become the ultimate backup tool, but there’s a catch.

Windows Backup does not support offline backups and requires a OneDrive plan. By default, OneDrive offers 5GB of free storage, which is why some users do not want to backup their PC. But is that going to stop Microsoft from pestering users? Probably not. In a new server-side update, Windows 11 has started nagging users to try the Backup tool.

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[-] Zikeji@programming.dev 82 points 5 months ago

Man, they just keep burying their head further. I still have Windows 10 on my gaming PC, and that's more because I plan on replacing it and will use that moment to transition to Linux, but up until a few months ago I could have been convinced to keep using Windows.

That was until they popped up a full screen ad in the middle of gaming, telling me my PC doesn't work with 11 but they have great financing options forn a 11 capable PC. Followed by my lock screen having ads of a similar nature. Fucking gross.

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 23 points 5 months ago

That's despicable. Popping a window up over everything enrages me even when it's an application I intended to open. Popping up a fucking ad while I am in the middle of something is completely unacceptable. I can definitely see what that was the last straw.

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 12 points 5 months ago

Search for "chris titus windows tool". It's a debloat tool that removes such annoyances. It also includes a button that runs the Shutup tool, that disables another bunch.

I'm a Linux user but I use these tools (and massgravel) on Windows VMs to make them behave.

[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 53 points 5 months ago

So glad I switched to Linux!

[-] Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 5 months ago

Same. I get a big smile on my face every time I read bad news about windows :)

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago

Wish I could fully.. one 20 year old half life mod I play with friends does not work with Linux AT ALL and it’s one of my favourite games.

[-] PotatoKat@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

What game? Love me some old HL/source mods.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The Specialists HD. It’s a game where everyone is The Matrix. There’s bullet time, king-fu, sick flips, and tons of amazing weapons. I’ve been playing for like 15 years. It’s all-but-dead other than my amazing friend who hosts a server, our close friends, and some old-heads. It’s my favourite FPS.

[-] Waveform@lemmy.world 35 points 5 months ago

I think Windows 10 will be the last version I use. As time goes on, Linux seems more and more like a viable option, and I'll be glad to have control over my PC for once. And who knows, maybe I will no longer have the mysterious freezing issue that's been plaguing me for years...

[-] Zetta@mander.xyz 10 points 5 months ago

I switched over ~3 ish years ago and have never been happier. I recommend Fedora if you want any distro suggestions.

[-] Waveform@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Do all distros have the same compatibility with video cards and software? I want something that'll run Blender, Krita, Gimp, etc., and support my Wacom tablet. And run my favorite games, of course. Lots of people say Mint is good for newbies jumping ship. I don't mind learning a new environment and running console commands from time-to-time.

[-] Zetta@mander.xyz 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

What video card do you have? All distros should work perfectly with AMD cards out of the box, while nvidia you will probably have to install the driver yourself. Nvidia driver support is continually getting better as time goes on though.

Blender, GIMP, and Krita will work out of the box with all distros. Not 100% sure on the tablet so you may wanna research a bit more on that front.

I tried Mint when I originally switched and wasn't a fan, I distro hopped a bit and stuck with Fedora when I tried it out. I use the gnome version of Fedora and originally installed some extensions to make it more windows like. After a few months I dropped those extensions and am pretty much in vanilla gnome now.

Also sorta unrelated but I also installed the new cosmic desktop environment recently (it's pre alpha right now) and use it instead of gnome, I like it more than gnome but it's pre alpha so hold off on that one probably.

The only issues I've experienced in recent memory with using Linux is Steam won't launch properly if I launch it using the steam icon, I have to open a terminal window and type 'steam'. That launches steam with the terminal, and I have to leave that terminal window open as long as I want steam open.

Whatever distro/de you end up going with will have a learning curve for sure but in my opinion it's really worth it. I truly think open source software should be the future, and I'm happy I took the leap myself. Good luck on your journey!

[-] Waveform@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

It's an AMD R9 380 2GB, so kind of old. (In fact, it's factory overclocked, so that might be the source of the crashes.)

I'll probably just buy a new storage drive so I don't have to worry about Linux and Windows existing on the same one. It's going to be great, having more control over the OS. I bet things will even be faster overall, due to the relative lack of bloat.

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[-] kennebel@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I switched to Pop!_OS earlier this year and couldn’t be happier. All apps run way faster than they did with Windows on the same hardware. All but one of my Steam games run great (one day I’ll get that last game to work). My “life critical” things are web based, everything else is adjustable.

[-] Waveform@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

That sounds promising. I've heard good things about Pop!_OS. Which game has issues, if I might ask?

I try to avoid web-based apps when I can. For instance, there is a supposedly great photo editor that's only available via web browser. I'd hate to become dependent on it and then lose access due to an internet outage, or something.

[-] kennebel@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Sorry, when I said "life critical", i mean things like email, banking, self-hosted NextCloud for files, etc. For me, everything else is flexible as I don't have business things that have to run on Windows (that is my work provided laptop), so I don't have to have the Adobe suite for photo editing, i can use one of several open source alternatives, and all of my hobbies have open source alternatives like Blender.

The only game I cannot get to run is Space Engineers. Numerous other newer and older games work great. To be fair, I'm not an online/multiplayer gamer, so the challenges people run in to due to anti-cheating requirements don't affect the games I play.

What was really interesting to me, is that I tried Windows 11 Pro and 6 or 7 different Linux distros over several months before landing on Pop!_OS. I mention this because it was all the exact same hardware and so I was able to compare performance in an Apples to Apples situation. There is an obvious application loading improvement. Even comparing against something like Garuda that is supposedly all about performance tweaks.

[-] Waveform@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Oh, I see. For some reason I took 'life critical' to mean any program one keeps installed and 'can't do without' ;)

I think Space Engineers is on my list, and it looks like my PC just barely meets the requirements. As for compatiblity, I can always keep Windows 10 around for certain things.

I don't play anything online either. Last game I tried online was Minecraft, and I just couldn't deal with the griefers. Some asshats found a way into my area and stole/killed all my cows >:( (Or I was overbreeding and the mods removed them, idk.)

[-] Karakangaroo@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I switched to opensuse tumbleweed about 3 months ago and I have zero complaints. Yast is such a powerful too you can avoid using the terminal for many things, and it being rolling release makes it easier to stay up to date. Plus it comes with snapper reconfigured so if anything breaks you can rollback in about 5 minutes. I've had to learn some new things, and a few online games don't work according to proton db but I've yet to run into a game problem on a game I want to play.

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[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 22 points 5 months ago

Microsoft will continue ramping up the ads, nags, and dark patterns until everyone is subscribed to their own hardware.

[-] OwlHamster@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago

*until everyone stops using Windows. Except for business users, which probably don't get these nags anyway

[-] athalean 18 points 5 months ago

What drives me nuts about this is that it always uses the vague language of security and data protection without any consideration that, y'know, they have competition from other cloud providers and self-hosted solutions that do things that OneDrive can't even do. I guess if you have your backups anywhere else it doesn't count.

[-] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago

Yeah but they have one killer feature others don't : shuting up these f**king notifications.

[-] FuryMaker@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Yeah. Then I'll fill up my free 15gb quota with garbage OS files, and be prompted to pay a subscription to backup the other 1-2tb of data.

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Microsoft is teaching a whole generations to ignore them.

[-] Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 5 months ago

The old days when pairing anything with OS would make US government sue you

[-] ArkyonVeil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 5 months ago

It's the third god damned time I find newly installed MS software doing "something" in the background that I never authorized. I don't even have Onedrive. I purged that sin from the metal as soon as I had the chance.

I already intend to change OSes. The real question is now if I do it when I decide to upgrade, or in the fast lane. Which is it Microsoft?

[-] Tryptaminev@lemm.ee 6 points 5 months ago

Do it now. The more time you give yourself for dealing with it the better. Start dual booting, or on one of your devices. familiarize yourself and transition slowly, rather than having to deal with all of it at once.

[-] ArkyonVeil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago

I've already tried Linux several times over the years. My problems were mainly poor program compatibility and RTX card related driver issues for the latest attempt. At the time I couldn't afford to change since critical work related programs did not run at all properly on Linux. Albeit that has changed in time. Also, because of the AI craze, NVIDIA has finally shipped decent drivers to linux land.

What prevents me most nowadays is mainly having to setup everything, which I'd rather do once when upgrading the whole system. The Power User moat has been filling over time and the confy guys upstairs are non the wiser.

[-] hddsx@lemmy.ca 13 points 5 months ago

Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Why does windows attempt to be iOS?

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 15 points 5 months ago

Because iCloud was a smashing success for Apple when they used this technique?

At least iOS and macOS don’t keep on asking you after you say no like Windows does though. At least not until you change something in your iCloud configuration.

[-] WordBox@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

My iPhone reminds me randomly. Google does the same on Android.

[-] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Whats the issue with iCloud?

[-] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Why does windows attempt to B-S-O-D

FTFY, with Crowdstrike these days

[-] Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago

Didn't read the article, but Windows 10 did the whole OneDrive backup nag message thing as well. Defender would always shiw a warning that you're "not secure" if you don't backup to OneDrive.

[-] Omgboom@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 months ago

We started seeing this pop-up recently, but here's the thing, my organization already uses OneDrive (unfortunately) but the pop-up just says that they need to contact your administrator to set it up (OneDrive is already setup)

[-] Khanzarate@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Just means the new backup service has permissions off by default.

Since your company may not want that, enjoy the eternal Microsoft spam forever.

[-] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

I updated a surface pro this morning and it was a huge effort just to log back in. Like, it took several minutes to get through all the prompts, login errors and finally land on the desktop.

Now I need to check if OneDrive installed itself again.

[-] Toribor@corndog.social 1 points 5 months ago

I've been using a Surface with Bazzite which works great.

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Also even if I had the space on my OneDrive (and I've even got 30GB thanks to some promotions from the Windows Phone days) my upload speed is dogshit slow and I don't want to think about how long it would take me to upload the 70GB it wants to backup.

[-] cryptix@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The business side is only going to care if that popup is going to get them that 2% more revenue next year or not.

[-] MrAlternateTape@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

This. It is annoying for 100% of the users, but a small percentage will be fooled and end up using OneDrive and probably end up paying.

It literally works like spam. Very little effort to cast a wide net and a small succes rate is enough to make a profit. Of course long term they keep pushing people out. But hey, profits this year, we'll see about next years when it hits us ..

[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

One would have to be a special kind of stupid to do that.

[-] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 months ago

[-] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 5 months ago

If you are serious that's a huge security risk.

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

using microsoft products is in itself a security risk.

[-] Laser@feddit.org 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well, that's kind of a bromide. By extension, everything is a security risk. Managing and minimizing risks is the hard part.

[-] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

Common Sense Home Edition 2015 has no issues like this.

[-] Resol@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Shut up, OneDrive.

[-] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

It's the first thing I uninstall in a fresh install

[-] lud@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

Life hack: Install Windows 10/11 Enterprise IOT LTSC you get support for a long time and there is absolutely no bullshit pre installed.

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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024

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