I am really going to miss the old settings when they finally remove what is left of Control Panel. So far they have removed things or moved shit to force the Settings app. But they keep failing to make the new things have anywhere near the level of control. The power settings from Control Panel still matter way more than Settings and seem to actually stick when applied. And I just really have no idea how they have made stuff like resetting networking/connection issues worse over time. Fucking right-clicking on the networking icon on the taskbar and picking “repair” would actually get shit working again 8 times out of 10. But just seems to be a placebo at this point. There are still so many times that using different resets in Internet Options fixes more stuff I see regularly than the resets in Settings->Networking.
And the newer Troubleshooting options never fix any of the Windows Update issues I come across. Just a glorified verification of the failures I already know are happening. I never thought I would so badly miss being able to tell Windows Update to ignore updates if they were bugging out (not to avoid them all together but at least stop the OS from just constantly going through the motions of installing and failing during each reboot/shutdown). So many of the updates that used to give me issues were really either down to them trying to install out of order or due to a fuck-up on MS’s end that pushed bad updates.
The push to so deeply embed these AI models into everything so fast is really pissing me off. Shit is known to have issues with just outright making shit up. Which is IMO reason enough to not be adding them to end-products (especially since the end-products are also still not finished with removing old versions of things). One thing that really worries me in my job with fixing people’s PCs is the AI and search that pushes web content (and the now inescapable placement of ads) above local resources/programs/settings/etc. The main issues people have aren’t actual viruses like in the past. It is the massive levels of scams and fake alerts followed by fake “repair techs.” If the average person is so easy to trick when it is people scamming them. AI is going to blow shit up waaaaaaaay worse and will be able to do it so much faster and completely. Average people are still under the impression that these AI chats are giving completely real and accurate information (reminds me of how people used to believe that if something was said on TV that it was real).
Shit is fucked and going to get much worse at a dramatically faster rate due to rushing things in order to make as much money as fast as possible. Even Microsoft used to ship things in a more complete state. But gaming has made shipping broken products completely normal. So no reason to care about keeping any level of quality.
And I just really have no idea how they have made stuff like resetting networking/connection issues worse over time.
While I generally agree with your comment, they did add an option (don’t know how long it’s been there) where you can right-click on the Internet icon, click the troubleshooter, and there’s a button immediately right there in the troubleshooter to reset the adapter.
And the newer Troubleshooting options never fix any of the Windows Update issues I come across.
I was fighting with this just last night. Ended up having to follow an official Microsoft guide on how to shrink my system partition by 250MB, remove the recovery partition and set up a new one with 250MB more space just so that windows update could actually install the newest update. Fortunately I enjoy dicking around with my computer and can afford to make a mistake that might trash my windows install but for others that rely on their machine this stuff has to be daunting and frustrating.
I was honestly excited about the new Settings when Windows 10 arrived. I was a Windows sysadmin for more than a decade and am intimately familiar with control panel and think it sucks. I hoped Settings would modernize and streamline. But here we are, so many years later, and many common tasks still lead us to control panel. Such disappointment.
I thought this was intentional? They have control panel stuff somewhat similar to the old style, but build a settings app for the less technical people so they can find common stuff without getting overwhelmed?
It is intentional but not like that, Windows is built on backwards compatibility. That’s why so many parts of current Windows versions have seemingly parts of old versions tacked onto them.
That is only maintained due to the new operating system being a new shell placed on top of the countless older shells and some new small features that rely on the newest most fragile thing they added with the shell
I heard some call it the “painting over rust” method, and they’re maintaining the most used and by some organisations the most relied on operating system in the world
We’re both going to get downvoted but the settings app has a much better UI than control panel full stop. The problem is the years of development that have gone into it only for the settings app to redirect to the control panel anyway for 50% of the things you want to do because they still haven’t been bothered to actually integrate everything directly into the app.
If you could actually do everything in the settings app that you could do in the control panel after 3 versions of windows I don’t think it would be so universally disliked.
win11 settings app can do a lot on it’s own, most network settings can now be configured there (except if you need to configure some obscure protocol or sth) DHCP, DNS, static/dynamic ipv4/ipv6 options, DoH both per-adapter and per-network are there
If you could actually do everything in the settings app that you could do in the control panel after 3 versions of windows I don’t think it would be so universally disliked
This was my biggest gripe with the settings app when I still used Windows
I use linux now, and for someone like me who likes to tinker and script, it has been amazing
yes they are, actually. Backwards compatibility is a huge thing in Windows, it’s why you can’t name files certain names such as CON, and why you can find things from 3.1 etc. still.
That’s what happens when your entire business model is promising to support [your business name here]'s favorite feature forever. It makes a lot of money, but boy does it make for a terrible product
it’s why you can’t name files certain names such as CON
To expand on this: The reason you can’t name files CON, etc., is because of a program from the 1960s called Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP), a program used in Digital Equipment Corporation’s computers. The overall OS that PIP was part of was called CP/M.
DOS, which came out in the 80s and was made for IBM computers, was modeled after CP/M, and it kept and expanded the capabilities of PIP.
Then Microsoft came along and created a modified version of DOS called MS-DOS which IBM started using.
Eventually, Microsoft created Windows 95, merging two initially separate products: MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Microsoft left in the code for handling CON, etc., but they hadn’t put in any limitations for filenames, which caused some bugs. So, from the next version of Windows onward, they disallowed the ability for anything to name a folder or file “CON”, among other related things.
So the reason you can’t name a file or folder “CON” is because of a 60-year-old file-copying program nobody uses anymore.
That looks to be an Access prompt, from the MS office suite. If you’ve ever written a macro you know how ancient the UI looks behind the scenes with those apps, and this isn’t even a main line office app since it deals with databases and they push excel to work with sets of data like that.
So yes it’s a Microsoft product, but it’s not really native Windows and it’s not an app that makes a lot of sense to spend a lot of time developing.
Just for accuracy’s sake. I’m certain there are better examples.
Anyways, I’m perfectly fine with dated UI as long as it’s efficient and does what it’s supposed to do. If they perfected this stuff way back when you had one chance to ship out a working product, is it really necessary to reinvent the wheel just for aesthetics? Cause that’s how you get a neutered settings app instead of a fully functional control panel.
Well, it’s more like they update the old stuff and still add new stuff on top of it. That way, generally speaking, Windows can remain compatible with older programs.
Like why is it so hard for them? The underlying settings database doesn’t have to change, only the UI. Unless it’s all so messed up nobody dares touch it.
What do you mean? You can still open control panel from XP/Vista and basically every option menu still points to the same shit that hasn’t changed since Windows 95. Go open device manager and go to the properties of any device and you get like XP stuff at newest. Event Viewer, Disk Management, and many other high level panels haven’t changed from XP.
90 percent of windows menus are still the same as 2000, even on the consumer side. And they’re not virtually identical, they ARE identical.
Lol, honestly, that’s probably fair. My memory basically ends at 95 though and I don’t remember any 3.1 menus well enough to make a call on that distinction.
Sure, but you can refactor code without completely changing or removing functional and widely used features. Especially looking at Win11 vs. Win10, it just feels malicious at this point. “How can we shoehorn in more advertising, AI and telemetrics?”
So fucking annoyed at the taskbar overflow shit in Windows now. I don’t want it hiding any of my system tray icons…I want to see what’s running and I don’t care how it looks. Every time certain apps update themselves, I have to go in again and select that particular app to hide itself with no way to tell Windows to just stop trying to hide system tray icons altogether. I’ve told it to hide Discord and the Xbox app probably 20 times each now and it conveniently forgets my decision every app update.
I’ve got fed up of them changing how many hoops you go through to get to the old settings so I have the .cpl commands memorized that work no matter what computer you’re at
Really annoying start search that doesn’t go to the control panel programs but opens bing search instead, also the right control panel features are not linked from the new 2024 system app ui WTF
As I’ve heard this explained, enterprise admins have scripts, and to a less important extent muscle memory, tied to Control Panel layout and command lines, and that’s not a group you want to irritate.
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