The Microsop Allegations Will Continue Until They Ship Functioning Cumulative Updates And High Quality Software Packages...

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omfgbrb@reddit

Anybody remember Windows Service Packs? Where you rolled the dice and hoped Dell hadn't borked their RAID drivers and cause your server to blue screen at boot. Running a parallel installation of Windows just so you could replace files in the damaged one and get the server up and running.

Pepperidge Farms remembers...

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bronekkk@reddit

I have not seen Windows being used as a primary platform at a workplace since 2018, or so. Since then it's either one of the options (other being MacOS and possibly Linux, with less support) or the only option was MacOS. Few things that Microsoft have going for them are Github and Azure (as AWS alternative) and Office (which works fine on MacOS). Even as a game platform, Steam on Linux is just better since every game has its own private runtime environment (i.e. Proton installs are separate per game). It's only few stupid game dev studios which insist on intentionally not running outside of Windows, and they are best ignored.

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RiceeeChrispies@reddit

I think your experience of workplaces is very much the exception, not the rule.

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SiIverwolf@reddit

Yeah, I'd love to know where this guy has been working.

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bronekkk@reddit

In the past few years, UK offices of US-based companies.

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SiIverwolf@reddit

Going on 20 years in the industry in AU, ~10 years of that in MSPs, often working with international groups, and only once have I encountered a business that wasn't reliant on Microsoft ecosystems, and that was a graphic design joint running MacOS and Mac Server lol.

Plenty of places with Linux boxes doing various things, but only that one that wasn't running Windows user endpoints and generally multiple Windows servers alongside any Linux.

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DNS@reddit (OP)

Server installations of Linux are high performance and stable, Linux is the backbone of the majority of network infrastructure. But the fragmentation between distributions really hampers the general adoption of the platform. I can setup Linux with proton, however it's going to be very difficult for a non technical users.

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cboff@reddit

Win11 is the current gateway drug for the next generation. Bad juju now becomes really bad later on.

If this gen grow up on a linux box that doesn't try to suck their wallet dry and send them around the bend with useless inclusions then they are going to use the tools they know when they are making decisions later on.

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Ssakaa@reddit

... but all the kids right now in school, and the ones finishing up school for the last, oh, decade or so have only really used linux boxes designed to teach them to depend on external services to such their wallets dry, between their chromebooks, tablets, and phones.

They're not even consistently learning Windows anymore.

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titlrequired@reddit

This isn’t really news is it? Never understood why people think using that phrase or the M dollar, was going to change anything. They’re a business, it isn’t hurting their stock price so nothing will change.

If your role requires patching and deploying updates and you know the QA is poor it’s up to you to test before deploying in production.

There’s a reason people used to say ‘wait for service pack 1’. I call them the good old days.

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TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit

We cannot wait though, updates are pushed automatically by MS.

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Ssakaa@reddit

You're in r/sysadmin, not r/windows here. If you're not managing and controlling patching, you (or at least your endpoint management folks) are doing it wrong.

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DNS@reddit (OP)

I'm saying it's unacceptable quality which deserves to be called out. If I click update, I expect it to work without needing to reinstall the operating system.

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RiceeeChrispies@reddit

Never had this problem, sounds like an environment issue.

Updates can and do break things, but I’ve never had to reinstall the OS due to it.

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DNS@reddit (OP)

This is not acceptable.

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RiceeeChrispies@reddit

I’ve never had this issue with thousands of clients. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but it’s not common at all.

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AdmRL_@reddit

Why are you choosing to die on a hill of ignorance? You do realise just denying an issue exists because you haven't bothered to look at it just damages your credibility, nothing else?

April KB5083769 Windows 11 update causes backup software failures

Microsoft releases emergency updates to fix Windows Server issues

Windows 11 KB5079473 March 2026: Install Failures and GPU Regressions Explained | Windows Forum

‘Major Issues’—Microsoft Confirms Emergency Update For Windows Users

Windows 11 February 2026 Update KB5077181: Install Failures and Boot Issues | Windows Forum

Microsoft confirms Windows 11 January 2026 Update issues, releases fix for at least two bugs

January 2026 Windows Patch Tuesday Sparks Out of Band Emergency Updates | Windows Forum

Microsoft releases second out-of-band fix for Windows in a week – Computerworld

This year alone there's been nearly as many OOB updates than there were throughout the entirety of 2022, 2023 and 2024. It's been 5 fucking months.

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RiceeeChrispies@reddit

Where am I choosing to die on a hill of ignorance? I’ve never had to reinstall an OS due to a Windows Update, that’s my point.

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vodafine@reddit

Don't worry about him he's just being a dick.

I also haven't seen it either with many opportunities, although I have chosen to in place upgrade the OS myself when I have seen weird issues, so this looks like the OS detected it itself, which is actually a good feature since it's basically admitting there's something fundamentally wrong and a reinstall is required.

In place upgrades don't require resetting everything it just replaces the OS component, the apps and all that come with. Resetting the PC is a different story. The wording to me suggests it's doing the equivalent of an in place upgrade which if that's the case, I don't see the problem. If it's a complete reset though, I can understand that being annoying.

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The_Wkwied@reddit

In my shop, in my first job, my boss only ever said to suggest to the client to reinstall windows if we genuinely have no idea what is wrong and development for our app has no idea, either.

Suggesting to a client to reinstall windows as akin to a mechanic saying 'idk what is making that rattle, have you considered buying a new car?'

Absolutely, entirely, nonnegotiably unacceptable.

"Our software, that we make, that we pushed out an update to, is broken, and we don't know what's wrong! So.. start over I guess and maybe it'll work, good luck! Sucks to be you, friend."

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auto98@reddit

Yeah it's how we used to learn, actually fixing problems instead of straight to reimaging/reinstalling the OS

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The_Wkwied@reddit

learning? We can't have that! We have to keep everyone uneducated.

How else will there be suckers to buy a new laptop every year? They added an alarm clock app, so lets call it AI too.

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TrueBoxOfPain@reddit

Totally agree!

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tejanaqkilica@reddit

Then you're in the wrong line of business. Switch over to developing programs and you'll make a fortune by shipping products that have no bugs in them.

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l337hackzor@reddit

Having lived through doing support in the Vista, updates aren't even that bad right now lol.

I haven't seen an update require a reinstall since Vista. I've seen a few BSOD, sure, but nothing a system restore didn't fix. Taking a Vista SP1 or older and getting it up to date then upgraded to 7, my God that was a task. I had it down to a science but if you didn't follow my method perfectly it would fuck up so hard.

I only support 200 or so desktops and around 15 servers. Not a huge sample size but I've thankfully had no major update issues on windows 10/11.

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SevaraB@reddit

They’re absolutely sinking to VMware reputation levels. The org I’m at now is the #2 player in its market segment. And since COVID, we’re ripping out .NET dependencies all across the enterprise. Our Azure footprint was so big that I’ve been told Microsoft actually had to work out how to scale up physically just to handle our tenant. And now all the .NET container images are being replaced with base Linux images we’ve built ourselves. If you go to deploy a VM, executives will make you justify new Windows Server VMs by proving the functionality you need can only be built in Windows. And on top of that, we’re repatriating it all- we’re spinning up OpenStack and I’m part of the team actively designing new pops to replace our Azure peerings.

I’m even told that as soon as the leaders are satisfied we’ve purged enough dependencies on Active Directory and client-deployed EXEs, we’re planning to ditch the Windows desktop OS almost entirely and switch our non-Mac endpoints to Linux. And that’s a fleet that’s around the 50k endpoint range. And I know ours isn’t the only org that’s gotten this fed up with Microsoft.

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spin81@reddit

I'm going to say the unspoken bit out loud, the quality of the Windows platform has been in steady decline since developers have been using AI and outsourcing as a crutch for programming talent.

I don't know that this is unspoken tbh

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Ssakaa@reddit

I find it hilarious that they include AI in that, considering they drop QA long ago and have heavily outsourced for cheap "talent" for years now...

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mcsey@reddit

Oh come on man. You are /u/DNS it's always your fault.

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jfoust2@reddit

DNS may be where the root cause was found, but we need to blame the person who configured the DNS.

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viral-architect@reddit

Perfect misdirection

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The_Wkwied@reddit

Get this man a corner office! He knows just enough!

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Ihaveasmallwang@reddit

I get that it’s the cool thing now to blame AI, but Windows updates have been crap for as long as Windows has been shipping updates. It’s nothing new.

Here’s something else that will really blow your mind: Linux updates sometimes break stuff too. Let’s also not forget application updates breaking things, sometimes the entire OS as was the case with Crowdstrike.

I’ve yet to experience a single example of a CU causing the need to reinstall the entire OS.

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techtornado@reddit

Simple problems become MacroHard when Microsoft gets involved

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BigLeSigh@reddit

Its also not as bad as you make out? Maybe your not doing your job properly

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DNS@reddit (OP)

I've seen multiple people with that error on recently installed Windows 11 builds, which I don't manage. It's a QA issue for a global company not an indie development project.

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ender-_@reddit

25H2 N is pretty broken if you do a clean install – Media Feature Pack always fails to install the first time, but succeeds the second time (the definition of insanity), but then regular Windows Updates break and you have to do a reinstall (well, unless they fixed it with April ISOs, but it's been this way since 25H2 ISOs became available).

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DNS@reddit (OP)

I've seen this too, takes several attempts to get the Media Feature Pack to install, even with stable internet and when all the other updates have already been settled in.

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ender-_@reddit

In my experience on 24H2 and 25H2 the first try always fails, second try always succeeds, but when the next monthly update is released, it always fails to install, and it doesn't matter if you let it install automatically, or download it from Windows Update and try to install manually – it'll fail in either case, and so will any future update. You have to go to Windows Update → Advanced → Recovery → Reinstall to make updates work again (this at least doesn't remove Media Feature Pack).

They seem to have fixed this in 26H1.

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itskdog@reddit

I would assume that deliberately trying to work around the filters probably won't get you looked at favourably by the mods who wrote them.

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Sh1rvallah@reddit

Fuck the mods

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bgdz2020@reddit

In all fairness why can’t we say the nick name our Industry has given this company?

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BigLeSigh@reddit

They own reddit now probably..

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DNS@reddit (OP)

Grown adults should be able to take criticism, it's better to call a systematic problem out rather than not say anything because it might offend someones sensibilities.

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Easik@reddit

Microsoft patches have been awful forever. They've broken something in every single patch they've ever released. There isn't much value in blaming it on AI because it's a Microsoft problem in general.

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petr_bena@reddit

"The auto moderation filters prevent me using the complete term"

LOL this sub really is a bunch of Microsop sycophants isn't it

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Creshal@reddit

It's more that the constant whining gets tiring after a while. Yeah, we get it, Microsoft can't find its own ass. Are you gonna stop using their products? No? Well sucks to be you.

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petr_bena@reddit

Me personally? I stopped some time ago already. All servers are GNU/Linux (mostly RHEL / OL / Debian). For my personal devices - I switched to macbooks long time ago, I did use Windows on my home rig because I had high hopes during Windows 10 era. They actually managed to pull a very good operating system back then. Microsoft was looking like it chose genuinely good path.

Then it all died with Win11, switched back to Debian there as well, I literally couldn't use that rig anymore - because WSL2 forced Hyper-V subsystem to take over VT-x and not yield it to anything else, so no virtualization tool I was using worked properly anymore, and I used that rig mostly to test various server OSes, appliances and tools. On Linux with virsh it works great. No need to limit myself in any way anymore.

Oh also MS was telling me that machine is too old for Win 11 and that I have to throw it to garbage. It's Xeon E5 1680 v4 with 64GB DDR4 in 4 channels, not great but also not so terrible to toss it just because MS requires TPM everywhere.

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DNS@reddit (OP)

I don't understand why anyone would defend an organization when their work isn't at an acceptable standard.

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valar12@reddit

I legitimately believe there are components of the Windows OS that are undocumented and all the developers are dead now.

There is no refactor possible and they are attempting to leverage AI to smooth it over.

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tanzWestyy@reddit

Windows K2 around the corner. Maybe something good comes of it.

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Cley_Faye@reddit

What's that? You want MORE AI in the CLOCK? Can do!

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shimoheihei2@reddit

I'm very curious how far down the rabbit hole we're going to go. Will there come a point when AI produced so much overly verbose unsustainable code that nobody can fix and that there will be no other solution than to wipe the slice clean and restart from zero..

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Creshal@reddit

overly verbose unsustainable code that nobody can fix

Thankfully, Microsoft has extensive experience with that.

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OwenWilsons_Nose@reddit

Oh my god, they actually censored the word. Good to know this sub is full of MS shills

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ChampionshipComplex@reddit

Thats NOT the experience of most people.

And I dont know what you could be doing to come to such a conclusion.

We have tens of thousands of systems and my expereince in patching predates Windows.

It barely seems necessary to say it because its so universally true - but Windows updates are a hundred fold better than they were 20 years ago.

Thats because Microsoft took the problems that existed at the turn of the century seriously because they were in a mess.

They had a model of shipping out new, paid for boxed product every 3 or 4 years and so their real devs were off working on the new version of windows not fixing the old. There was no reliable patching tool or conditional checks so you'd have to install in a certain order or break it. Drivers the worst contender for crashes and errors were not centralised or managed. No two computers in your enevironment were ever the same.

App and driver developers had to try and test their products across hundreds of possible states and reliability was non existent, constant rebuilds, security holes everywhere.

Now compare that to now. Windows is a service and Windows 11 is a marketing term not an actual new version of Windows - it is still 10. Windows has had a decade of focus from the one dev team, and the patching mechanisms are now as manadatory as Microsoft can make them. The rings for deployment allow us to manage our risks and have waves of updates. With Windows 2022 patching doesnt need a reboot.

Windows across 2 billion devices gets upated every 4 week and Microsoft are now also the worlds largest security company so the security dashboards have moved the needle from Microsofts OS and apps being the highest risk to some of the most secure.

In my decades of computing I have never seen a Windows system that wouldnt benefit from a rebuild until 10/11 got its act together.

Now I have decade old Windows 10 devices running as securely, reliably and as performant as brand new 11 builds next to them. I cant remember the last time I saw a crash that wasnt caused by a third party driver or unusual non Microsoft app.

In systems running almost exclusively Microsoft software on reputable hardware and drivers systems are fantastic and a huge improvement from 20 years ago.

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dedjedi@reddit

> unacceptable

paying money means the practices are acceptable and will continue.

don't like it? put ya money where ya mouth is and it will change.

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zatset@reddit

To be honest, I have integrated updates and drivers from Windows7 on with DISM. There are graphical font ends or you can write one with C# WindowsForms so you don’t have to resort to command line for such mundane tasks. Or write a script.

But yes, instead of focusing on AI, Microsoft should have focused on stability. Nowadays users and companies are unpaid beta testers. They can develop their business in other areas, but operating systems are for running applications, not to be used as platforms with intrusive advertising.

The real issue is that nowadays even the major Linux distributions are highly centralized. And support licenses are in many cases even more expensive than Windows.

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Infninfn@reddit

Consider that Windows 11 at most contributes 6% to Microsoft’s revenue and then imagine what kind of clout its leader has in the company to get the engineering resources they need to achieve the perfect world for admins and users alike.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

I agree with you. I started browsing tech vids on YouTube again and I was surprised at how many released videos talking about the poor performance and releases of Windows in the last 5 months.

I’ve also noticed a rising userbase on the Linux subs from casual users.

Windows won’t decline for a long, long, time but it does seem like this is a tipping point. The poor performance along side (forgive me for politics) the failing international relations of the US seems like there might be a small nudge away from the platform.

I can only hope it keeps moving in the direction but who knows.

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_millsy@reddit

Move to Linux then