Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026 102
Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system's performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls "swarming."
"The feedback we're receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear. We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people," Pavan Davuluri, president of Windows and devices, told The Verge. The company plans to spend the rest of 2026 focusing on pain points including system performance, reliability, and overall user experience.
January has been particularly rough for Windows 11. Microsoft issued an emergency out-of-band update to fix shutdown issues on some machines, then released a second out-of-band fix a week later to address OneDrive and Dropbox crashes. Some business PCs are also failing to boot after the January update because they were left in an "improper state" after December's monthly update failed to install. Users have also grown frustrated by aggressive Edge and Bing prompts, constant OneDrive upselling nags, and Microsoft's push to require Microsoft accounts.
The core members of the company's Windows Insider team recently moved to different roles. "Trust is earned over time and we are committed to building it back with the Windows community," Davuluri said.
"The feedback we're receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear. We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people," Pavan Davuluri, president of Windows and devices, told The Verge. The company plans to spend the rest of 2026 focusing on pain points including system performance, reliability, and overall user experience.
January has been particularly rough for Windows 11. Microsoft issued an emergency out-of-band update to fix shutdown issues on some machines, then released a second out-of-band fix a week later to address OneDrive and Dropbox crashes. Some business PCs are also failing to boot after the January update because they were left in an "improper state" after December's monthly update failed to install. Users have also grown frustrated by aggressive Edge and Bing prompts, constant OneDrive upselling nags, and Microsoft's push to require Microsoft accounts.
The core members of the company's Windows Insider team recently moved to different roles. "Trust is earned over time and we are committed to building it back with the Windows community," Davuluri said.
Focus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Focus? (Score:4, Informative)
They have lost focus a long time ago and they will not get it back even if they crash and burn.
If Too Big To Fail is a thing, then Too Rich To Give A Shit is certainly a thing.
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Like, say, Boeing? Or Intel?
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That seems to be their current state, yes. A few years ago, I got the impression that MS can only make Windows worse now (except for minor fixes), because they have built up a mountain of technological debt. That impression has by now gotten to a strong expectation.
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They have lost focus a long time ago and they will not get it back even if they crash and burn.
They never lost focus. Their focus has been laser-tight for as long as I remember. That focus was cash and apparently, they have been incredibly successful. Operating system? Huh?
Meaningful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Meaningful (Score:4, Insightful)
"passionate customers"? (Score:2)
Re:Meaningful (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe Microsoft understands fully what would be "meaningful" to their customers. How about removing the Microsoft account requirement, removing the telemetry, removing the ads, removing the AI, removing the cloud integration, removing the bloat? How about giving customers real control, like being able to turn off updates. That would be meaningful.
Yeah, they're not going to stop shoveling AI and "give us all your data" initiatives. And while I have no outright proof, I have to think the data-suck and honestly too-fast addition of AI features is leading to a lot of the instability issues we've been hearing about. I've found that if I keep networking completely turned off I get much better performance on local-only tasks. Even without opening an email client or a web browser but leaving the network adapter turned on I see CPU and RAM usage climb fairly quickly. Which tells me there's something running when the network is on that isn't when it's turned off. I would pop a network sniffer if I got real curious about it, but I just want to use my computer during my limited time each day to record some guitar, program some drums, and do a little writing. Turning off the network allows me to accomplish that.
It's too bad the network is required for so many workflows now. It leaves the great big gaping window open, and Microsoft is both the construction company of the house you're living in, and the peeping tom desperate to catch your digital life in its underwear.
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Aside from some bug fixes, almost nothing Microsoft has done to Windows in the last 10 years has been for the users' benefit, but for their own benefit.
Every knowledgeable and tech-savvy Windows user just wants Windows 7 back.
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I don't believe Microsoft understands fully what would be "meaningful" to their customers. How about removing the Microsoft account requirement, removing the telemetry, removing the ads, removing the AI, removing the cloud integration, removing the bloat? How about giving customers real control, like being able to turn off updates. That would be meaningful.
Is any of that meaningful to their customers, though? Yes, it's very meaningful to you, and me, and a large fraction of the denizens here. Most people barely realize that their user account should or even could be different from their Microsoft account. Heck, your MS account is more distinct from your Windows user account than you Google account is distinct from your Android user account, or Apple vs iOS accounts. Very few people make any attempt to block the telemetry being collected by literally every o
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...like being able to turn off updates. That would be meaningful.
Anyone qualified to operate a machine that isn't patched and current knows how to make it that way.
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There isn't much incentive for them to change. Despite everything, Windows 11 adoption has been faster than Windows 10, and the massive exodus to Linux hasn't happened. At one point they were terrified of everyone moving to tablets and mobile devices, but that hasn't happened either.
The simple and unfortunate reality is that there isn't any alternative for most people.
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I don't believe Microsoft understands fully what would be "meaningful" to their customers.
Huh? Microsoft knows EXACTLY what their customers want. The problem only arises because Microsoft values what they want more than they value what the customer wants. In fact, much of what Microsoft wants is directly contrary to what customers want. They would rather quite their business entirely than allow the customer's desires to override their own.
Long story short, no matter what they say, they will never ever give customers what customers want.
Start by not turning everything into Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)
My preference would be for them to focus on fast, native rendering again, maybe with a new 'win64 api'. But I'm not sure that talent or expertise exists at MSFT anymore.
Would you settle for more CoPilot instead? (Score:2)
All we have are AI people now.
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I wonder what the point of updating the Windows GUI would be anyway, every 3rd party app seems to use some custom skin and nothing is consistent. Even Microsoft uses a different UI for Office and yet another one for Teams...
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They also don't use any talent for Teams. Today I was in a meeting and Teams just became unresponsive when a screen was shared. I had to quit and restart it and missed a bunch of stuff while I was waiting for it to be "setting things up for" me. What's there to set up, assholes? Just let me get back into the meeting.
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That reminds me of when Microsoft acquired Skype and it almost immediately got much worse. Teams is another low-effort product that they presumably acquired from another company because Microsoft doesn't make software any more, they just buy products and then make them worse. I just sat through another meeting yesterday where we struggled to get audio working for about a half-hour. Even when you do get it working right, one day it will simply decide to change all your audio devices, leaving you scrambli
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This started 20 years ago when they tried making all their UI work like web pages, something nobody asked for or liked.
Eventually, like you said, everything became an instance of Chrome. Even their popular programmer editor, VS Code (worst name ever) is basically a web browser underneath, and I _like_ VS Code. I used Multi-edit for about 30 years, only abandoning it for SublimeText in 2019, and then to VS Code in 2020 because that was all I was allowed to use at work. But, VS Code, despite being pretty b
I cant see it worse than any other Windows (Score:1)
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Windows 2000 was good for its time. I would love a version of Windows 2000 with an up-to-date security model.
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Too late... (Score:3)
Sorry, too late. The trust was killed by MS a long time ago and I don't think they can get it back. I've pretty much weaned myself off of MS products at home; the last remaining one is Onenote which I use via the web interface and even there I'm slowly pulling the information off and deleting notebooks.
I only use Windows when forced to at work, and even then, I do my best to live in the WSL world. I've got some time left before I retire, but I'm really looking forward to retirement and ending the MS world.
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This is where the "elites" plan to reduce the world population comes into play.
Just like it said on the Georgia Guidestones:
"Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. "
So who gets to be in that 500,000,00????
the "Elites" will be choosing.
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Like George Carlin said, it's big club and we ain't in it.
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Midwits don't understand that billionaires don't care about making money. They sell things to you so they can build spaceships and buy expensive yachts.
If all production is automated, they no longer need the money so they no longer need to sell things to you.
What billionaires really don't understand is that most of them have no useful skills in a post-neoliberal world and their wealth is more likely to end up in the hands of their security staff, who have a very particular set of skills.
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Midwits don't understand that billionaires don't care about making money
This is obviously false, because they can have more money than they can spend in their lifetime and still want to keep making more.
The rest of your comment is no consolation because they will shit everything up for the rest of us on the way there.
Hope they continue vibe coding Windows (Score:3)
So more people moves to better operating systems.
Linux Desktop (Score:2)
Maybe they can swarm and suggest some Linux distros to move to.
BSD alternative (Score:2)
mumble mutter manacle myth-mumps (Score:3)
'Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system's performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls "swarming."'
"Brooks's law is an observation about software project management that "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org])
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Low hanging fruit (Score:5, Insightful)
They can regain trust by removing the following:
1. Telemetry.
2. Advertising.
3. "AI".
4. Mandatory Microsoft account.
5. Arbitrary restrictions on supported hardware (TPM, CPU age).
Easy really - no need to add anything.
Re:Low hanging fruit (Score:4, Insightful)
6. Restore old utilities the way they were, such as Notepad, WordPad and Paint (without the AI)
7. Give people the option of using past Windows user interfaces, even if they don't make it the default. For instance, let one make Windows 11 or 12 look like Windows 7, if that's the look & feel one enjoys
8. If they have to include a News app, give people the option of entering the websites of the news sources they trust, not the ones MS wants us to read
Re:Low hanging fruit (Score:5, Insightful)
8. If they have to include a News app, give people the option of entering the websites of the news sources they trust, not the ones MS wants us to read
And for fuck's sake, if I click on one of those news articles, open it in my default browser, not Edge!
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You: And for fuck's sake, if I click on one of those news articles, open it in my default browser, not Edge!
Microsoft: No
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Probably, but Microsoft will re-enable it all with the next update.
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Are there not scripts to remove/disable this shit?
So we should all do the job MS refuses to do after paying them for support which they can then deny because you've made changes they didn't authorize? I'll stick with a good Linux distro instead.
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There are ways around these things, but some of them are beyond many users, and users shouldn't have to go around their OS vendor to do things. The purpose of the OS is to serve the user, not the other way around.
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1. Telemetry.
Yes, but not only for privacy reasons. Windows 11 regularly grinds to a crawl, with plenty of available RAM and no CPU/storage usage, because just about every running process is waiting for telemetry network calls to complete.
Re:Low hanging fruit (Score:4, Insightful)
A big problem that will remain is that Microsoft is subject to USA laws eg the Cloud Act [wikipedia.org] and others that let the USA government grab your data and remotely disable services and software. The USA could never be completely trusted (think: Edward Snowden) but Trump has thrown this into sharp focus. There is a move within the EU to move away from American technology [ecfr.eu]. Microsoft cannot fix this problem.
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No problems like that on Linux, just saying.
I mean Linux is there when you need an escape.
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... and all that stuff could be probably fixed with a few registry changes.
I trust (Score:4, Funny)
I trust them not to restore my trust.
Drastic leadership changes needed (Score:3)
Every opportunity of the last 30 gears has been destroyed and squandered by Microsoft. XBox being the latest victim.
Drastic changes are needed in the leadership coz the current ones have no idea what they are doing
They're admitting is shit show... (Score:3)
We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people
That statement is clear, Windows is not a useful or meaningful, or usable operating system, across the board. Microsoft is admitting this, Microsoft, how bad does a product have to be, for Microsoft to admit it's terrible? If you need any more convincing that you can't utilize Windows as a professional, you're a fraud. Not a confused, but understandable idiot, a fraud, no different from someone who takes money for a job, and disappears. It's over, Windows is not a usable operating system, from Microsoft, not from the Unix and Linux community, from Microsoft.
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Yeah but /. Has had a good old whine every time windows upgrades.
I’m on Win11, And it’s still just windows.
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Just a day later, there is this story about how Microsoft is experimenting w/ adding a menu bar to the top. Thereby once again, disrupting everybody's workflow
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Want to gain trust - just be an OS (Score:2)
Just be an operating system. Focus on being better than that.
Stop mining data.
Stop trying to force people to connect to various services.
Just let users run the software they choose to run and stay out of their way.
Remember XP SP2? (Score:2)
I'm very hopeful this will be a repeat of the XP SP2 experience.
I will admit I'm not willing to bet on it though... but no harm in being optimistic. Cautiously optimistic... or is that just wishful given their
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We've all seen this comic strip before. Microsoft is Lucy. Windows is the football. Consumers (you and me) are Charlie Brown.
I identify with your visualization. :)
Way to deflect (Score:1)
It isn't Windows that has the trust problem. Look in the mirror Steve, er, I mean Satya. It's gonna happen when you turn an operating system into an advertising, distraction, and surveillance platform (that still runs on the same deficient kernel that you ran in the year 2000).
We'll swarm right on it (Score:1)
2 years... (Score:1)
Here's the starting list for you: (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Allow disabling automatic updates. Indefinitely.
2. Allow disabling AI system-wide
3. Kill all nagware / ads.
4. Remove the Settings app and restore a proper, old-fashioned Control Panel.
5. Restore full support for local-only accounts.
6. Stop forcing hardware updates, such as TPM.
7. Stop constantly resetting system settings on updates.
8. Related to 7, stop resetting default apps / handlers.
9. Decouple from the OS and allow users to fully uninstall Edge.
10. Stop collecting all the bloody analytics.
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11. Start supporting and updating Windows 7 again.
12. Fire Nadella.
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Better yet:
2. Remove all of the AI components and make them into a stand-alone package that the user can install if, and only if, they actually need or want it.
Windows 11 doesn't have a trust problem (Score:2)
Windows 11 is the problem.
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Yep. But MS cannot admit that. And that pretty much means they cannot fix things.
it's pronounced Fow-koos (Score:2)
Focus,man
Bull (Score:2)
Shit.
What the slave wants (Score:1)
This is the current choice of winner-takes-all capitalism: Doctorow looked at the consumer-side and called it "enshittification".
Too late for me (Score:2)
I finally switched my main PC from Windows 11 to Linux Mint. It wasn't even telemetry or ads - I know how to deal with those. It was everyday functionality that didn't work or was unreliable in Windows: Bluetooth pairing, networked printers, access to other machines on LAN; along with basic desktop usability. It's been a couple of months and I don't miss Windows at all.
I know this is an anecdotal evidence data point, and I may be a more "advanced" user. But I can tell that the amount of Googling to make thi
swarming (Score:2)
its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system's performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls "swarming."
Normally you would use a process called "dogfooding" but it's not dog food that Microsoft works with.
Trust is earned by meaningful ACTION (Score:2)
>"Trust is earned over time and we are committed to building it back with the Windows community,"
Utter nonsense. I am about 99.9% sure you will not remove the blocks requiring certain unnecessary hardware, remove requiring Microsoft cloud logins, and remove the "AI-ification" of most everything. Those are probably the three most requested and upsetting things you have done, among many. If you don't address those three, everything else is mostly meaningless.
I am glad I don't have to use MS-Windows on a
Trust me, bro (Score:2)
Sorry, Microsoft. I already have the weather guy fooling me for years. Get in line and take a seat. It will take a while to believe in you again.
Not because they forced it... and captured people (Score:2)
BAD user experience (Score:3)
My dad bought a new Windows laptop recently and I figured I could talk him through the setup. There was so much counter-intuitive shit that I had to resort to telling him to install Zoom so I could do it myself remotely.
Win 11 will always be inferior to Win 10 (Score:1)
Worthless actionism (Score:2)
Reliability and usability come from architecture and design, none of which can simply be fixed. MS has disrespected their users for a few to many years now for any quick wins in that area. It may even be possible that the only way to fix Win11 is to throw it away and start over. That would be a 10 year process tough or longer.
Personally, I think they are cooked and nothing can save Windows now. Well, they could go back to Win10 and not mess with features anymore.
Nope, don't believe you (Score:2)
Microsoft's culture problem has only gotten worse. There's an uncanny desperation in their behavior that turns people off and they don't know how to stop.
Remember, they got sued for Movie Maker (Score:1)
There is no job in the world... (Score:2)
There is no job in the world that involves the word "swarm" that can be managed competently and intelligently unless it's being done by literal insects.
Promote a COO to CEO (Score:1)
I'm looking at you, Cook...
Re: Meanwhile on Debian.. (Score:1)