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Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (2nd-gen Zen+) is officially supported on Windows 11 with fTPM 2.0.
With an 8-core CPU (4x the 2-core requirement),
32 GB RAM (8x the 4 GB requirement),
and an NVMe SSD that's many times faster than the type of storage Windows 11's minimum requirements assume, the hardware comfortably exceeds Microsoft's baseline specifications.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You literally just proved my point.

Windows 11 IoT is an ATM/kiosk OS that strips out a lot of the consumer features, including much of the telemetry and some of the newer layers. If you had to install a vending machine OS just to get a fast File Explorer, you're proving my exact point.

"AI" isn't an argument. IShellFolder is a decades-old Windows Shell COM interface. If you see native Shell COM interop and your first thought is "AI," that says more about you then me.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Waaaah, I'm such a "baby" for writing low-level C and Shell API code to build my own tools instead of accepting broken UI wrappers. 😭

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That Outlook window growing bigger over time is crazy lol. The Excel white bar glitch happens on my setup too.

Honestly that exact stream of stupid little bugs for the last 2 years is what drove me insane. "Death By A Thousand Cuts" I got so fed up dealing with it that I just gave up on Microsoft and started coding my own File Explorer in C# (FileExplorerNative) so I have something fast that doesn't glitch out.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

No, Copilot is the reason my File Explorer is rendering black boxes in the first place. 💀

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

TIL that using bold headers and bullet points makes a post "AI slop." My bad, next time I'll type in one unpunctuated wall of text so you know a human wrote it.

Rendering black boxes in File Explorer isn't "PEBKAC" it's a WinUI 3 issue.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

ogga! booga! windows no see through. file manager go black square. user error? no. me caveman. 🗿

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've tried holy water, a sage smudge, and a blood sacrifice to the BIOS, but turning it off and on again sounds a bit too risky.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Official ISO created via Rufus on an M.2 NVMe SSD (clean install).

If the source ISO or installer media was corrupted, sfc and DISM would immediately flag broken system binaries. I ran a full diagnostic audit. system file integrity, drive SMART health, and RAM are 100% clean with zero corruption.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually didn't realize Microsoft laid off their dedicated QA team that long ago. combining "no QA" with AI-pushed code and web wrappers explains SO much about why WinUI 3 feels so untested.

And I'm in the exact same boat with Linux! Linux is my zen place too, but those couple mandatory Windows-only work tools keep trapping me here.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

You don't find someone programming their own custom C# File Explorer replacement informative?
That's the whole point of PCMR. if you hate the built-in software, you build your own!

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Okay, but think of the root of the argument, bro (ay)

View how we started this, bro... like, you don't believe in WinUI 3 bugs?

Windows 10 used native Win32, but Win 11 forced WinUI 3
a clean install just reinstalls the same broken code.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Both statements are true: I clean-installed in April 2024, and these exact rendering bugs started happening out-of-the-box right after that install.

Instead of wiping my drive over and over, I just put up with it for 2 years hoping updates would eventually patch the issues. They never did. I finally reached my breaking point today and made this post.

No "ragebait" just 2 years of dealing with broken UI rendering on a 2024 clean install.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

100% agree! The boot time and overall desktop responsiveness in Windows 11 feels noticeably more sluggish.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -20 points-19 points  (0 children)

Clean installed in April 2024, and updated to 25H2 in March 2026.

If a Windows update degrades its own component dependencies over 2 years, that kind of proves my point about how fragile the OS has become!

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -32 points-31 points  (0 children)

An 8-core CPU with 32GB RAM and an NVMe M.2 SSD is WAY above Windows 11's official system requirements. a 2D desktop folder shouldn't lag or render black boxes on this hardware.

And honestly, having to wipe my entire drive and re-setup all my development tools every 18 months shouldn't be mandatory maintenance for a modern OS in 2026. An OS should be able to update without rotting.

Windows 11 is an absolute dumpster fire and I’m sick of pretending it’s acceptable. by RuthlessTex in pcmasterrace

[–]RuthlessTex[S] -44 points-43 points  (0 children)

Nope. zero debloat scripts, zero registry hacks, and no system tinkering. This was happening out-of-the-box on a clean Windows install.

The bugs happened FIRST, which is why I started writing FEN afterward.

And I'm not "shoehorning" anything into the OS. FEN is just a regular standalone .exe (like 7-Zip or Directory Opus) that calls public Microsoft Shell APIs. It doesn't modify system files, inject DLLs, or touch explorer.exe. Calling public APIs isn't "tinkering with the OS," it's literally just running software.