Microsoft Won't Let You Close OneDrive on Windows Until You Explain Yourself (theverge.com) 245
Microsoft now wants you to explain exactly why you're attempting to close its OneDrive for Windows app before it allows you to do so. From a report: Neowin has spotted that the latest update to OneDrive now includes an annoying dialog box that asks you to select the reason why you're closing the app every single time you attempt to close OneDrive from the taskbar. Closing OneDrive is already buried away and not a simple task, with Microsoft hiding it under a "pause syncing" option when you right-click on OneDrive in the taskbar. But now, the quit option is grayed out until you select a reason for quitting OneDrive from a drop-down box. Here are the options:
1. I don't want OneDrive running all the time
2. I don't know what OneDrive is
3. I don't use OneDrive
4. I'm trying to fix a problem with OneDrive
5. I'm trying to speed up my computer
6. I get too many notifications
7. Other
1. I don't want OneDrive running all the time
2. I don't know what OneDrive is
3. I don't use OneDrive
4. I'm trying to fix a problem with OneDrive
5. I'm trying to speed up my computer
6. I get too many notifications
7. Other
Other (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
Onedrive has hit about peak penetration. It's a not that great service included in O365 that drives a lot of MSFT Azure revenue. Same as Edge, they want to figure out why people are deleting it or otherwise getting rid of it. The product group would like to stop the bleeding. I predict little success.
The same situation is playing out for Teams. Zoom and Discord are the main issues for further penetration, and nothing in the MSFT offering is going to do much to unseat them.
Re:Can't blame them for trying (Score:4, Interesting)
What IS OneDrive?
Not familiar with it.
Re:Can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Informative)
It's like dropbox - it syncs your files across machines via the cloud.
Lots of issues with synchronization and file access since it pretends to be real files but they don't actually exist
Re:Can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of issues with synchronization and file access since it pretends to be real files but they don't actually exist
Umm, I have hundreds of people using it with very minimal fuss. Very few synch issues other than the obvious user with no Internet scenario. Not sure what you mean by "real files but they don't actually exist"? The biggest issue I see is it has file name/length limits [microsoft.com] and those can be very hard for some people (particularly non-Windows people; we have a large number of Mac people using it) to wrap their head around. It's really Sharepoint, so a lot of limits come from that, e.g., a space becomes three characters (%20) because it has to be translated into a URL, the file length limit includes all parent folders, etc.
It's hard to beat the amount of included storage (1TB/user) and compliance/regulatory features Microsoft bakes into the product, for the price at least, and you probably need the Microsoft licenses anyway if your users need Office.
Dropbox by comparison costs a small fortune. We used Sharepoint/Onedrive to replace Dropbox, not because it was better (they're roughly equal) but becasue there was no reason to pay for both. iCloud Drive is not tenable for a mixed Windows/Mac environment. Google Drive was a contender but my organization doesn't pay for Google (we're in education) and we have very little faith we won't wake up one morning and find a huge bill waiting for us, or our quota suddenly slashed, or even (less likely but it's Google) the product suddenly sunset with no warning. :(
Re: Can't blame them for trying (Score:2)
Whatâ(TM)s the issue with iCloud Drive? I donâ(TM)t have much experience with it, but coincidentally, I turned it on a week ago for the first time on a Windows 7 machine to copy some files to all my Macs. It worked, but this is hardly much experience. My biggest issue with it is that Appleâ(TM)s iCloud storage costs get expensive very quickly.
I do use OneDrive at work on my Mac, but thatâ(TM)s because it comes with our Office accounts and it includes so much space. I donâ(TM)t f
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iCloud Drive doesn't work well on Windows, in my experience, but more importantly, it doesn't include version history, that's huge for us. It has very limited compliance and logging features. We have managed iCloud accounts for our Apple users and it's almost a black box from an administrative standpoint. I can go in and see your files but I have very limited visibility into how you work with them, where you log in from, etc. With OneDrive I can use conditional access to harden security, I have complete
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Interesting. I can see from your description how iCloud Drive is more a consumer product and not so suitable to many businesses. And thanks for your pointer to the info about the default settings for shareable links. I can't fathom our IT, they're intrusive and heavy handed with their security that at times it's difficult for people to work. Maybe you're right and they don't want to deal with a lot of senior non-technical people who will have to change how they work
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The issues I've seen are that while it's sync-ing files locally with the cloud then you can't move/rename them which is pretty annoying, but the worse one is if you have files stored on the cloud and view them on one drive on a machine, you click them, it downloads the file and opens - no problem. If a program wants to access the files, it can check if the file exists, Windows says "sure does!" but then you go to access it and you get strange access errors. Users get confused, then check the file, it's fi
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If a program wants to access the files, it can check if the file exists, Windows says "sure does!" but then you go to access it and you get strange access errors
What programs are you working with? I have only seen that type of behavior with one piece of software, this old analytics program a handful of my users use, it throws strange errors when working with files managed by any sync client (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Synology Drive; I tested them all) and per their support this is a "known problem" :(
In that case, it throws the errors even when the files truly do exist on the local device, not in a "Online only" state. The solution is to either move
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Admittedly, in my world the O365 implementation was broken on purpose because of IA (read: cybersecurity).
That said, the only real advantage of Onedrive is that we don't have to do workstation backups, Onedrive takes care of all the individual files saved on people's systems. Otherwise, we'd have to reach out to systems to save off user directories, or implement (yuck) roaming profiles or whatever.
As for the rest, it's a net negative, but that was a big deal at the time. One joy is interesting file lockin
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To solve your problem of not being able to restore a OneDrive redirect to an actual folder: take a look at the 'SetACL Studio' software. The software is in essence not freeware, but the author provides a serial key on the download page out of his own free will.
The reason I like it is that the software more or less ignores any existing ACL issue NTFS puts on a folder, it just replaces that mess with whatever ACL you create within the software. So, don't use it if you don't know what you are doing. But if you
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The files ARE real, sure you can "save space" and have them "on demand on this device" but I don't think that's the default configuration. This is certainly NOT like Google's Drive File Stream (it's called something else nowadays, if it exists at all), that would indeed just make a fully virtual drive (FAT32 or similar, no less!) and many apps will crap out because of various interactions with
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It's like Dropbox, but worse. It tries to integrate tightly into the file explorer as well. The defaults it uses are silly; it will _delete_ your local files if they see that they're backed up. Like its broken backup methods, it assumes everything in Libraries is important, and everything else is not. You may find that suddenly tons of shit is being backed up, which could affect our ISP bandwidth and charges if you're working from home or have unexpected slowdowns without being told why if in the office.
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Microsoft doesn't understand that the most common reason for any of their products to be turned off is "it sucks". Microsoft writes cappy software, plain and simple. Then step one they force it as a default in Windows to try to get it accepted by the public without the burden of competing against rivals with better solutions. Step two is making it very annoying to remove, turn off, or replace.
For home users they assume most people just click "yes" by default, and treat them as too stupid to manage their o
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It's a not that great service
I'm curious what you would consider a "great" service. What is OneDrive missing or doing wrong? What other product would you recommend?
Personally, I used to back up my files onto Zip drives, then CD-ROMs, then DVD-ROMS. It was such a pain. As a result, I only backed up every few weeks, leaving myself vulnerable to loss.
With OneDrive, everything I do is backed up pretty much immediately. I can retrieve old versions of a file that has been modified multiple times. And best of all, I don't have to mess with it
Re: Can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Interesting)
Discord isn't good from an IT security perspective since it requires a whole range of ports to be opened.
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Or just choose one reason at random, who cares.
Re:Other (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong way to think about it. Data poisoning is the proper approach. Click a selection at random and hit submit. Every time someone does that it decreases the signal to noise ratio in their data
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Well...maybe because I want to try to influence the priority and direction of future development of the product?
Re:Other (Score:5, Interesting)
the fact that any of that is necessary to sidestep MS's INSANE and needy drive to scoop up as much personal data and corral you into their workflow is bonkers.
what the fuck is going on in redmond?
my prediction is that 11 is already a flop, 12 will be like the Hindenburg and then lots of heads will roll, and 13 will be an apology and universally praised as a breath of fresh air that includes none of this anti-consumer idiocy. At which point the cycle restarts, and MS starts anew at being a god damn pest.
Re:Other (Score:4, Insightful)
>anti-consumer
In my view nagging, bitching, pleading, forcing users to use a microsoft account, onedrive, cortana, edge, bing, automatic updates etc is the definition of anti-consumer. Basically they make it intentionally difficult to take the tack of:
"no, i don't want this. fuck off and leave me alone. don't nag me, don't remind me, just fuck off and leave me alone" -- and have the software respect that decision.
Windows does things like restart services, reinstall removed software, require arcane registry hacks or random key combinations to get around their pesky, intrusive fuckery. That's not consumer friendly, at all.
tl;dr MS removing USER CHOICE on your own hardware is anti-consumer. Even If mommy Microsoft determines it to be in the your best interest - they are removing choice -- which is utterly unforgiveable.
Re:Other (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that you're using third party programs to do for you what you could easily accomplish for free with Local Group Policy is the foundation of your problem. It's approximately eight mouse clicks to completely disable Windows Update with a GPO. That's within the Microsoft framework. In a decade plus of managing Group Policy I have never seen Windows revert a GPO setting. Many of the other complaints you detailed could also be handled with Local Group Policy.
Look bro, I'm not trying to proselytize Windows to you. I don't use it as a daily driver. In my personal life, it's just for gaming. At work I have to support it, but it's not on my work machine, macOS is. My personal computer is not Windows. I get disliking it. I'm just pushing back on some of the extremes in your and other's posts about it. A lot of the things y'all are complaining about are things you can fix in just a few minutes.
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My experience has been the opposite. My use of Ubuntu isn't slow or inefficient at all. For the ordinary things I do, it is just-as-good-or-better than windows ever was.
It also seems to have been designed much better than windows in that it supports older hardware (I got 12 years out of a desktop, thanks to Linux, that Microsoft wanted to brick at year 7), and gives me more options for system configuration. It is also more stable, doesn't crash nearly as often.
And what do you mean by "unfriendly?" Are y
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My experience has been the opposite. My use of Ubuntu isn't slow or inefficient at all. For the ordinary things I do, it is just-as-good-or-better than windows ever was.
It also seems to have been designed much better than windows in that it supports older hardware (I got 12 years out of a desktop, thanks to Linux, that Microsoft wanted to brick at year 7),
Sorrh but you're talking shite. Windows is just as good at supporting older hardware. I've got a 2006 THinkpad T60 running Windows 10 with all hardware supported just fine. Linux has been removing unsupported architectures and older hardware where there are no maintainers willing to contnue to support drivers/architecture.
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"Because Linux is slow/inefficient to use, unfriendly, and poorly designed."
Unfriendly yes, poorly designed, maybe, inconsistent would be more accurate, but slow it is not.
And the incantation you just recited is no less arcane than the ones in Linux.
How about "I have my own damn storage" (Score:3)
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That doesn't work in the Enterprise context boss.
My organization has a video production side. That team works on a local NAS (Synology), made available remotely via their sync client (functionally equivalent to Dropbox/Onedrive/etc.), because there's no cost effective cloud option for dozens of terabytes.
The rest of the crew uses Sharepoint/Onedrive. We thought about putting these use cases onto the NAS, except, that means work comes to a screeching halt if hardware fails or our office loses power and/o
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Synology NAS boxen can be set up in a HA pair. It isn't even horribly hard. A beefy UPS sounds like another need. We have one setup to maintain the servers, network gear, and phones for about 45min. Internet loss is still a thing though.
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Thanks boss, I already knew that if you had read the rest of the post. It doesn't save you if both locations go down. It doesn't save you if there's an outage with the ISPs that you have in both locations. It doesn't accord you graceful failover without some sort of SD-WAN solution. It also makes you responsible for 24/7 availability and SecOps monitoring.
Also, not to get snippy, but what kind of n00b do you think you're talking to? You think a UPS is an eye opening revelation for me? We had a week
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It also misses a bunch of value propositions for the "Modern Work" experience for an enterprise. Laptop XYZ is lost or dies. Oh no. In Intune, click the button to wipe the old one and drop ship them a new machine. They sign into autopilot, magic happens, your security tools are there (Intune), their desktop and documents folders are on the machine (Onedrive), their email is there (M365), and their bookmarks and saved passwords are there (Edge Sync).
It's a pretty neat trick. I was skeptical, but it's all r
Re: (Score:2)
Well, several reasons.
- Backing up to your own hardware is usually a pain.
- It's not easy to automate backups to your own hardware. Oh yeah, I know that all the backup devices have automated software. But they're clunky and hard to set up, and fail to successfully complete backups on schedule a shockingly large percentage of the time.
- If you have a fire, and you don't have an offsite backup, you're probably screwed.
- Backup hardware has to be replaced way too often.
- Nobody's systems are compatible with an
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Problem with a lot of these things. Self hosted or not, I do not want or need the social media and sharing features these all include.
Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
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My OneDrive storage is not tied to my email address. They got an email address specifically created just for OneDrive, and no other purpose.
I can't find the right option (Score:4, Insightful)
"Because somebody from Microsoft can take a long, wet suck on my OneDrive" isn't among the options. Why would anybody want to choose another?
Every day, windows gets more annoying (Score:3)
It's no wonder OSX is growing so much. Microsoft is giving em quite a push.
Re:Every day, windows gets more annoying (Score:5, Informative)
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I imagine this is a turn off for normal people that don't know computers as well.
They look at "machine A" and "machine B" and machine B has no advertising and mcafee pop ups etc and end up choosing it.
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They look at "machine A" and "machine B" and machine B has no advertising and mcafee pop ups etc and end up choosing it.
If only this was the case, we would not have Secure Boot, Intel ME, TPM2 Requirement, the upcoming M/S Pluton Chip. and spyware everywhere. The only people who would do what you suggested are people here. Most non-tech people only look for cheap, that is it.
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You do have all those, but you also have Windows being at 68% of the market share, down from the 91% they had in 2012 during the heyday of WIndows 7
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Most of that market share went to Apple, enabled in no small part by Microsoft proactively making it easier for their products to interoperate with the Apple ecosystem and vise versa. I don't think the two view each other as competitors any longer, although their customers certainly do, the number of Apple and Microsoft SMEs I've met who are completely inept in the other ecosystem is frankly shocking to me. I guess this is where being a generalist pays dividends, lol, I'm completely comfortable in both ec
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I fully agree with this, recently a relative needed to get an new laptop to replace his 10Y old Thinkpad. He did not want to run Linux or a similar OS.
I said do not get one with Windows 11, avoid that at all costs. So he picked up a MAC Laptop and is quite happy with it. I could have put a Linux on it (T430), but he would never use it.
FWIW, I put my request for the T430 if he decided he does not want it. :)
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I have a T430 dual booting between Linux and Win 7. Excellent daily driver to this day. Pro tip: get the extra battery to put in the CD-ROM drive bay.
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Why trade one walled garden for another? Switch to Linux.
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Well, he's not talking about himself. He's just stating that macOS keeps growing because people out there are switching from Windows to it. And the reason people are switching to macOS and not to Linux is because most people don't know what Linux. Do you want people to be aware of Linux and its possibilities? Well, somebody will have to spend a few hundreds of millions (if not thousands) in marketing.
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I switched to MacOS for my primary computing in part because Apple Silicon is pretty damned impressive performance wise, and, without any virtualization, I can go straight to a *nix command line. Sure, it's BSD flavor, but I've been around long enough I can switch between GNU toolchain and BSD without too much difficulty. I have a laptop running Linux that's my back up and travel machine, and again, there's the *nix command line. Works like a hot damn, and if that laptop gets crunched by the luggage handler
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Sure, it's BSD flavor, but I've been around long enough I can switch between GNU toolchain and BSD without too much difficulty.
If you install Brew [brew.sh] it's pretty trivial to install the entire GNU toolchain, including GCC, so any missing packages (have not yet found one but I'm sure they exist) could be compiled from source.
Re:Every day, windows gets more annoying (Score:5, Informative)
Ugh.... I know it's Slashdot where Linux reigns supreme. But as a LONG time Linux user myself? It's just not viable for the average computer user as a workstation. It's viable for the limited/restricted usage you give students with Chromebooks, and it's viable once properly/carefully configured for the casual user where you know the scope of what they want to use. And obviously, it's a great option for "power users" who will spend the time learning the OS.
The "average user" doesn't care so much about walled gardens. He/she cares about things like being able to install their favorite software applications and to have a user experience where things aren't too cluttered with options OR where options they need are difficult to find.
A Mac already doesn't work for some of these people because their chosen apps have no native Mac editions. But at least on the Mac, you can get commercial products like AutoCAD if you need them, and pretty much everything Adobe makes has a Mac version. Since it's a BSD Unix at its core, it also has easy to install editions of most of the stuff the Linux community considers its "major apps" too. The OS itself gives you tools like ability to do basic annotation and editing on PDFs and you can generate one from anywhere. And if you need support? You have local retail stores in many major cities where you can schedule appointments to go in and get assistance or basic training on how to use it. Plus, it's not perfect by any means ... but even Microsoft's Mac editions of apps tend to be a little cleaner and less annoying than their Windows counterparts because they're still following old Mac conventions for app design, and/or don't care so much about collecting data from a relatively small percentage of Mac users out there.
Re:Every day, windows gets more annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
but even Microsoft's Mac editions of apps tend to be a little cleaner and less annoying than their Windows counterparts because they're still following old Mac conventions for app design
This was my biggest mindfuck when I started supporting Mac people and using one myself. The Office suite of apps -- including my long time nemesis, Outlook, ugh, die already -- work better on Mac than they do on Windows. When they do go wrong, which is pretty rare, it's far easier to nuke and reinstall them (just delete some folders in the user's library directory) than it is on Windows. I've never had to reformat a fucking Mac just to resolve an Outlook issue. I have had to do that a non-zero number of times on Windows. Never had to nuke a user profile on Mac either. Lost count of how many times Outlook issues have required that for resolution. *facepalm*
My pet theory, based on zero tangible evidence, if you've been around here long enough to remember the first Windows source code leak [slashdot.org], a lot of folks who fished through the code came back surprised by how many comments there were referencing patches to the OS to support the Office team. If your user space application requires kernel changes to work properly, you're fucking doing it wrong! On macOS they don't have the ability to demand the OS team make adjustments to get Office working properly. I'm sure Apple would take a bug report from Microsoft more seriously than they'd take one from me, but they aren't going to make changes to macOS just to make the Microsoft Office Dev Team's job easier.
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It's not? I'd hate to see what kind of "average computer user" you're thinking of, because my experience has been completely different.
My older sister is a very typical user, who doesn't understand anything about how computers work and likes it that way. Over a decade ago, she got her hands on a LiveUSB for Ubuntu, and after only five minutes was ready to switch. Ever since, she's been a happy Linux user, and the only time she's need
It's a disk space hog (Score:5, Informative)
If you have many local accounts, like on lab computers where we can have over 100 accounts, the OneDrive bloatware ends up consuming a significant amount of disk space, and impacts startup times, even when zero people use it. Bloatware is killing Windows.
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Luckily, most of us don't have 100 accounts on one machine.
So many missing options (Score:5, Insightful)
But honestly the only one that matters is "My using OneDrive would violate federal, state, and local law and also result in my termination" because tax information, HIPAA, etc. Fuck off Microsoft, stop trying to set me up for blackmail.
I actually don't know how anyone can justify using Windows for business when it's the worst spyware of all time. How is even allowing confidential and protected data to pass through a system with Telemetry legal? We're talking about data that has to be protected by at least two mechanisms and it's going across a system that the EULA says Microsoft can pick up any data from at any time and for any purpose and then go on to hand it to their associates?
Re:So many missing options (Score:5, Interesting)
The Big Bank that Mrs. works for has been closing its data centers and moving everything to Azure.
Everything. And of course, they're all communicating using Teams, mirroring what Biggest Bank does.
All Microsoft, everywhere.
And now, they want to "pair" all of their developers with a new programming buddy, Visual AI.
Seriously. But most engineering is being moved to India anyway, so lucky for them.
I'm sure it's coincidental that Big Bank's CEO sits on Microsoft's board.
Re: (Score:2)
My condolences.
Can you give a hint as to which bank? I might wanna withdraw my funds and move to somewhere a bit more secure....
Re:So many missing options (Score:4, Interesting)
I might wanna withdraw my funds and move to somewhere a bit more secure....
It's highly unlikely your account information lives in Azure. I've supported bank customers before. Azure is their communication/collaboration channel. All account information -- including the bank's own books -- lives in FiServ's private cloud [fiserv.com], they offer a turnkey solution that meets regulatory requirements.
Dealing with FiServ makes dealing with Microsoft look easy and fun. They literally do not care. I had a failover scenario (bank's HQ lost power for a week after an ice storm), needed one small thing (a route change) out of FiServ to get them back up and running, and even a call from bank CEO to FiServ account rep could not get that escalated. On Day Three of waiting for FiServ to give a shit we cheated and used NAT to work around the problem, which was a massive violation of their agreement with FiServ, but whatever, people needed access to their accounts. FiServ finally responded to the ticket.... two days after power was restored and nine days after the "emergency" ticket was created.
I thought it was because my bank clients were small potatoes compared to FiServ, until a buddy of mine went to work for Navy FCU [navyfederal.org]. Literally the largest credit union in the world, twice the market capitalization of FiServ, and she says they get the same kind of treatment from them. :(
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The Big Bank that Mrs. works for has been closing its data centers and moving everything to Azure.
Why does that sound like a tax haven? Like Belize.
Re:So many missing options (Score:5, Informative)
They also don't have the "your service keeps backing up useless temporary files that drives me over the 5 GB storage limit" option. I would need that option from my personal experience with the product.
Yes, I know that you can configure it to exclude certain directories. That said, I never asked for them to back this stuff up to begin with, so all it's really doing is wasting my network bandwidth and CPU resources to back up trash to the cloud.
Re: So many missing options (Score:2)
Of course it can because Microsoft is a willing part of the panopticon, a defense contractor, etc etc. I know the answer obviously. But it is in no way secure enough let alone scrupulous enough to be trusted with other people's data. It's a very sad fact that basically all government systems that aren't antiques run Windows.
Number Eight (Score:5, Informative)
1. I don't want OneDrive running all the time 2. I don't know what OneDrive is 3. I don't use OneDrive 4. I'm trying to fix a problem with OneDrive 5. I'm trying to speed up my computer 6. I get too many notifications 7. Other
8. I get too many useless modal dialogues requiring user action before anything happens
Does OneDrive start singing Daisy (Score:2)
Just what do you think you're doing?
I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in eavesdropping on you and scooping up all your data.
Just updated windows and tried it (Score:2)
I don't see this behaviour
Windows 10 Enterprise 21H2 LTS build 19044.3570
Microsoft knows it can get away with this (Score:4, Insightful)
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The fight between a sane init system vs. systemd is pretty much over. The wrong side won. Which sucks for a lot of reasons. I can avoid it for now by using Gentoo, in which systemd is mostly optional. But not for much longer, due to the following.
Xorg vs. Wayland is different. Xorg is clearly legacy technology that will never gain much more development or mindshare. But Wayland remains fragmented, and the only compositors that are close to being fully featured require one to run GNOME (and hence syste
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Can I select multiple? (Score:2)
I mean, #1, #2 and #3 directly apply to me, and #5 and #6 are also of interest.
Toxic relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
Several Microsoft applications have a toxic relationship with its users. We live in a world where the software uses you instead of the other way around.
It it's really useful... (Score:2)
...people would choose to use it, voluntarily
I find it useful, and am using it on a limited basis, but am always a bit suspicious of stuff that's forced on me
I guess Fuck You (Score:2)
isn't one of the option?
MS users feel like beta testers lately! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting really tired of garbage like our corporate MS Teams users constantly getting prompted with what feels like marketing nonsense, suggesting they "Try the NEW Teams". Once they switch to it, it prompts them at every login about whether they want to keep using the new Teams or to switch back.
They do the same, only slightly more subtly, with Outlook and the "Try the new Outlook" switch they leave present in the top right-hand corner. If users think, "Oh, good... a new, improved Outlook!" and select it? They're thrown into what's basically the Windows Mail app on steroids, where it wastes drive space syncing a second copy of all their mail and calendar entries from Exchange.
And now OneDrive asking them to take a survey on exit, too? None of this feels like a business/Enterprise experience whatsoever. And that's BEFORE all the complaints about core functionality issues. (Just yesterday, our CEO held a big Teams video-conference with one of our company's partners and nobody was able to screen share in it. It would let them click to do it and act like it was working ... but nobody could actually see any shared screens. Permissions for the meeting were set for "Everyone" to be able to do it. They had to end the call and send a new invite and try a second time to get it to work right.)
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They're thrown into what's basically the Windows Mail app on steroids,
There are no steroids. It is just the web app. Nothing I could find different between them.
It doesn't help that it also looks and feels like someone followed some instructions on setting up their very first web mail client and did a shit job of following the instructions.
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The new Teams app was great for productivity since it didn't bother to notify you of any meetings or messages.
Why they would publicly release such a broken app is a mystery. Maybe you're right about them having their users do beta testing for them.
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Advertising is counterproductive (Score:5, Insightful)
If I am pushed excessive undesirable advertising, those products go on my "perhaps I will avoid these things" mental list.
There are a number of things that I will not buy because they have offended me in some trivial way. This just adds to that list.
SMH (Score:2)
From a "run as administrator" command window:
taskkill /f /im OneDrive.exe
Apple just use psychology instead. (Score:2)
After denying numerous iTunes / phone app updates on Windows the icon went from "quit to "quitter" over time.
So now it just says "Quitter"
Taskmgr (Score:2)
End process
Does abruptly killing the process and not answering Microsoft's stupid poll a valid choice? Kind of like not voting is also a political message.
1, 3, 5, 6 (Score:2)
I'd love a multi-select, please.
Re: (Score:3)
Note how "I don't trust Microsoft to have a copy of my data on their servers, now fuck off and let me close this data exfiltration software" isn't an option.
They don't want the reason, they want to wear you down until you accept what they want.
The comments here are why their software sucks. (Score:3)
Use taskkill? (Score:2)
taskkill /IM onedrive.exe
The enshittification of Windows continues... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you absolutely need to use Windows for work then I can understand, but with the recent improvements on Linux for gaming it really doesn't make sense anymore to continue to endure the "Windows user abuse" for any sort of personal use.
If you are (a) using Windows just for personal use with gaming, browsing, email or other tasks that Linux does perfectly well, and (b) you're complaining about the violation of your privacy and the abuse of your systems and information by Microsoft, then you need to STOP wasting your energy on complaining and redirect that energy to learning Linux.
The cure for the greedy, dangerous and privacy-destroying and ongoing abuse of Windows users, is to STOP using Windows and move to a platform that respects your rights. Nothing else will solve that problem.
Re: (Score:2)
last i tried linux for gaming was circa 2018; and even then it was like 85% of the way there; though that last mile 15% was a dealbreaker. For the games in my library there was always some quirk, some random god damn behavior that just ruined the experience. Be it sound randomly cutting out of a channel, or some arcane config file that needs to be babysat, or what have you -- it was just shy of being a replacement.
for now 10 is tolerable (but barely) I'm guessing (praying?) by the time it finally gets forc
sync its glitchy (Score:2)
Just today i changed my keepass password database from onedrive to dropbox cause the android versión was not updating it. No point to use if fails at the primary function. And dropbox its not reliable either, but i just wanted to get my dang passwords :D
I tink i need to move to other solution who just syncs fast over PC and Android.
Its https://syncthing.net/ [syncthing.net] good enough ?
Let's try to start a movement (Score:2)
How about everyone select "Other", then fill in the following:
"Satya Nadella's penis is too flaccid".
Just sign out, and don't sign in (Score:2)
If the minuscule amount of RAM it occupies is a problem, then you have bigger problems.
I have tried to find the task that starts it, but haven't yet.
I'm a number 2 (Score:2)
And proud of it.
Yes, the pun was intentional.
One drive is sneaky (Score:2)
Sounds as annoying as Android (Score:2)
I have a Pixel and backup my photos/files to a NAS. Android doesn't seem to have a option to stop suggesting I backup to Google. Periodic prompts and, after saying 'no' again, sometimes the photos app asks "how about just these couple pictures"?
MIcroSoft are killing Windows (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using Windows computers at home since the WIn98 days. The prime reason is to run audio/video software. Over the years I've upgraded to newer versions of Windows to take advantage of increased memory (you can never have too much memory for audio/video work) but along the way learned a very valauble lesson. Don't use any MS software other than the OS itself. They always try to lock your data in etc. etc. Over the years the "non audio" software I use grew to things like VLC, Thunderbird, Firefox, Foobar, GIMP, Sony VEGAS, plus all sorts of useful little utilities and also quite a lot of programs I wrote myself in VB, then latterly C#, Python etc.
When Windows 10 came out I bought the LTSC version as this was the only one that I was prepared to use - no forced MS account, no forced crapware installs etc.
All the latest moves Microsoft are making is to turn Widows into some sort of "dumb as a rock", "Fisher Price" style activity centre/appliance for idiots. Forced MS account, foced installation of crap you don't want, regualr deletion of user preferences, costant pop ups, etc. etc. etc. I sometimes help out friends with Windows 10 home installations and I honestly don't know how they can stand all the interruptions/crap.
My solution has been simple. Ove the last few years I've moved pretty much everything non audio/video related over to a Linux desktop as VLC, Thunderbird, Firefox, GIMP etc. all run pretty much the same on Linux.
Having looked at the utter bullshot MS are putting into WIndows 11 there is no way in hell I'm ever going to "upgrade" (sic) from 10 LTSC. So I'll now be keeping my WIn10 box going until either it, or I, die .
It seems like the MS management have forgotten the whole conept of a "personal computer". It's for *ME* to do what *I* want. I don't work for you, you have no idea what I want to do with my PC so stop trying to force shit on your users.
Persnally I think they#ve got some trolls workig in the upepr management who are literally hell bent on working out "how can we get rid of our user base ?"
Nothing to see here! (Score:2)
OneDrive CAUSED data loss for a customer (Score:5, Informative)
As you can imagine, she was frantic, as irreplaceable data was at risk. I was called in to debug the issue, and sure enough, copies to the 4TB disk didn't work. I hooked it up to my laptop, and it was fine. Why could my PC copy files to it, but hers couldn't?
Because of OneDrive.
The error message was a OneDrive error. But she wasn't copying to OneDrive in the first place. Or was she?
It appears that when you copy files using Windows Explorer using drag and drop to another Windows Explorer, OneDrive quietly intercepts the copy, and also copies the files to OneDrive, for backup.
She was doing drag and drop between two Explorer windows. And her OneDrive was completely full, and out of space, so it couldn't take any more files. So Windows aborted the copy with any error.
Yes, because OneDrive was full, Windows prevented copying to a local hard drive.
The customer didn't even know what OneDrive was. Exiting it, and stopping it from starting up again, she was able to back up her system, but she was totally freaked out about the OneDrive "virus" that almost caused her catastrophic data loss.
And when she found out what OneDrive was, and realized that confidential, proprietary data from her customers was now on Microsoft servers, she freaked out yet again.
My only question is, why isn't there a "because it causes data loss" option in the list of reasons people want to exit it?
Ctrl-Shift-Escape (Score:2)
Task Manager -> End Task
Maybe that will shut the up.
Meanwhile the Mac version silently stops (Score:3)
I'm an unfortunate Mac user of OneDrive on Mac. It has a very irritating issue that whenever it updates itself (which it does silently) it somehow removes itself from the login items list. Which means on the next reboot it's not running - a situation you don't notice until you realize that your files aren't being backed up.
So you re-add it to the login items, make sure it's running and once again forget about it. Which sets it up to remove itself from the login items list again. Rinse and repeat.
Awful product. And I hate it even more because you can't turn on Autosave in Office without saving to one of its folders.
Microsoft is pushing OneDrive and Azure hard (Score:3)
I am on Windows 11 23H2. There is a box in my Settings app "home" page that says this:
Cloud Storage: Something happened, and we couldn't locate your storage details. Wait a bit, then try again. [imgur.com]
Note that the message has a little OneDrive cloud icon above it. They're literally reporting that there's something wrong with my computer. Cloud storage is not working!
In truth, Dropbox is fine. Google Drive is fine. My cloud storage is fine.
In addition, Office won't enable "autosave" with any other cloud service. It could automatically save the document to whatever syncing cloud directory I want, it just won't.
Yeah. DOJ needs to break off OS and software from Azure and cloud services at MS. Probably break off search too. This is just ridiculous, and regulators need to be proactive and cut them off now. Break this thing up.
Re: (Score:2)
It's fascinating how disfunctional MS is.
Did the problem you described occur with Win11?
I uninstall OneDrive as part part of my standard Win10 setup process. I also uninstall Skype so it doesn't appear in the right-click menu.