[HN Gopher] What if you delete the "Program Files" folder in Win... ___________________________________________________________________ What if you delete the "Program Files" folder in Windows? [video] Author : redbell Score : 59 points Date : 2022-12-12 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com) | cainxinth wrote: | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/delete-system32 | hbn wrote: | That's interesting that it started reverting into Windows 10. | | It makes you wonder how the thing is built. Like rather than | modifying the code, Windows 11 is like a service that run on top | of 10 and modifies a few UI things near the end of the startup | process. Was that just some kind of hack due to time constraints? | Or is the Windows codebase really that much of a delicate | ecosystem when it comes to not breaking legacy software so they | couldn't even modify the taskbar or file explorer without | wrecking something? | anoonmoose wrote: | Recently, I was required to use a PC that had Windows 11 on it. | I tried to set it up like the rest of my computers, which | involves moving the task bar from the bottom of the screen to | the side, which I've done for years in Windows. | | Yeah, W11 doesn't support that. If you do some digging you'll | find MS claiming it's a large technical lift that they have no | current plans to do. | | What does this mean with regards to your question? Not much. | But that regression in functionality, in an area that every | other OS I use supports and has supported for years, definitely | suggests the thing is a hack. In my humble uninformed opinion. | stagger87 wrote: | They have since added the ability to do this. | mikebridgman wrote: | Do you have a link? It seems it still requires a 3rd party | app. | TehCorwiz wrote: | The location of the Windows 11 taskbar cannot be set | through any UI options. They do not officially support | changing the location of the taskbar according to available | documentation. The upgrade message inside Windows 10 | explicitly calls out this deficiency along with other | before continuing. There are registry hacks that change the | location, but this is unsupported. | | Docs: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/how-to- | use-the-t... | TrevorJ wrote: | That kind of comports with how the UI in windows has behaved | from 98>XP>7>8>10. In 10, you get the windows 10 UI on most of | your top-level interfaces, but once you dive into a sub-menu | you get some legacy UI and if you dig down deep enough you get | UI from what feels like windows 98. | dylan604 wrote: | Did you intentionally skip Vista? | rightbyte wrote: | Funny how I totally forgot that one existed. The only time | I saw it in use was a friend's laptop. And it was laggy | like hell and he soon installed XP. | kace91 wrote: | Weirdly enough, that's one of the things that originally made | me want to explore options outside windows. | | The mobile ecosystem kept changing and taking you into new | experiences (even before smartphones). Meanwhile, a Windows | desktop never felt like something new. Just a layer of paint | over the old creaky house. | | I even remember a 'smartphone' of sorts I had before android | was a thing, which run windows phone: They literally shoved | the desktop version there, I remember not being able to click | buttons even with a stylus because the ui was so small for | the device. The most popular app was some weird dragon themed | overlay that, lo and behold, gave it finger-sized buttons. | vel0city wrote: | It wasn't "Windows Phone", it was Windows Mobile or Pocket | PC 2000. All the releases of Windows Phone definitely | didn't have a UI like the regular desktop version of | Windows and only existed after the release of Android. | kace91 wrote: | Yes, you're right! Windows mobile, I totally forgot about | the actual windows phone, that came later. | vel0city wrote: | It is definitely a common mixup. Microsoft really dropped | the ball on having a consistent product and a consistent | name in their mobile play. | TillE wrote: | It's just some moldy old bits of UI, the actual Windows | kernel itself has evolved substantially over the years. | gumboza wrote: | That's the sad thing. The core of windows is pretty good. | It's just the mismanagement and shell that's a shit show. | RajT88 wrote: | > Meanwhile, a Windows desktop never felt like something | new. | | Well. There was plenty of "new" UI enhancements over the | years which I resisted as much as possible. Imagine a meme | of Garth from Wayne's World, "We fear change..." | | I always hated the more smooth and colorful Windows XP | theme. Computers back then were resource constrained enough | that you'd notice the fact that it wasn't "free". It wasn't | until Windows 10 that I stopped trying to make the shell | look as much like Win2k as possible. The extra UI eye candy | on modern systems is as near as matters "free" now, as long | as you have plenty of RAM. | | Now I am just trying to make Windows 11 look as much like | Windows 10 as possible. | gumboza wrote: | It's worse. There's some windows 3.1 hiding in the ODBC | configuration... | | https://imgur.com/XOmCyEG | oblio wrote: | Is this still there in Win 11 2022? | RajT88 wrote: | Just checked. It is. | | I am not surprised - I feel like I was marveling over | some similar ODBC dialog back in 2009. | unilynx wrote: | An 'old' settings dialog in Windows is usually to support | old drivers who still want/need to extend that dialog | with driver specific options. You will probably still see | it in the network settings too if you dig deep enough | matchagaucho wrote: | Turtles all the way down. | | Windows boots from some DOS and File I/O BIOS interrupts. | sebazzz wrote: | Maybe pre-UEFI, but the UEFI boot process is completely | different. | EvanAnderson wrote: | MS-DOS has never been used in Windows NT and its descendant | operation systems to support booting. | | Prior to Windows Vista the real mode code in the MBR loads | NTLDR[0] which switches to protected mode and runs | osloader.exe to boot the kernel. Post-Vista this is handled | by the BOOTMGR[1] bootloader. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLDR | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting_process_of_Windows_ | NT_... | matchagaucho wrote: | Windows NT and the systems based on it are not based on MS- | DOS, _but use a virtual machine_ , NTVDM, to handle the DOS | API. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_API | | Games like Doom still run on Windows because of this DOS | virtualization. | helloooooooo wrote: | No it doesn't. UEFI boots into bootmgr.efi, which loads up | winload, which loads either ntoskrnl or hyperv | microsoftdoes wrote: | Not true since the Win 9x days. | jesprenj wrote: | Was 2000 already NT and free of DOS? | Cockbrand wrote: | Yes, it was the direct successor of NT 4.0. Windows 2000 | was still an OS aimed at the "professional" market, | though. XP was the first consumer/mainstream oriented OS | based on NT. | indigodaddy wrote: | I used Win2000 as my main desktop for about 3-4 years | back in the day. Very stable. | adra wrote: | I used win2k for like 10 years and continued to play | games it as well. I was able to ride on the XP coat tails | because between the two, there were only a handful of | win32 APIs that were not implemented in 2000. I ended up | having to patch a few DLLs to ignore these missing | endpoints, but it meant I could use legitimately the best | windows there ever was for a few more years. Eventually I | "upgraded" to windows 7 to get reasonable driver support | because manufacturers finally stopped shipping 2k | compatible drivers.. what a sad day that was. | agumonkey wrote: | PC Magazine had the weird idea of shipping a CD-ROM of | the Beta release. Having an obsession to try anything I | decided to replace win98 with this thing (I had no idea | what NT was). | | It was so lean, fast and stable that I never used | anything else until the day XP had some drivers that were | absolutely necessary to use my desktop. 99% of low level | crashes would just pop up a notification and nothing | more, it was insane. | vel0city wrote: | Windows 2000 was an NT release, but Windows Millenium | Edition (Me) was the last generally released DOS-based | desktop OS released by Microsoft. Windows Me was released | after Windows 2000 by a few months. | ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: | My Surface go 3 came with W11 looking like W10 (except the | start menu/task bar). That confused me a lot (old right click, | old settings). It came win W11 Home so I did a fresh W11 Pro | installation (which for some reason accepts the built in key | and is activated) and everything looked like W11. | gumboza wrote: | Windows is built like my old apartment was decorated. 20 layers | of paint over the top of mouldy wallpaper. | puffoflogic wrote: | I developed windows during the Windows 10 timeframe. Although I | left before windows 11 was conceived, it's painfully obvious | that it is just a UI reskin on top of 10. This was preordained | by certain organizational choices made during my time there; | namely, that the "Shell" team responsible for the start menu, | desktop, and other UI tidbits[0] was completely divorced from | the rest of windows development, with their own business | priorities and so on. This was the team responsible for Windows | 8/.1, so as you can imagine they were somewhat sidelined during | Windows 10 development. It appears they have their revenge, | first and foremost from the promised-never-to-happen rebranding | (whereby they jettisoned the Windows 10 brand which was an | embarrassment for that team and that team only). That the | result is only a reskinned 10 is the natural result because | that is the only part of the product they have the authority or | ability to change. | | The Shell team was trying to push this same new UI during my | whole time at Msft, with at least three cancelled attempts that | I was aware of even from an IC perspective. By the end the | embarrassment was contagious. | | [0] Plus Edge, as part of the same vestigial business unit. | This explains the central position of advertising in the | reskin, because Edge in all of its forms was always meant to | drive ad revenue. _That_ is the distinct business priority I | mentioned earlier, which sets this organization apart from | Windows (NT,win32,etc.) development proper, which was shifted | to Azure. | easton wrote: | It is a pretty big hack. I seem to recall in 11 (at least | around RTM time, maybe not now) that if explorer.exe died then | all the windows lost their rounded corners. There was | definitely a dev build where if the start menu crashed (also | explorer.exe I think) the windows 10 one would reappear, | although that might've just been because during development | they shipped both start menus. | voidfunc wrote: | the tl;dw is "It breaks" | MikeTheGreat wrote: | ...And for my next trick, `rm -rf /`! | gradstudent wrote: | Is it really the same? Or more like `rm -rf /usr` ? Was this | folder always required to maintain the integrity of the system, | or is this a more recent thing? | chungy wrote: | On most Linux distributions, it's basically the same. Your | package manager tends to make no distinction between OS files | and installed program files. | | FreeBSD does another approach, where user-installed packages | go to /usr/local and don't get intermixed with the base | operating system. | bombcar wrote: | It's actually quite similar; it used to be that all the | "system" binaries were in /bin and /sbin and the "other | stuff" was in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin but that has not been | true for quite a while on many distributions. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | "back in the time", /usr could be on a network drive, and | /bin had to contain just enough stuff to boot the system, set | up networking and mount the /usr | codetrotter wrote: | Interestingly I actually did manage to make my /usr | partition unmountable a few years ago on a system where I | had changed the shell for the root user from /bin/sh to | /usr/local/bin/bash and ever since then I have kept the | default shell for the root user on my systems unmodified :) | euroderf wrote: | Back in PDP-11 days (Unix v.6) my boss managed to do a | "rm -fr *" not in his personal bin (as he believed ATM) | but in the system bin. Oooooops. (but Armando S was ready | with functioning backups.) | jesprenj wrote: | https://www.ecb.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html | quickthrower2 wrote: | Or chroot. And that is how docker was born. | liminal wrote: | The surprising this is that deleting those folders on Windows 11 | results in it presenting as Windows 10. | Waterluvian wrote: | In high school my friends and I had a basement drinking game | called "System 32 Roulette." We had a fresh Windows 98 machine | and you had to pick a file inside c:/windows/system32/ by random | and forcibly delete it then reboot the machine. If the computer | booted up and you could successfully get back to that folder, | everyone else had to take a drink. If not, you had to finish your | drink and then reinstall Windows. | zfxfr wrote: | I wonder about the random part.. How did you achieve this ? | Dice or something ? Be cause even with basic knowledge of the | system it would have been easy (for a while) to delete only | useless files.. It's a very original drinking game ! | mattigames wrote: | The Windows CMD shell contains a built-in variable called | %RANDOM% that can be used to generate random numbers. | Waterluvian wrote: | We weren't this sober. If I recall we just went into | details view, held the down arrow, until someone yelled | stop. | nakts wrote: | Doing that in 2022 with machines from back in high school would | be a true test of patience | samwillis wrote: | I really feel this need be a YouTube series, "Hot Ones" style, | while interviewing interesting people in tech. | codetrotter wrote: | Contrary to the sibling comment I absolutely adore this idea! I | am definitely doing this sometime with my friends next time I | can get them to come over to my place! | whichdan wrote: | My gut reaction was "wow that sounds boring" but then I reread | it and realized I would have absolutely been excited about this | in high school. | Waterluvian wrote: | It was mostly a side attraction while we played Smash Bros or | whatnot. But the best part is watching a super drunk person | trying to install windows. It was hilarious. | rayiner wrote: | Or watching a straight to DVD sequel of starship troopers. | Waterluvian wrote: | ...why does this loudly ring a bell? Do I know you? | dylan604 wrote: | Was this off of CD-ROM or a stack of floppies? I think 3.11 | was the last of the floppies, but memory is hazy around | what 95 install media was. Pretty sure 98 was CD, but that | could be a fun "bonus round" to force an install from | floppy. | Waterluvian wrote: | It was a CD, but a really low quality burned CD that we | eventually scratched the label side on, which stripped | the data side off with it. So it was eventually hung from | the ceiling with dental floss. We crossed out "98" with | marker and wrote in "95", but to be honest, it didn't | install anything by then. | hermitdev wrote: | I know I've installed Win95 off of floppies. Don't recall | the exact number, but believe it was around 40-50 3.5" | floppies. It came in a box about the length of a shoe | box. | PinkMilkshake wrote: | It was 13. I only remember because that was when I first | started learning about computers, and I needed them many | times. My Mom loved me. | jvanderbot wrote: | In high school any excuse to drink with friends was most | welcome. | | We'll, still is, but in high school too. | oso2k wrote: | Yeah...it's like Windows version of Jenga. Which piece will | make the tower crumble? | gxs wrote: | Ah, the stuff on HN never ceases to amaze me. This is awesome | and something my friends and I would have loved to play. | rkeene2 wrote: | Lots of things break if you move "C:\Program Files" to a | different drive (and make it a mountpoint), updates try to RENAME | from a temporary directory into it, but fails because it's a | different filesystem instance. IIS used to also kernel panic in | this case. | TacticalCoder wrote: | Can I use this thread about Windows to vent a bit? I don't use | Windows but what a gigantic clusterfuck of a turd. Mother in law | now wants "two monitors instead of one". Whatever... I took a PC | with Windows 8.1, bought a DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter (GPU has | got two output but her monitors are only HDMI) and it's kinda ok | but then "Windows 8.1 support expires on 2023-jan-10". OK, let's | buy Windows 11. I try to install Windows 11, had to create a boot | disk or something (because why not) using Ventoy in wich I put | the Windows _.iso_ (just dd 'ing the .iso as with Linux won't be | sufficient apparently) and I happily launch the install. Hardware | not supported by Windows 11. | | OK, I'll give my mom in law my AMD 3700X and install Windows 11 | on that one instead (and I'll buy myself a 7700X). Same thing: _" | Hardware not supported by Windows 11'_. WTF. That 3700X is a | recent machine. And the error message it totaly uninformative: it | just says _" hardware not supported"_. | | Well, good thing a few years ago I made her switch her SME to | Google Workspace / GSuite only. She and her employees are doing | everything from the paid version of GSuite (something like 50 EUR | / employee per year). | | Guess what's installing atm on that 3700X for my mother in law? | Ubuntu. | | I dd'ed the .iso and the install starts just fine. | | It's insane: you _want_ to give 145 EUR to Microsoft for their | ad-ridden and keylogger infested spyware of an OS but they don 't | let you. Unhelpful error message. Instead of saying what is not | supported, they just say: _" Hardware not supported"_. | | So now it's going to be Ubuntu everywhere at her little SME and | OS X laptops for when they're on the go. | vxNsr wrote: | Hint: you gotta enable TPM | | This is the first result when you google Windows 11 | requirements. https://www.microsoft.com/en- | us/windows/windows-11-specifica... | | All the rest of your complains boil down to being upset that | Microsoft doesn't support old stuff forever... guess how long | old versions of Ubuntu are supported? (Hint it's not forever) | | Also I could be wrong but pretty sure windows 8 still gets a | free upgrade to Windows 10/11. They don't advertise it, but the | licensing server still accepts old licenses. | | Also if you want you basically can do the iso onto a usb... | bombela wrote: | But the error message is completely optuse. How can you be so | sure it's because of the TPM? The message says nothing but | fuck you user. | | Also modern version of Ubuntu (and linux distribution in | general) have no issues on decade old hardware (I have a | couple machines that old). ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-12 23:00 UTC)