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I haven't seen much about Win 11 here yet. So I installed it on my 2nd box yesterday. Here's my preliminary report.

The box:
3 year old Asus Vivobook 15
Ryzen 7/ Radeon Vega 10 chip
12 Gig DDR4 RAM.
500 Gig SSD drive
Running current Win 10, plus Avira Prime for malware, and GOG Galaxy

Installation:
Painless and quick. Took less than 30 min. no issues, even dealing with a fairly intrusive malware/AV program (Avira Prime).

Problems:
A few. Even more than Win 10, 11 kicks in your windows (pun not intended, but I'll live with it), slams a wrecking ball into your back door, and then hands you a shiny key to your new inviolable steel front door. Translation, the permissions that Win 11 grants are insane, even with good diagnostic software, it will take you a while to lock it down.

A strange graphics glitch that made any window open in a mini-magnified 640x480 (back to the future much?) This one turned out to be buried deep in settings, forcing a window to 640x480. Annoying, but fixable.

Mild learning curve. Stuff is in different places, R-click brings up a very different context menu. Nothing tragic.

Benefits:
I LIKE the new taskbar, but if you like the old one, it's a click away. My boot time got faster by 4 seconds on the average. Not huge, but noticeable.

GOG:
(Games and Galaxy) Galaxy seemed broken, until I fixed the annoying 640x480 window (see above) after that, it worked fine. I've only tried about a dozen games so far (from old DOSBOX games to Witcher 3 and Grim Dawn). I actually picked up a few FPS on some of my more demanding games. All games I tried loaded, played, saved, and closed as they should. I installed a new mod on Oblivion, again, no problem.

Conclusion:
Widows 11 did not ship broken. That's an achievement right there. I found the process pretty painless, and far superior to the Win 10 upgrade. My games, other software, and AV/Malware seem to work fine, some even a little better. There's no compelling reason to do the upgrade now, but also no reason not to. I'll leave my main box on Win 10 for now, but will probably upgrade it in a few months, as long as no game-changing bugs come to light.

PS: Ran into my first CTD with Win 11. Two Worlds, Epic Edition, needs a really old Nvidia driver to work. (It's Nvidia PhysXloader.dll), on the Nvidia website. I'm guessing I'll run into more of these (I've only tried about 20 out of 550 games so far) seems like Win11 doesn't carry the same ancient drivers that Win10 does.
Post edited October 31, 2021 by rabblevox
This deserves to be dragged back to the first page as it is relevant to a lot of people.
Thanks for your review. I like thiese kinds of reviews from people. You are making me try out WIN11 myself :)
nice , ill still wait to install it
Gonna wait that 1 year window to let them fix out all the outstanding bugs that are in launch version and then see how they improved on 10 and devolved in ways.

And I'm trying out Linux! in my computer classes we are learning a lot on Linux and so far besides using a non UI version of Linux I do like some of the ones we have like Mint :)
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DreamedArtist: Gonna wait that 1 year window to let them fix out all the outstanding bugs that are in launch version and then see how they improved on 10 and devolved in ways.

And I'm trying out Linux! in my computer classes we are learning a lot on Linux and so far besides using a non UI version of Linux I do like some of the ones we have like Mint :)
Yeah, I just installed Mint on my machine. Windows is becoming a liability and I need to refresh myself on using Linux again.
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rabblevox: PS: Ran into my first CTD with Win 11. Two Worlds, Epic Edition, needs a really old Nvidia driver to work. (It's Nvidia PhysXloader.dll), on the Nvidia website. I'm guessing I'll run into more of these (I've only tried about 20 out of 550 games so far) seems like Win11 doesn't carry the same ancient drivers that Win10 does.
Thanks for the entire review, but thanks especially for this edit.
I wasn't planning to upgrade to Win 11 until it becomes impossible not to or some sort of feature makes it desirable, but still, it's nice to hear about the new OS experience.

At least it doesn't sound like I'll lose my mind when I do decide to upgrade!!
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DreamedArtist: Gonna wait that 1 year window to let them fix out all the outstanding bugs that are in launch version and then see how they improved on 10 and devolved in ways.

And I'm trying out Linux! in my computer classes we are learning a lot on Linux and so far besides using a non UI version of Linux I do like some of the ones we have like Mint :)
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paladin181: Yeah, I just installed Mint on my machine. Windows is becoming a liability and I need to refresh myself on using Linux again.
It's like riding a bicycle. Though becoming familiar with specific distro system configuration options may take a little getting used to.

Honestly Linux is a lot easier to get into than it used to be. And even easier getting back to.
Oh I kind of enjoy getting back into Windows... It is good to get to scream sometimes. Also staying away from W11 for now.

Tomorrow the main reason to get Windows 11 will be released: Intel's 12th Core generation of processors. Exciting to see how good they are and how well Windows handles them.
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rabblevox: PS: Ran into my first CTD with Win 11. Two Worlds, Epic Edition, needs a really old Nvidia driver to work. (It's Nvidia PhysXloader.dll), on the Nvidia website. I'm guessing I'll run into more of these (I've only tried about 20 out of 550 games so far) seems like Win11 doesn't carry the same ancient drivers that Win10 does.
So... in Windows 10 Two Worlds works fine with the latest NVidia drivers, but not on Windows 11?

Did you actually try installing the old drivers, and the game worked then? Can you have both the new and old drivers installed side by side?

Oh and was that specifically about the PhysX drivers? I recall there having been some headaches with them before, some old games depending on older version of PhysX or something...
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rabblevox: PS: Ran into my first CTD with Win 11. Two Worlds, Epic Edition, needs a really old Nvidia driver to work. (It's Nvidia PhysXloader.dll), on the Nvidia website. I'm guessing I'll run into more of these (I've only tried about 20 out of 550 games so far) seems like Win11 doesn't carry the same ancient drivers that Win10 does.
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timppu: So... in Windows 10 Two Worlds works fine with the latest NVidia drivers, but not on Windows 11?

Oh and was that specifically about the PhysX drivers? I recall there having been some headaches with them before, some old games depending on older version of PhysX or something...
The Two Worlds EE GOG version includes the necessary PhysX-Legacy driver package which should be installed automatically during setup. With NVIDIA DCH driver 472.12 for MSI RTX 3060-Ti GAMING Z TRIO 8G, I have been play-testing it for about 2 to 3 hours during which there hasn't been a single crash or performance issues.
Still going ahead with forced internet connection to install?

Pretty sure that will go well when thwarting malware (sarcasm). Not having a connection. Not wanting ms garbage accounts. to name a few valid points of contention
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ChuckBeaver: Still going ahead with forced internet connection to install?

Pretty sure that will go well when thwarting malware (sarcasm). Not having a connection. Not wanting ms garbage accounts. to name a few valid points of contention
You aren't forced to create an MS-account. During setup simply select the option to create an offline-account. With 3rd-party security suite you can block all outgoing traffic from MS-services and apps, dlls and other files to harden the OS.
The only exception could be the Windows update service/application and you don't even have to allow that, if you are willing to use the update catalogue and Windows Update Standalone installers.

If there is one thing that's forced on you it is the Edge browser. This piece is hardest to get rid of. You got to change several items in the registry to remove existing dependencies, rename several folders where a simple . in front of the folder name does the trick or else renaming the .exe to something different and when that's done, there are the services... I just hope that some consumer group will bring it before a court of law as they've done when MS forced IE11 on users. There is absolutely no need to integrate Edge the way they've done it in 11.
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Mori_Yuki: The Two Worlds EE GOG version includes the necessary PhysX-Legacy driver package which should be installed automatically during setup. With NVIDIA DCH driver 472.12 for MSI RTX 3060-Ti GAMING Z TRIO 8G, I have been play-testing it for about 2 to 3 hours during which there hasn't been a single crash or performance issues.
This was in Windows 11, right?

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Mori_Yuki: If there is one thing that's forced on you it is the Edge browser. This piece is hardest to get rid of. You got to change several items in the registry to remove existing dependencies, rename several folders where a simple . in front of the folder name does the trick or else renaming the .exe to something different and when that's done, there are the services... I just hope that some consumer group will bring it before a court of law as they've done when MS forced IE11 on users. There is absolutely no need to integrate Edge the way they've done it in 11.
Apparently they want to fight Chrome with fire...

Can you still set up a different default browser, like Chrome or Firefox? Does Edge have lots of other uses now as well, being the default PDF reader and whatever?

Not sure how bad I consider that, but of course it sucks if it somehow hinders you from using your preferred applications (be it web browser, PDF reader, multimedia player, whatever...).
Post edited November 04, 2021 by timppu
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Mori_Yuki: The Two Worlds EE GOG version includes the necessary PhysX-Legacy driver package which should be installed automatically during setup. With NVIDIA DCH driver 472.12 for MSI RTX 3060-Ti GAMING Z TRIO 8G, I have been play-testing it for about 2 to 3 hours during which there hasn't been a single crash or performance issues.
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timppu: This was in Windows 11, right?
Yes, it was 11. If you are interested, here is a list of games I found to be working on Windows 11. Today I tried Soldiers: Heroes of World War II which I will add to that list later.

There was a crash at first start because the display resolution was too high (2560x1440). A known problem not related to the OS. This can be fixed by setting the native resolution in the OS environment to 1920x1080, or whatever max the game can take w/o producing the error-message. If resolution was set to a very high value in-game after creating a personal profile, the profile folder in ./GOG/[...game...] must be deleted, or a copy of the options file has to be pasted into your personal profile.[/i]

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Mori_Yuki: If there is one thing that's forced on you it is the Edge browser. This piece is hardest to get rid of. You got to change several items in the registry to remove existing dependencies, rename several folders where a simple . in front of the folder name does the trick or else renaming the .exe to something different and when that's done, there are the services... I just hope that some consumer group will bring it before a court of law as they've done when MS forced IE11 on users. There is absolutely no need to integrate Edge the way they've done it in 11.
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timppu: Apparently they want to fight Chrome with fire...

Can you still set up a different default browser, like Chrome or Firefox? Does Edge have lots of other uses now as well, being the default PDF reader and whatever?

Not sure how bad I consider that, but of course it sucks if it somehow hinders you from using your preferred applications (be it web browser, PDF reader, multimedia player, whatever...).
You can set a different browser as your default. Link-types .htm, .html, .pdf, .svg as well as http and https should be set to that browser automatically. Even if you do, some entries in the default apps section will remain linked to Edge.

There are four entries in Apps - Default Apps - Microsoft Edge: Microsoft Edge, Microsoft-Edge-Holographic, Read which I guess is a native .pdf reader and lastly MS-XBL.3D8B930F. There might be other apps you could link them to. I haven't tried yet but, clicking on the small arrow next to each entry, 11 offers to visit the MS store. So there is a possibility that there are other apps available you could use.

Even so, with its integration into Task Manager, to gain control over and shut down running processes, this was just a bother... Not that you could really shut-down Edgewebviewengine or however it is called. Shut it down and it pops-up and uses GPU resources a millisecond later. Without renaming the folder and .exe for that process it will constantly be active and running.

To end this on a positive note: This is about the only major critique with the new OS. It's stable, no BSOD's, crashes or other problems. There have been but they are all connected to my experimenting with certain settings, blocking files with Comodo FW and/or personal HIPS settings, taking away rights from files I probably should not have etc. ;) Nothing major but still taking a while to fix, certainly valuable lessons what not to do. :D
Post edited November 04, 2021 by Mori_Yuki