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A recent update means that when I click Start and start typing, the entire start menu is immediately converted to a Bing homepage style thing full of stuff I literally have no interest in. American sports, American politics, Entertainment news.
I'm trying to find the Visual Studio Installer. I'm working. I'm really, really not interested in what Bing thinks I care about because it's never close, nor will I ever give Bing enough info to make it close. It's none of its business.
I don't understand this mentality. Ram-it-down-your-throat advertising is dead. I should know - I have a media company. And yet Microsoft seems to be going down a path designed to make the user experience worse for negligible gain.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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One of the things I did soon after getting my laptop was to uninstall Microsoft News. Its feed was complete tripe. Doing this might help.
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I still have this installed, tho I never use it and if I open the start menu to search for "visual studio", I get zero web results. There's a little "search the web" button, but that's it.
This article suggests two mitigations, neither of which I've used: How to Disable Web Search Results from Start Menu in Windows 11 - Guiding Tech
I also don't use Edge as my default browser - so I'm not sure what that would surface into there.
Honestly though, I hardly ever use the start menu - I'd rather use a launcher like Flow Launcher.
------------------------------------------------
If you say that getting the money
is the most important thing
You will spend your life
completely wasting your time
You will be doing things
you don't like doing
In order to go on living
That is, to go on doing things
you don't like doing
Which is stupid.
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"American sports, American politics, Entertainment news."
Aaaa, what's your problem? 
I'm still in Windows 11 culture shock myself. I just don't have the time at the moment to adjust things. But I will remove that news thingie the next poster mentioned.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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open shell seems to have fixed that for me.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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That has to be one of the very first things I install on a new Windows...
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Ditto. I used Classic-Shell until the developer stopped support, and was very pleased to see it go open source.
https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/
The page doesn't mention Win11 as supported.
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Yep, that's been my cure for years. I also use Everything search to search for stuff on my computer.
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another reason for running some version of linux.
I barely ever have to deal with this unless I am on some VM or someone elses machine
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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One word: Powertoys -- they have Alt-Space for this (a few years ago I was using Launchy, it has the same functionality).
Yeah, Microsoft is decades behind what people/developers really want. I should know -- if you look at github for a few important projects (WinUI, UWP, etc.) you'll see a lot of people asking for features, and MS either downright saying "we won't do that", or simply postponing it to infinity and beyond.
Not to mention that you can't turn off Real-time protection (not for good anyway), and I haven't found a way to turn off that stupid Antimalware Service Executable. And if you're asking why -- for better compile times, of course.
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I can’t feel sorry for software savvy people bitchin about windows 10/11 adware. Any self respecting pro should really be running Server 2016 or 2019 (with periodic self activation) and not pay MS a cent for bloated junk like 10 or 11. These idiots (MS) even disabled their app store and edge browser on their own server os’s. Otherwise 2016 and 2019 are the best products they’ve ever produced and are amazing for dev. These puppies can be trimmed down to less than 950 overhead threads. w10 can’t come close.
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Not sure how you can run Server 2016/2019 on a laptop. I know too much about the idiots at MS -- but for now, I'm stuck on Windows 10 (the reason I'm not upgrading to Win11 is that it's even worse when it comes to updates)
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Sorry to hear you can’t get the drivers onto server on your laptop. It’s worked for me on elitebooks and even surface 3. Anyway good luck
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I have never seen an ad in the Windows start area, except for the pre-installed stuff you can just uninstall. I'm guessing that you opted-in to something by mistake.
Are you sure you can't just turn them off?
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I more or less have.....
PI-Hole all the way for me, and if that's not enough, once a DNS goes through Pi-Hole, it gets passed through a custom Bind-9 instance which strips out anything Pi-Hole didn't catch, before handing off to my ISP's DNS.
On my router (I run a custom PFSense install) I have port blocking set up, so that internal machines and apps running on them cannot attempt to bypass my DNS set-up with their own, and as a result I see practically NO advertising what so ever, nor do any of their trackers get through either.
Even my next door neighbour was impressed, when she popped in a few weeks ago and asked if she could use my connection, because hers and gone off, and her ISP only had internet based help for that kind of thing, she couldn't believe how there was no ad's, no tracking on anything using my connection.
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Chanting:
Article! Article! …
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We'll see
It's not terribly difficult though.
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Windows is a toy. It has always been a toy. It was built by children (just look at the APIs!), who grew up to be assholes.
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Owen, why don't you tell us how you really feel.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I use StarDock's Start-10 tool for my Windows 10 installations. No AdWare or anything like that. However, I don't know about Windows 11 since I haven't installed it yet.
Nonetheless, I understand where you are coming from. I play a lot of Solitaire to cool my mind down from software development and to have to pay to get rid of the incessant ads is something I will not do.
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I have a Java version of Solitaire that I could share.
Of course, the problem is… you would have to install Java!
I should probably port it to powershell…
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You can disable Bing search FYI.
Do a google search for it. Win10 & Win11 have possible different reg keys for it.
Makes life a lot better.
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You really think that because you exert a measurable influence in the Microsoft development ecosystem they're going to listen to you?
Chris, I'm shocked I tell you, shocked. I didn't think you Aussies were that gullible.
Software Zen: delete this;
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The more I hear and experience these things, the more I'm leaning toward Linux. Enough is enough already.
Cheers,
Johann
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