The 20 Worst Windows Features Of All Time

[Saint_Michael 3]

Surprise they didn't make a larger list by a few thousands anyways here we go.

 

20. DriveSpace

 

For you experienced Windows 95 users might remember this device as it was used as a compression agent, but if you like me and barely remember windows 95 then yeah this is meaningless feature.

 

19. Windows Movie Maker

 

I seen it maybe open it once or twice but I never really use it, but from the description it was just as worthless as well. A phrase comes to mind companies build something they think we want but in reality we don't and want something else.

 

18. Web TV for Windows

 

Again if you remember this thumbs up to you.

 

17. Shut Down

 

Finally something I can talk about as the stories about the shutdown of windows is legendary in the tech world, and I have run though this problem on various computer systems with the need to do a hard reset to fix it. Of course I have laugh at the fact if you read the article on the different ways to shutdown windows you would want to actually smack the guy who thought this would be convenient to the users. However, since I been on this computer (Dell XPS) I haven't had any problems with the shutdown, of course I put it into standby mode every time, it only gets shutdown when my niece uses it. Although its all about the memory that has to be dumped and the processes that have to be closed in order for you computer to be shutdown, and so before you even close down your computer close the processes that you never use, clean up your RAM and then shut down. Of course thats like one of about a few million ways to fix that problem.

 

16. Paint

 

I wouldn't call it the worse feature I call it the most pointless feature, and yeah like they mention in the article the last time they update this program was when it first came out , thank god for companies such as a adobe and macromedia that make great graphics software or we be in some serious trouble here.

 

15. Windows Aero

 

Yeah I let you know how it works out once I get a graphics card that can run the aero GUI even though the motherboard is vista compatible, I think they meant that vista could run on it with no problems. Well hopefully somewhere they talk about the resource hog known as vista, and the compatibility issues, and other wonderful stuff; however, I have no big problems with Vista since I don't spend enough time to screw it up.

 

14. Active Desktop

 

Heck I never really knew how to get that working right, and so again if you got this to work for you thumbs up again.

 

13. Windows XP Search

 

Lets just say Vista Search engine came at a price and eating your hard drive up to make it 100 times better then XP, and of course it gets bad if you have like millions of files that have the same file type. I rarely used I created so many folders on my desktop over time, that if I didn't delete anything I would have no room.

 

12. The Microsoft Network

 

I never used MSN 1.0 although I used there ISP for like 3-4 months while in the army. Thank the computer gods for making ISP's and the internet better.

 

11. Windows Explorer

 

I Think I used this maybe a handful of times just to learn what was in a computer and thats it.

 

10. Windows 95 USB

 

Yeah you let us know how that worked out, and from the description in the article it would be a close tie with Windows ME.

 

9. Windows Genuine Advantage

 

I can verify that one as I got a Professional edition Word 2003 and they are saying my is bad, although I do have it installed on another computer and so yeah dumb me for not removing it. Although it still works I just can't update and patch it which yeah is a bad thing, somewhat.

 

8. End Task

 

If people claim they never had this experience they are lying to you and right in your face because everyone experience this little problem or rather big problem depending how long it takes for this screen to disappear and the process or program that came with it is finally close.

 

7. User Access Control

 

Vista UAC need I say more I had a a few run in when trying to figure things out and had to turn it off, but will Microsoft fix this problem in SP1? Didn't see anything so I doubt it.

 

6. Windows Update

 

For the most part they are referring to the pop up that comes every few seconds asking to restart your computer after a critical update has been installed, worst feature not really, annoying as hell? yes.

 

5. Messenger Service

 

No not the IM client, although I find it rather annoying that when they started producing new versions of MSN IM that getting rid of the old was horrible and completely getting rid of it would screw your system so bad that regret ever doing it in the first place. Although I think MSN 8. whatever finally fix that and actually completely updated the old msn 5.0. Well at least for the vista world we never EVER!! have to do deal with that again, but as pertaining to the service they are talking about never heard of it till now.

 

4. Notifications

 

 

Its more of an annoyance but I rather have that annoyance then spending hours trying to figure out whats wrong, although these get rather bad when trying to install hardware or USB devices and these come up ever 2 seconds.

 

3. Internet Explorer 6

 

Where to begin, hackers, coding standards, patches, security holes etc etc IE7 fix some of those problems and I say that very loosely.

 

2. The Registry

 

We all know the consequences of screwing with the registry and so its spot as number 2 is just right, of course if you looked ahead to see what number 1 was you disagree as I just did and put this at number 1. I think the problem is they didn't make it user friendly and unless your a computer god who knows what your doing most advanced users never touch this.

 

Finally the number worst window feature, and sadly it isn't Windows ME and we all know it should be in this list, and I can claim I really hate ME as I had to install it for my class had had a problem allocated hard drive space to get it going. Lets just the group I was in tried two different ideas to fix the problem that should have work but they didn't, and so 45 minutes later, I think, we installed windows 2000 instead. Ok lets get to number 1

 

1. ActiveX Controls

 

Any horror story you heard about activeX is most likely true, but as for its position I put it in the bottom 20 not top 5.

 

Like I said this list would be about 10 times as long if everyone picked something they hate as a feature on Windows, Disk cleaner comes to mind, and so if you got a something that is a worse feature post it up and lets see what we get.

 

SOURCE

Edited December 19, 2007 by Saint_Michael (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

I would have personally re-ordered these features... and actually trimmed some things from it. A lot of applications were just useless, like the Microsoft Network browser. (Who ever used it?) Some items on that list were more like gripes (like how Windows Explorer couldn't do a bunch of stuff OTHER than browsing). Then again, shouldn't Windows be superior as an operating system TO include features for Explorer?

 

-

 

11. Shut Down

I laughed when I read this. It's true that there are too many options to choose from just to turn off your computer... and now Vista offers FIFTEEN ways to shut down? Seriously now. And honestly, I can't tell you the difference between standby and sleep. (Hibernate just saves your state and shuts down your computer, to restore your state that was saved on your hard drive.)

 

10. DriveSpace

I still remember when I got all excited over compressing my hard drive to get DOUBLE my hard disk space. It was a no-brainer at the time, when 2GB HDs were a boon. Then I realized how slow a 266MHz processor was in accessing data from a compressed hard drive. DriveSpace wasn't very keen on choices either... you either compressed the whole drive or didn't. Apparently no one else missed it in XP.

 

9. Aero (and Vista)

It's cool, it's neat, and I'm one of many that appreciates the eye candy. But the fact that Vista already brings existing machines down to slow-poking slugs being so inefficient with system resources kind of keeps most tech-savvy people away. And those that aren't tech-savvy will wonder why their computer is slow right out of the package.

 

8. Messenger Service

I actually don't know of ONE IT guy or gal that uses this for network communication. Of course, e-mail makes this kind of useless, doesn't it? And of course, if you do see this in action, you're probably not part of a secure network. Kind of ironic, really.

 

7. Indexing Service/Windows XP Search

The indexing service slows down your PC, and XP search STILL can't find what you want to find in an efficient way. Lose-lose.

 

6. Task Manager (End Task)

Why does it not just work? Why does it take forever to kill a task? Why, in this time and age, can't we just stop a process or application from running? The world may never know.

 

5. Notifications

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Redundant much? Thankfully, you can turn these off by editing the registry... but then again, who would want to risk that?

 

4. Windows Update

Especially after knowing that Microsoft is very willing to update your computer without even letting you know AFTER you tell Windows NOT to automatically update, I personally disabled the Automatic Updates service. The fact that it pesters the crap out of you isn't much fun either... it's almost better just to install hot fixes manually, or if you're like me, sit on Service Pack 2 and not worry about much as a home user. Simply put: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Most hot fixes and patches are for specific occurrences anyway... and unless you are that 1 person out of 100 that is actually experiencing that problem, I wouldn't even bother.

3. ActiveX Controls (and Internet Explorer)

Along with the fact that they are exclusive to Internet Explorer (which is probably a good thing), they are easily the most exploited security threat to most users browsing the web. It almost seems like anyone can write up one with some malicious intent in it... and you know how most people blindly accept ActiveX controls just to get at what they want to get at with no hassle. The fact that Internet Explorer 6 was the basis for loyal Microsoft clients, unchanged for the longest time allowing for hackers galore to attack the browser's many security holes, didn't help out either.

 

2. Windows Genuine Authentication

Authentication sucks. Especially if you have a legitimate program and no one in the Microsoft world is willing to believe you. Not to mention that every time you install a non-OEM version of any Microsoft operating system you have to authenticate it by phone, since Windows isn't likely to have your network controller working with a fresh install. Did I also mention that time just stops if WGA says that your legal copy of Windows isn't legal?

 

1. The Registry

This is definitely the WORST feature of Windows, in my opinion. PC World is right about one mistake bringing an entire operating system down to its knees... absolutely horrendous. And if even advanced users aren't willing to touch this, how is it a good idea to put all of Windows's vital data into one such unstable database? Editing the darn thing is like taking a block away from a Jenga game...

 

-

 

I actually found Paint to be rather useful for quick copy-and-paste work for a screen shot when I didn't feel like waiting 10 seconds for PhotoShop to boot up. Movie Maker is okay for amateur videos... it lacks in features, but I suppose that's what you get for applications bundled with the operating system. (They really couldn't give you everything for that $200+ you spent on the operating system... )

[Will.Allison 0]

I would have to agree on all of these except maybe windows movie maker. Its not great, I know, but it can get the job done and it comes free with windows. Most other movie makers are ridiculously expensive. iMovie crashes on even good computers when the movie gets over 5 minutes. You pretty much have to have a top of the line mac to use iMovie for long movies.But yes, Windows is a terrible operating system. I wish it was not the best for games and the most widely used.

[lemonwonder 0]

Alot of these I dont agree with such as notifications, tv and compression.

[AlabamaHit 0]

LOL I have to agree with yall on that. But to me the most annoying an pointless is the Notifications. Like we dont konw that we installed that program

[fffanatics 0]

Umm are you all serious? From what it looks none of you really know about programming and why a lot of these features are there. Plus, all of these features are used by hundreds of thousands of people so I would hardly call them useless so i am going to go through almost everyone of them and tell you why they are there / why they are useful.

 

19. Windows Movie Maker

 

Windows movie maker is a great application for a novice who wants to make a movie. First of all, any other movie makers that are ok cost money. This is a FREE application that a windows user can use to make a simple, plain movie that requires no experience. I have seen numerous productions from windows movie maker that are quite nice so don't say how bad it is til you use it and see how easy it possibly is. Personally, i use Adobe Encore and such for my movies but I am not a novice and dont mind spending some money on good software

 

17. Shutdown

 

This is a very important feature of windows and every other operating system. If you do not shutdown your computer you are in for issues and more problems then you know. First of all, when you shutdown all memory is cleaned, all threads are closed, and all streams are closed. This is important because many applications leave dlls loaded even after the program is closed which will eventually cause your computer to slow down. Secondly, any memory leaks are cleaned since your memory is completely wiped when you shutdown. Finally, if an application forgets to close a lock on a file or any memory space, then it is unlocked after a reboot. Stand-by only put important windows information into memory and it still leaves the computer running using power in order to maintain the other threads. Hibernate does turn off all power but it just puts EVERYTHING onto the harddrive and then loads it from there. This does not fix memory leaks or loaded dlls. Therefore, you need to shutdown your computer or else it will run slower and not as efficient. There is no other way to fix this so start using it. If you want to make your computer load quicker, look at pcstats.com for guides on windows performance. They are very good and have easy instructions.

 

16. Paint

 

This application is used by the majority of users. I have used it for things like resizing screenshots all the way to making UML documents that other programs just were not making correctly. It is very useful for simple image editing tasks and it loads much faster than photoshop (and it is free).

 

15. Windwos Aero

 

This is a very nice feature if you have a computer that can run it. It makes navigating windows very easy and it looks amazing as well. If you use a mac, you know what I am talking about. Easy and beautiful navigation is something that many novice users like because they feel like it is more powerful and easier to use. Thats just the facts.

 

14. Active Desktop

 

This is a feature that many people use without knowing it. It is used by outlook to display your calendar and tasks and can be used to out a webpage on your background. Many schools and libraries have this as their background so that they can display links and information on it like any other application. Once again you might not notice it but it is widely used.

 

11. Windows Explorer

 

Um i think you were talking about the explore windows icon that comes up when you first install it. Windows Explorer is actually what you use to look at and find files on your computer like when you click My Computer it brings up a windows explorer window so i dont think this is useless? Everyone uses it cause unless you use the command line, there is no other way.

 

9. Windows Genuine Advantage

 

Ok, as a user it might be a bit of a pain but when you loose billions of dollars in revenue because of pirated software, it is important to try and prevent it. When you purchase Microsoft Software you buy one license which means only one computer can use it at a time. Just because you purchased windows xp home edition does not mean you can install it on 3 pcs. Same thing goes for microsoft office. One cd = one licence = one installation. If you want to update it when you put it on another pc you will need to make sure that it is only on one and get a code to make it work. Its a evil necessity since people like to break the law.

 

8. End Task

 

Um have you had a program hang or not close? Yes cause everyone has and you need this to end it. If you have issues getting it to open it means one of two things. Either you dont have a dual core or more chip since it will open almost instantaneously cause one core will do it for you or you have too many programs open / the hung one is used 100% of your cpu cycles and you just have to wait til a new thread can get time on it. Linux and Mac have the same thing except it is from the command line so its needed. Plus, you can use it to refresh windows properties that are changed in the registry without a reboot just by killing explorer.exe and creating a new process of it.

 

7. User Access Control

 

This is for security control. If you have used linux you know you need to do the sudo command to access system files and such. This is the same thing except a box popups to ask you if you want to become an admin. Linux does that same thing for gui applications so its still there. Also, you can always put a flag on a shortcut to always run it as an admin or use a keyboard shortcut to do the same. Turn it off if you want but its for security and does not stop you from doing anything. Plus, if you have a pc that runs fast enough (good vista rating not a crappy one) then it just comes right up and doesnt slow you down at all.

 

6. Windows Update

 

Do you want a secure pc? If so you need this. Linux and Macs have the same thing you just dont notice them as much. I like knowing when it is installing stuff or choosing when to let it install. It makes life much easier because if i am in the middle of a big project that needs CPU i can push the install off for a while.

 

5. Messenger Service

 

All over the world this is used instead of aim so it has to be there. It is used all over asia and europe as the preferred instand messenger so it has to be there.

 

4. Notification

 

First of all, if you dont like them turn them off. Secondly all OS's have them because people like to know what is going on. If I am connecting to a wireless network i want to know because you do not always want to. Turn it off if you dont like it but most people do.

 

3. IE 6

 

The whole world uses it so it has to be there. Firefox has issues too so dont even get me started.

 

2. Registry

 

Try programming without it. Do you like having you browser history? that is where it is stored as well millions of other program specific properties and settings. Without it, you computer would not work and none of the settings you change would ever save. In linux these are your .conf files that all the programs create. This just puts it in a single easy to find place. You can change settings very easily in it so dont complain it is needed and is very useful for advanced users.

 

1. ActiveX Controls

 

Due to patents you need to be asked to use them. Also for security reasons. To be honest, if you dont like them turn them off in your settings but that means no javascript, no flash, etc. These are all activex controls so what are you complaining about. These are what make web 2.0 web 2.0. You need them and use them a lot.

 

Ok so here is my rebuttal for most of them. I am out of time and dont feel like writing more but look into what things are before you complain about them. Most things are used by millions of people so you might not want to say they are useless.

[strange-garden 0]

haha. I use IE. I love it. at first i had no idea where all of the buttons went to...but...it wasn't too bad once i got used to it.

[A donut 0]

18. Web TV for Windows

Again if you remember this thumbs up to you.

 

That would have to be the most useless feature for me.

 

I remember back in the good ol' days of Windows 98 when that Web TV would pop up every time I log on. Always having to click 'no' repeatedly...

[Amiel 0]

I hate the Windows Genuine Advantage. It's really irritating, while I'm booting up my computer, it has to remind me my Copy of Windows XP should be Genuine neither my copy is original I think... LolI hate the Windows Vista Aero thingy, people is crazy for that aero because it's really neat and shiny. But hello? It's just like that and it's just the same as Windows Media Center. So why they should waste their money for the aero thingy? It's really annoying... lol

[techclave 0]

yeah i agree to most of them. linux is far better than windows. people can also try mac. windows has lost its stand.

[rayzoredge 2]

8. End Task

 

6. Windows Update

 

5. Messenger Service

 

4. Notification

 

2. Registry

Some disagreements:

 

8. The Windows Task Manager is a pretty good utility... but sometimes End Task just doesn't like to work. You can try to kill some processes as much as you want, but the Task Manager will just stare back at you blankly like you never even gave it a command. (That's what people are griping about when they mention it.) Of course, when it DOES work it's a charm. I usually have to force-kill Explorer myself a lot because of stupid things like Explorer "using" a folder or file when it's clearly NOT in use, preventing rename and move operations.

 

6. As an everyday consumer user of a PC, Windows Update is for the paranoid only. I've been running Windows XP SP2 without any additional patches, hotfixes, or other downloads from Windows Update (and of course, I've disabled it). Why? After finding out with my IT guy at work that Windows Update would have the strange behavior of turning itself back on and downloading things without your consent OR your knowledge. Makes you wonder what Microsoft is up to... Most hotfixes and patches are for closing up holes for security and possible exploits anyway... and unless you pissed off a bunch of geeks, I think the average person is safe without it.

 

5. The Messenger service is NOT MSN Messenger. It's basically a way for network gurus to send out messages to client machines on a network. The funny thing about this though is that there was enough of an exploit in the protocol that even Microsoft's SP2 patch disables it by default.

 

4. Notifications are handy at times, but sometimes it can just be redundant to the point of being retarded... not to mention repetitive. I wish that you could selectively deactivate certain notifications...

 

2. I'm not sure about the programming perspective, but an operating system shouldn't be brought to its knees if you change ONE thing in it. I think that just for dummy's sake, if you're around poking and possible screw something up (manually or with a bad patch or install or whatever) that instead of getting an NTLDR error (or whatever) and having an unbootable system that Windows should detect a corrupted registry and offer to restore a BACKUP or even have something like SFC for the registry.

[CrashCore 0]

I have two very strong disagreements: mspaint and Windows Movie Maker! Both are extremely useful programs, although mspaint is by far the superior of the two.

 

Mspaint actually has a somewhat large, religious following. It is used extensively for pixel art, and it's a very lightweight program for doing simple editing. How convenient would it be if I had to start up the GIMP on my laptop every time I wanted to do a small resize or simple change? Not at all! I can tell you of the terrible experiences I've had with OSX and its lack of a small, lightweight image editor (although there are a few very good third-party ones!).

 

Now Windows Movie Maker isn't the best product to come out of Micro$oft's depths, but it's definitely not one of the worst. I've used it to create some pretty decent videos for a video editing class. While you have to keep in mind that this is a high school class, the videos were still quite good. It does have an array of features that make it at least good enough to do simple video edits for wedding videos, home videos, or small projects.

 

They actually messed up the number one most worthless Windows feature: Windows ME! The entire operating system was so bad that I honestly believe it should be above such terrible products as Internet Explorer 6, Windows Genuine Advantage, and ActiveX Controls.

[tricky77puzzle 0]

Here's my comments on some of them:

 

20. DriveSpace

 

It's only useless since drives nowadays are so darn big. It's still existent in Vista, I think, only it's just called "compress folder".

 

19. Windows Movie Maker

 

It has all the features of iMovie, but its interface is blah.

 

I've never heard of Web TV for Windows, so I'm not even going to comment.

 

17. Shutdown

 

This feature was useful back in 1997 when computers had to shut down before they could be turned off. Nowadays the only reason I still "shutdown" my computer is because I don't like the blinking light that's on when I sleep. The light on a Gateway GM5474 shines like a lighthouse when it's dark and it annoys me when I sleep.

 

16. Paint

 

This program is useless for editing, but it is good for saving screenshots. Pity it would be useless in Linux if it existed because of the built-in snapshot taker.

 

15. Windows Aero

 

Yeah I let you know how it works out once I get a graphics card that can run the aero GUI even though the motherboard is vista compatible, I think they meant that vista could run on it with no problems. Well hopefully somewhere they talk about the resource hog known as vista, and the compatibility issues, and other wonderful stuff; however, I have no big problems with Vista since I don't spend enough time to screw it up.

Not to mention that it doesn't even look good. I mean, who really likes Segoe UI here?

 

14. Active Desktop

 

I don't even remember what this is. This was something from 98 that I don't believe is existent in XP or Vista.

 

13. Windows XP Search

 

I completely agree with this one. 98, 2000, and Vista all keep search indexes like Google Desktop search does. I think Vista's search is actually faster. When my old 80-GB hard drive started getting full, I searched for all files that were 6 MB and larger. The engine returned about 30,000 results and took an hour to do so.

 

12. MSN

 

Instead of msn.com it's now live.com. Not to mention that the old Hotmail wasn't very good either. It was the first publicly released version of free HTML mail (back in the good old days when the inbox space was just 2 MB), but then it was bought by Microsoft and it started deteriorating and getting branded "Windows Live Mail". It doesn't even keep the extension "hotmail" anymore!

 

11. Windows Explorer

 

Actually this is pretty useful. Only, I wish Firefox had those kinds of capabilities... then I could start using it like Konqueror on my Linux installment.

 

10. Windows 95 USB

 

Not to mention that it doesn't even work on Windows 95.

 

9. Windows Genuine Advantage

 

Yes, this is crap. There are lot of bypassers now that can get rid of the problem, but I never had a non-genuine copy anyways. I think WGA is borderline spyware...

 

8. End Task

 

End Task is for sissies. I do it the geek's way and use End Process. It's faster and doesn't clog up the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) as much.

 

7. User Access Control

 

I don't even know what this is. Oh, never mind, I do. It's those warnings that Vista gives you to Cancel/Allow stuff, right? Yeah, that's kind of useless, especially if there is only one user.

Even Linux has this, as "sudo". To bypass it, login as root, although that is VERY NOT RECOMMENDED. I mean, on Windows, it's okay, but not on Unix, where programs have direct access to hardware.

 

6. Automatic Updates (That's the proper title.)

 

I hate this too. If you set the Automatic update to Level 3 (Automatically download and install updates), it turns off automatically in 5 minutes if you don't "restart later". It doesn't automatically turn off if you set it to levels 1 or 2 (I set it to level 2 personally) but the message can only postpone for a limited amount of time. Thank God in Vista the limit is raised to 4 hours.

 

5. Messenger Service

 

I don't know what you're talking about. If you mean the online service that was just branded "MSN", I never used that service, but it's kind of like AOL without the internet access.

 

4. Notifications

 

These aren't that bad, it's just that they get annoying, like you said, with add new hardware.

 

3. IE 6

 

2 words: Use Firefox. I have 3.0 beta 2 installed right now, and it's pretty stable, actually.

 

2. Registry

 

This one is pretty useful. The only problem I have with it is that some things are so damn hard to find in there.

 

1. ActiveX Controls

 

To the guy who says Javascript and Flash are all ActiveX, I think the person here is talking about the controls written in VB. At least the JS and Flash controls aren't exploitable.

[Evolke 0]

Well, I have Internet Explorer, and I dont have any problems with it, But maybe thats just me, and because we only have Internet Explorer, its all that I know, and Im used to, so its not too bad for me ♥Evo

[klusk 0]

The above mentioned features cant be called useless......of course they may be less used because we may have better softwares available......IE has some bugs...but still its fine to work with for most of us......as far as windows messenger service is concerned...i havent seen many guys using it but you have to have a default messenger... well if you talk about notification...they can be annoying but they are really useful sometimes.....messages like "network cable unplugged", "limited or no connectivity","100 mbps connected" are worth shown....they have just tried to provide all the programs...if you find better...use them..whats the point calling the default ones useless....