The 20 Worst Windows Features Of All Time

[suberatu 0]

Here are my two cents on some of the features you mentioned.

 

19. Windows Movie Maker

I actually believe this is a decent tool. Indeed, there is a large number better options out there but the fact that this comes preinstalled and ready to go out of the box makes it convenient. However, it is EXTREMELY unstable and having to save your work every 30 seconds for fear of it crashing really does kill this tool.

 

17. Shut Down

I usually don't shutdown either. Also, I can see where you're coming from on your complaint here.

 

16. Paint

I think its convenient for when I have a picture with a 2 pixel white border I need to remove, but I don't want to take the time to fire up Photoshop.

 

14. Active Desktop

I never knew what it was either.

 

9. Windows Genuine Advantage

Incredibly annoying indeed. My dad gave his computer to a shop once to get it fixed and they ended up reformatting and giving him a pirate copy (unintentionally on his part). The little popup makes you want to smasht he computer. Fortunately, we did find a way to remove it and it never bothered us again.

 

8. End Task

The key here is to go under the processes tab (instead of applications) in the Task Manager window. Then you select the process's exe file (e.g.: MSWord.exe) and click end process then confirm by pressing yes. It instantly kills the task. The only thing that doesn't work for is Explorer, but if you're using that you probably have more problems than being annoyed by End Task.

 

6. Windows Update

The restart popup sucks. Many times I was in the middle of a crucial part of a game and it got minimized just for the stupid popup to show up. My solution: Get a good firewall and anti-virus (let them update), disable windows update, and whenever you hear about a REAL "critical" update that is needed, temporarily turn it back on.

 

4. Notifications

Any type of popup is generally annoying, but these are especially bad.

 

3. Internet Explorer 6

I honestly think this deserves #1. It's really sad that most people are still running this and even sadder that most companies are too lazy to adapt their sites to other browsers coming out. Many only allow you to access them through IE which is just plain dumb.

 

2. The Registry

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't impossible to manuever through it. Many times, you know what it is you need to fix or delete, but finding it is like traversing through hell.

 

1. ActiveX Controls

To my knowledge, I've never used them, but anytime I was forced to use IE and was asked to allow one, it was usually an attempt by some malicious entity.

[dre 0]

2. The RegistryIt wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't impossible to manuever through it. Many times, you know what it is you need to fix or delete, but finding it is like traversing through hell.

It was made this way on purpose so you would get ripped off by "tech specialists" and stuff like that. The cryptic style of this system would scare most people away.

[SkyStormKuja 0]

Three things.Firstly, I think that the IE is sucky in a whole.The Taskmanager doesn't really work...Windows Aero seems like a completely useless feature. Why in heavens name would you want to turn your windows in 3D?! I have asked numerous people, and so far no one could give me an answer that made any sense. I think that is a quite useless addtition, and I am so glad it's not "built in" like hundreds of other utilities and effects.Actually, DriveSpace was quite useless to me when I had Windows 98(I think). It worked and everything, but as soon as I installed something large, it would suddenly eat the compression away, leaving you with the original size at the end.