Microsoft is planning an 'Advanced Windows Settings' panel for power users | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is planning an 'Advanced Windows Settings' panel for power users

xda-developers.com

59 pointsthunderbong76 comments

Yes, all we need, another layer in Windows. I recently went to Windows 11 and it is stunning that you still have multiple places for settings.

How are we going to name the classic settings? Classic classic control panel?

Adult Control Panel? I always think "Adult" when I'm trying to bring up the legacy panels instead of the function-crippled slow modern iterations.

I would love concept of "adult computing", where I can mark a checkbox "I herby guarantee that I'm not going to blame $company for me being a moron and installing malware/destabilizing device due to changing random options". Then device starts behaving like piece of hardware I own, shows error messages that actually tell something and in general doesn't assume if I drop dead if presented with more than two buttons on single screen

Oups, i'm afraid you are describing 1999 :/

Do you also agree to pay me compensation if your computer is part of a bot ring that is ddos’ing me or spamming me or spamming my users, because you installed malware?

Can you put up a bond for this or proof that you carry insurance for this?

You're free to sue me like for any other harm. Also, do you think that now you are protected against that? Will Google/Apple pay you compensation if due to to their negligence locked down devices become part of botnet?

Edit: but honestly if I could pass "driver test" for computer, pay insurance in the range of my car insurance and it would mean that I will never meet error message without details and I would not ever be locked out from configuring my device, however I please, I would take that deal.

Don't forget about 'netsh' and all the PowerShell cmdlets and objects that can manipulate windows settings.....

The CLI is all we really need... If Microsoft can expose all settings via CLI or PS, then folks will build the advanced config UIs for them!

That is what Nano Server is all about.

Windows has always offered control via COM interfaces to system settings.

Hey, don't stop them now - I'm having a great time watching Windows independently recreate every complaint about Linux GUIs:D If you thought QT/GTK was bad, wait 'til you see multiple styles and not-quite-overlapping settings panels from a single company!

E-Mail (32-Bit) ... Just leaving this here

The classic Control Panel allows everyone to add an icon to it. Most of those additions are quite pointless, like the Mail icon, which belongs to Microsoft Outlook and opens a configuration window you can easily access from within Outlook itself. The modern settings UIs are not extensible like this, nor should they be.

Have you considered Linux?

It's arguably worse there. You got regular settings + GNOME Tweaks + a bunch of settings that can only be changed via CLI or some .ini file.

That's a fair assessment. I'm in the process of moving to Linux because I find windows 11 to be so incredibly awful. I'm using Ubuntu and it's been mostly a good transition, but learning a new operating system does have a learning curve for me.

Also: which desktop? At least you can install multiple desktops and switch at login.

FWIW, I like Cinnamon best, but I also like KDE and XFCE (plus, XFCE works especially well over remote desktops and inside virtual machines). I've never cared for later versions of GNOME and ran away screaming.

There's a talk that I enjoy a lot about this "multiple places for settings" problem. About how lots of software end up resembling

1. The maker's org chart (Conway's law) ...

2. ...multiplied by time

Casey Muratori: The Only Unbreakable Law - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY

His examples are precisely the Windows settings :) . More precisely, the various audio/mixer UIs.

> Microsoft is developing an 'Advanced Windows Settings' panel to give advanced users more control over their operating system and improve workflows.

> Give developers more control over their system settings and advanced behaviors

> - Help developers discover powerful settings that can improve their daily workflows & improve machine performance

This is the set up to start charging for these right?

As a monthly subscription.

The play is to get developers to upload their data to Microsoft’s Cloud so OpenAI can vacuum it up.

This is clearly a screenshot from Dev Home, an app that is already available to Windows 11 users.

The Advanced Settings page here just relates to some developer focused options, as that is the purpose of Dev Home.

Sounds like "Tweak UI" all over again.

(Yes, I am that old. And thanks to Mr Chen for that wonderful tool).

This was brought up in a recent interview with Raymond Chen on Dave's Garage channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vJQv4rgHYE

There’s Winaero Tweaker for that, for quite some time now.

This seems more like a configuration UI for new developer-targeted features, more like PowerToys-for-devs than the traditional Control Panel settings. “For power users” is a bit misleading.

Also, maybe they should just go back to the old concept of an extensible Control Panel, instead of accumulating a growing set of independent “settings” apps?

Great. Now we have to search for settings in three levels of control panel instead of two.

If you were a true power user you'd be modifying the registry directly ;)

I am not man enough to register my network cards and different protocols via registry.

No worries - that’s what Copilot is for! Click now to subscribe

I miss Windows XP / 7, everything went downhill after.

I don’t miss windows at all, been all Linux since 1995.

That's not exactly a cakewalk either. But you do get control.

No wonder you don’t miss it if you missed its best years.

Meh. Windows has never offered anything to make my computing experience better - no incentive to migrate.

Different strokes for different folks.

There's been different things through the years, games was a big one, but there's still the lack of any good remote desktop solution that's keeping me on Windows. I also haven't found a good replacement for Acronis TrueImage, ie incremental full-disk backups that run in the background, which has allowed me to be back in action in under 30 minutes when I've had drives fail.

Windows 7 was the last version that I was willing to use (with 7 and 2000 being my favorites). Any time I've had to interact with a Windows 8 or later machine, I've hated it. I only use Windows under duress anymore.

You can still run Windows 7 on some modern hardware.

Comments like these make me wonder if you are looking back with rose colored glasses. You didn't mention Vista, which is universally regarded as a failure and in the same timeframe as you described. While some of Microsoft's more regrettable decisions have yet to be made by 7, but there are still plenty of bad ones to choose from. Games for Windows Live, Fisher Price UI, massive software vulnerability, Office "ribbon", Admin Popup, Internet Explorer, Silverlight...

Microsoft, especially after Windows launched, has always been the poster child for greedy, monopolistic, anti-consumer business practices.

You're missing the point: to the extent there were things you didn't like about XP and 7, you could fix them. Your relationship with your OS vendor was that of a paying user, not a hostage.

I agree I never saw the point of using XP or 7.

Some of us have bills to pay.

Man I wish Microsoft (Apple too!) would just say screw it to new features and spend time really polishing their operating systems. I'm sitting on Windows 10 as long as I can.

Does it begin with 'Reset to W2K' ?

PowerToys is nice: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

This is interesting as a blog article from 2003 "Why doesn't Windows have an 'expert mode'?"[0] was posted here a couple weeks ago. [1]

The reasoning was that users self-rating at being advanced because they are good in one domain might lead them to messing with things they have no idea on.

I suppose the flaw is that people find ways to mess with stuff regardless, even if just following the first google result's instructions.

At least if they use advanced settings people's misfortune won't be because they ran a strange program, but I doubt this will stop them from doing so anyway.

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=43...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337292

Arguably, the average user's proficiency has increased in the last TWO DECADES

I associate it rather with the 90s that many computer users knew lots of insane arcane details of the computer and OS that they were using. Today's users (except for some subject area experts) are nearly always far below this knowledge level.

Reminds me of the late 90s when I was trying windows NT4 and the message "please contact your administrator" that kept popping when something failed.

I was alone on my personal computer and kept wondering "who is my administrator?"

Took me a while to figure out that it was me.

Remove telemetry and ads?

That's adorable.

No settings needed — there's always the "I wasn't asking" approach of deleting the DLLs that contain the code for these misfeatures.

Could you please expand about this? Last time I checked it required to spend a lot of time to remove that options and/or run a "magic script" that I don't clearly know what it does (security wisely).

Which requires disabling/bypassing/breaking system integrity checks, because, you know, ads are essential part of the OS

What system integrity checks? That's a thing now? I mean I did it for Windows Update and Edge and Defender in my VM, no problems so far.

I asked you above to provide the specific details and contribute here in HN please.

Okay. First of all, you need to ignore NTFS permissions — to do that, you need to either reboot into Windows' recovery mode or use another OS that supports mounting NTFS read-write.

To disable Windows Update, delete (or move somewhere else) C:\Windows\system32\wua*

Windows Defender: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender, C:\Program Files\Windows Defender

Microsoft Edge: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate

Telemetry: C:\Windows\system32\diagtrack.dll

Windows 10 already has developer settings in one panel including powershell security settings, always show file extensions, and show hidden and system files.

It's doubly insulting to me as a user and as a developer that those basic things are considered "developer settings" though ;)

Only issue is that power user in the microsoft world means someone ticking a checkbox to enable picture backgrounds.

How about giving me back XP or 7?

I want the old control panel, I can't use the new one unless explorer is running.

I don't know why both MS and Linux don't have a tool like IBM's AIX SMIT GUI that generates a CLI/shell command from a menu based dialogue. This was a great tool for those seldom used admin things you needed to do.

For an additional $50/month.

There was an 20 year old blogpost by an employee posted a few weeks ago outlining exactly this (and why they never chose to do it), commenters were disagreeing writing it should be done but Microsoft would not dare to do this now anyways. Now it's here, and HN hates it.

Because since then situation in Windows changed, and there are already multiple control panels, with settings being spread around them in nonsensical way - and this one just adds a 3rd one.

It really needs a complete rework of settings.

And to be honest i like the split of default and poweruser settings.

Maybe that's what this is. A way to bring all those advanced settings from the Control Panel into the Settings window.

Think of all those smaller unresizable windows that are a few hundred pixels wide and tall with the tabs at the top and the OK, Cancel, Apply buttons at the bottom. You know the kind. Those are in most cases advanced settings.

You are too optimistic. It has been a very long time since MS has done anything coherent with Windows.

Where's the power user setting to turn off all the enshittification?

It’s called “install Linux”

Every single Linux DE sucks and will suck an incredible amount of your time if anything goes wrong / you want to tweak something niche. Open source (in the Linux DE world) = free = eff it, I’m not getting paid, they should be thankful

There is only one good DE and it is Fluxbox. ;)

(I'll go get my flame suit on.)

Anecdata. Linux has worked for me for almost 30 years. Anecdata too, just so you can see how that works ;)

I prefer Linux sucking away my time over Windows sucking away my time any day. Also, I don't feel like Microsofts attitude towards users is much better, theirs is "fuck you, we're getting your money anyways, eat trash". I'd rather use something that's imperfectly built for actual users over something that's built to generate revenue and market power for Microsoft.

For the biggest part, the additional pain that I have with Linux (over the pain that I'd have with Windows anyways) is worth it for having a system that brings me joy to use and gives me room to be and feel competent. The rest is made up for with the knowledge that I'm using FOSS.

Obviously, this is my personal view, which is a result of my preferences, how I (like to) use computers and my values. But so is yours.

Registry settings, GPO, https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 and https://winaero.com/winaero-tweaker/

Finally can we be rid of Control Panel

hell no. One of the last things that still works.

This has now become more confusing than Linux.

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