Hi! Long time no see, huh? 🙂
It’s been three years since my last State of the Windows article, which was about the inconsistencies in the Windows 11 user experience. Since then, Microsoft (and the world as a whole to be quite honest) has gotten through a lot of changes, especially since the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and in our case, most importantly, Microsoft Copilot.
Until a few years ago, Windows was Microsoft’s crown jewel (or as they said in the Windows 7 commercial, the heartbeat of Microsoft), an impressive operating system that had the purpose to be a common platform for all devices. However, since the launch of Windows 11, which at first had the purpose to somewhat modernize the look and feel of the OS, it seems that priorities have changed quite a bit.
Today we are going to talk about the perceived drop of quality in Windows, from fundamental issues like critical bugs and incidents from the last 3 years to how everything’s become a Copilot upsell funnel mechanism.
So, without further ado, let’s go!
First, let’s talk about the current, show-stopping errors that appeared with the latest January 2026 update, and how to fix them.
1. PCs that wouldn’t shutdown – January 2026.
This is one of the bugs that I’ve actually encountered a few days ago at work – people would come in saying that their PCs would either act unresponsive after shutting down (as in, they wouldn’t start up again the next day), or it would reboot immediately after shutting down.
This issue was introduced with the January 2026 update, KB5073455 and it is more prominent on newer platforms, especially Intel’s Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake.
Reportedly this issue is caused by the System Guard Secure Launch, a virtualization-based security component which, as the name implies, protects the boot process by using DRTM, or Dynamic Root of Trust for Measurement.
More information about this technology can be found here.
Since last Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released a patch for this issue, KB5077797, which seems to solve the issues.
As a temporary workaround, users can shutdown their PCs using the Command Prompt, by entering shutdown /s /t 0. But this begs the question, why does the shutdown command work through this command which supposedly does the same thing, but not through the classic shutdown button?
2. Outlook “classic” can’t open pst files – january 2026
Once again, this month’s Patch Tuesday brought another major issue, which has the potential to affect one’s productivity in a big way.
If the KB5074109 is installed, applications can become unresponsive when accessing PST files stored on cloud storage. To put it simply, if you have your mail archive saved on OneDrive or Dropbox and are still using the classic Win32 Outlook (and not the WebView based one) it’s possible that you can’t access the file, since the application would become unresponsive.
Also, users with Outlook POP account profiles and profiles with PST files report that Outlook hangs and does not exit properly.
Up until yesterday, the only fixes were to either uninstall the update or to “use webmail”. Their words, not mine.
However, as of January 25th, Microsoft released the KB5078132 update, which should fix the issue.
Some other issues with the latest update include:
Apps that wouldn’t load (including system ones like Notepad), crashing with the error 0x803f8001.
Unbootable volumes – the infamous 0x7f BSOD which means that it can’t mount the disk partition to continue booting.
These are the most glaring issues that were introduced with the latest Windows update.
but as a whole, windows is a mess.
Since the introduction of 24H2, Microsoft had a scandal related to Windows almost every month.
Some of the most critical ones include:
WinRE wouldn’t recognize keyboard and mouse input after the October 2025 update
Task Manager wouldn’t close completely if KB5067036 was installed, meaning that whenever one opened a new taskmgr window a new instance would be launched.
RDP failures with 24H2/25H2 – once again, this is actually a critical issue that I’ve also encountered at work, and because of it we had to rollback a few PCs to 23H2 in order to have stable RDP connections.
Various devices like DACs or webcams not working after installing updates.
DRM video issues with the September 2025 update
Unfortunately, these are only some of the more prominent issues that occurred in the last year.
But wait, that’s not all!
Another ever-growing issue is the fact that Windows is bloated. And I’m not talking about the number of apps that are included in the OS or something that any script or custom OS could fix, but the fact that critical components are becoming so heavy that Microsoft has to develop workarounds in order to make them feel faster.
The prime example is Windows Explorer, which has become so sluggish that it has to be preloaded in order to make it faster, but even then it’s actually slower than previous versions of Windows!
How can one of the core UI elements of the OS become so heavy while not offering any noticeable quality-of-life improvement (apart from the introduction of tabs in Windows 11 22H2)?
Even Windows updates have become insanely big. Just take a look at the latest January 2026 update for Windows 11 23H2 and the one for 25H2.
More than 4 times bigger! And you probably know why. More on that later.
Last, but not least, the technical debt of Windows has become almost unbearable. 30+ years of Windows NT certainly adds up. And the fact that Microsoft can’t focus on a visual language or a software platform for once is daunting, especially since given the nature of Windows you have to support them all.
However, the biggest problem is that Windows is not only buggy. Sure, a piece of software of this magnitude can and will have its fair share of issues. Our use cases have gotten more complex and the software that we expect to fulfill those use cases have become more complex, more secure, more powerful, you name it. That being said…
windows is getting annoying.
Let’s tackle the elephant in the room.
LLMs (and AI as a whole) have the potential to be an outright revolution, changing the fabric of society and the way of our lives. Microsoft Copilot as well could be a brilliant idea if it is implemented correctly and has the power to completely transform Microsoft into an even bigger juggernaut, unlocking even more of that sweet shareholder value… if it’s done properly, that is.
Introduced in 2023, Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s chatbot based on OpenAI’s models after a $10 billion investment. Introduced in Windows 11 with the December 2023 Patch Tuesday, at first it was just a benign WebView application that could be easily removed. However, since 2024, Copilot and artificial intelligence have taken a critical role in Microsoft’s overall strategy, especially in areas like programming.
This shift also showed up in subsequent versions of Windows.
In Windows 11 24H2, the main highlight of the new update was the introduction of a suite of AI features, with the most important being Windows Recall.
The flagship feature of 24H2, Recall was intended to a be a “photographic memory” of sorts for your PC. This meant that, as you might have guessed, Windows Recall would take a snapshot of your screen every few seconds. Then, the information from those screenshots would be processed using local AI to make it searchable.
However, soon after it was introduced it became clear that it was a security nightmare. Early security researchers discovered that the data was stored in a largely unencrypted SQLite database, making it a goldmine for info-stealing malware. Not only that, but the early builds of Recall had no option to disable it. The backlash was so severe that Microsoft was forced to pull the feature just days before the Copilot+ PC launch in 2024, leaving a new generation of PCs without their flagship feature.
Applications like Signal and Brave implemented anti-Recall features that would prevent the app from taking screenshots.
While Microsoft would mitigate the main security concerns related to Recall, by making it uninstallable, encrypting its database and making it usable only if Windows Hello was enabled, the damage was already done.
Also, Windows Recall is one of the main reasons why Windows updates are so big these days, as each Windows update also introduces updates to the AI models included with the OS, even though you may not even have a Copilot+ PC that supports these features.
Apart from Recall, Windows has also suffered from an acute Copilot-ification.
The preinstalled browser (Edge) has Copilot.
The main text editor (Notepad) has Copilot.
There is also a dedicated Copilot app which is preinstalled and non-removable (in most cases)
The main photo viewer has a Copilot button which just opens the main app
The Settings application has Copilot in its search function (which doesn’t even work properly).
The Search application has Copilot (which only opens up the Copilot app) and needs a COMPLETE overhaul in my opinion.
Paint has Copilot
Office has Copilot (which is one of the few instances where Copilot and AI as a whole is genuinely useful if used correctly)
Also, judging by the latest Windows 11 builds, even Windows Explorer, which is already quite heavy in itself as we discussed earlier is getting Copilot!
With the Copilot epidemic also came the complete death of the “offline” Windows.
Perhaps the most nagging change since 2023 is the slow death of the local account. Microsoft has spent the last three years systematically closing every “backdoor” that allowed users to set up Windows without a Microsoft Account.
Methods like OOBE.exe /bypassNRO or [email protected] as the email for the account have been “fixed”, meaning that it becomes harder and harder to use a local account with each subsequent update.
a vision with a crumbling foundation
Looking back at the last three years, the “State of Windows” is one of extreme ambition built on a crumbling foundation. Microsoft is trying to build a futuristic AI skyscraper, but they are building it on top of a basement filled with 30-year-old technical debt and a ground floor that can’t even handle a shutdown command properly.
Unfortunately, the issue that plagued Windows since the dawn of time has only aggravated recently. Windows 11 is a mixture of old and new technologies that are glued together, with decades of legacy code that simply refuses to die (because if it did a lot of corporate costumers would complain, and whether we like it or not they are paying big cash for support to Microsoft).
Also, it tries to have a “modern” UI that unfortunately not only is inconsistent, but also it’s too heavy for its own good, being just a lipstick on a bloated old pig.
Last, but certainly not least, it is full of AI features that most people didn’t ask for, some are even actively feared (see Recall) and are also quite lacking in polish and usefulness.
I feel like a good analogy of the current situation with Windows is this picture which was shown in an internal presentation regarding the performance and reliability of pre-reset Longhorn
Until Microsoft stops treating Windows as an “AI innovation platform” of sorts and starts treating it as the stable, reliable tool it was always meant to be, the user experience will continue to feel like a battle between the person sitting at the desk and the company that built the desk.
Thank you for you attention.
Did you find this article interesting? Writing these deep dives (once every few years 😂) takes a lot of time (and caffeine).☕Also it would be nice if I would get a proper domain for this page.