Windows 11 now shows a full-screen pop-up to use OneDrive and protect your PC

lemme in@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 557 points –
windowslatest.com

In addition to monthly reminders to use Microsoft Edge and Microsoft 365, Windows 11 now recommends using OneDrive. A recent Windows Update triggers a full-screen pop-up for OneDrive, which looks like the OOBE (out-of-the-box experience) that typically pops up when you install Windows 11 for the first time.

First spotted by Windows Latest, Windows 11 has a new pop-up titled “Let’s back up your files,” which appears automatically when you start your PC.

It’s worth noting that OneDrive’s free storage is limited to 5GB, so you need to buy storage to use the Windows Backup feature. It isn’t practically possible to backup your complete PC to OneDrive in the long run unless you have empty folders.

Also, if you do manage to skip the OneDrive pop-up when booting Windows, you’ll see another notification that warns your PC that it is not fully backed up with an alert icon.

It isn’t possible to pause or remove these alerts and full-screen pop-ups in Windows 11 if you live outside the European Union.

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Friendly reminder that Linux is free and respects your ownership of your computer.

Windows free since XP

This is like someone in a UFO sub reminding people about Roswell

It’s been so nice. My wife and I have really appreciated the steady, stable consistency of our home desktop doing exactly what we want it to do without distractions, all the time.

It’s a simple pleasure, like owning a TV that’s not smart, or visiting a website with no ads. It just does what it’s supposed to do. I want more technology like this in my life.

Funnilly enough getting Linux properly back in my home again (used if for a NAS with a laptop ages ago and been "playing" with it since the 90s) was making my TV smart the right way using a Mini-PC with Lubunto and Kodi to make a TV Media Player (which also does other usefull stuff like be my home's NAS and Torrent Server over Always On VPN) and replace my ISP's set up box which had become enshittified.

It's a great way to bring back true ownership and control of electronics in this day and age of enshittification without having to sacrifice anything.

Think you're preaching to the choir on that one

Could've mentioned Arch Linux specifically though.

People never mention Arch Linux around these parts ...

Switched to Linux earlier this year when I saw the end of Windows 10 support coming. I haven't looked back since.

I don't miss that "not for now" or "maybe later" being the only option beside "yes" in prompts.

You may think Linux users are annoying but to be fair Microsoft is frankly begging for the "btw you should use linux" comments with every new windows update

The more users switch to linux, the more windows will need to cater to those users to get them to come back.

As someone who recently made the switch, and felt the immediate relief when I started using an OS that wasn't actively fighting me, I can't foresee what Windows could possibly do to convince me to go back. If my distro enshittifies I'll just switch to a different distro. Fuck the corpos.

Look, this is horrible and everything, but how are people pretending this is new? Occasional updates since Windows 10 have been showing these annoying pre-boot configuration screens even if you've skipped them before including ones wanting you to use OneDrive.

I've never had that happen on windows 10, and I have three win 10 machines here that get daily use.

If you spend the time and effort and find the half dozen different places to turn off Microsoft ads it probably stops them.

You shouldn't have to do that and they probably made it even more of a hassle in Windows 11, because they don't care that you own the computer, they really don't like you having control over it.

Enterprise edition? Or do you already have OneDrive set up?

My Win10 starting doing this a few years ago, probably every month or so.

Good for you, so you're from the EU or any other country that forces MS to stop this bullshit (or at least your installations believe you are).

In Canada, no VPN and I just turn off everything I don't want windows doing as best I can

The language in the fucking pop up. “Skip for now”, implying that at some nebulous future date it won’t be an option.

Eat my whole ass, Bill Microsoft.

It's called "dark process" and is utilized by so many companies these days.

My first job straight out of uni was a “Marketing Experience Designer” which translated into looking at the company’s product offering and writing papers on where and what dark patterns can be used and to whom.

There’s a special place in hell for people like me 😟 was broke and needed the job.

At no point has Microsoft gotten me to regret my decision to install Mint

I came back to the Windows to have a comfortable cloud storage experience (background files and folders synchronization) and to be able to play any game there is.

Stop fucking bugging me OS! Junkmail, spam, junk phone calls, junk sms, notification abuse on smartphone apps. It really adds the hell up and this kind of shit coming from something I paid to install is infuriating.

would you like to SUPERSIZE your OS subscription?

Let's improve your experience

Sit back, relax, we're taking the wheel here to once again shove our subscription products down your esophagus. Would you be so inclined as to now use New Outlook, OneDrive, Microsoft Office, Telemetry (just kidding, we make it mandatory and give you the illusion of choice), Edge and our sponsors Candy Crush? We thought you would, so we've set these as your default apps. For instance, we have decided for you that Edge was what you actually needed instead of LibreWolf, which cane from an unknown source.

Thanks again, we will come again in next month's update!

Don't forget Skype for Business doing the weird half-sign on thing and then starting Teams which nags you to switch to Teams (New).

One of the first things I did was remove OneDrive when I installed W11.

I have yet to see any of this new malarky, and I am not in the EU.

From a admin command prompt: winget uninstall Microsoft.OneDrive

If you have linked an account to OneDrive, I'd advise you unlink it first.

the EU should put all these companies through the fucking WRINGER. better yet, the States can help regulate them! imagine all the power massive tech corpos would lose if the EU and the US worked together to bring them down. then the EU's regulations would also apply basically anywhere else, since tech companies watch the US market the closest (and they can't afford to lose this market unless they... idk, move to China)

better yet, the States can help regulate them!

Did someone say tax cut for the rich!

Only if we can ease up on some environmental regulations and gut an unrelated federal agency too!

as if they can even move to China, its market is already dominated by domestic replacements for everything

damn, you're right. India then, maybe? i don't know how reliable the Indian market is, because i don't know much about India (Bharat? when are they going through with the name change)

A colleague of mine (we work government, so Microsoft all the way) spent a month in India learning their ways and I couldn't be more envious. All open source and cloud agnostic.

Or better yet consumers could stop supporting shitty companies and use alternatives instead, seeing as we're listing fantasies...

The alternatives.. That once they shows a bit of growth and promise gets bought up by a bigger and greedier company, that then gets bought up by one of the big corpos and carefully discontinued in favor of their own product.

If my Linux distro gets bought by a big greedy company I'll switch to a different distro.

Linux itself isn't a company. And cant be bought up even if Linux Foundation is taken over. And its not like you support Linux Foundation when you download one of the free distros.

Users: Do you realize what Windows is subjecting us to? MS board of directors: Windows? We don't even use PCs

Man they're really making the case for me to keep using Windows 10

The 5GB free space of my OneDrive is filled with game saves in the documents folder. You can't exclude directories there from being backed up. Good job.

On Mint you just get this nice popup to help a beginner with important stuff like drivers and updates. It has a checkbox to make it not pop up again and it never does. Unbelievable!

Last time I booted up Win 10 to game I got a full screen ad for Windows 11. When hitting the button to exit, the button disappeared and the whole machine froze and eventually crashed. (Although that crash might have been somewhat hardware related)

Didn’t the EU force Microsoft to show third-party alternatives to Internet Explorer like a decade ago? I feel like this is the same thing.

And shit like this is why I just installed Linux Mint on my mother's PC. No issues so far.

Windows is just a loss leader to sell your data and other products at the point.

Your resistence only makes my customisation harder!

Does Pro not do this type of shit? I can't really remember when I saw onedrive after my initial deactivation and uninstall spree on my machine...

It must. I’m using 11pro and never see any of these ads

10 pro did way more obnoxious anti-consumer shit than I could tolerate. It still regularly ignored and reverted settings.

Since 11 has become even more hostile I'm guessing pro still sucks hard.

I skip this and fully uninstall one drive immediately after getting control of the desktop.

For better or worse, I have a school account linked to my OneDrive (makes it easy to hop on a school computer to work on stuff), so at least I probably won't see this.

I just buy a grey market pro key and it seems to stop all of these issues. I can't say I've seen 1/4 of the things news articles are complaining about windows doing.

Are you in the states? Uninstall one drive and come back to me on this one.