Windows Annoyances

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

Ok folks… first of, this thread is to gripe about the LITTLE things. Please don’t go off on how evil Bill Gates is, and how Microsoft ruined your life (if it did, start up a new thread, I want to hear about that! lol).

This is about the tiny little annoyances, the stuff that gets at you a little at a time. Not quite limited to Windows though… Office, IE, and other MS stuff goes too.

Stupid Formatting in Word, and Obfuscated ways to get rid of it.

You ever try to do a simple numbered list, and have it all go tab-crazy on you, turning it into an outline? Bugs the heck out of me every time it thinks I want it formatted some special way when, IF I WANTED IT I’D ASK! I know my dad has a lot of problems, because with Navy documents, the format used is defined by strict guidlines and regulations, and apparently, they’re not in the book Bill is working from, because Word keeps trying to change it. And if you’ve ever tried to turn it off, you know it’s buried VERY deep in some out of the way set of preferences. Basically, to turn it off, you have to look through every possible Word option before finding it. Why not one big option, at the top of everything “Yes/No When I type something, I want Word to screw it up.”

Jumping text selections.

This is probably my biggest peeve right now with windows, and I’m not sure what it’s from. I imagine it’s from Windows itself, and their MFC APIs, but I notice it most in IE. But it’s when you click to start a text selection (to highlight text), and as you drag over, the beginning of the selection jumps. Usually happens around special characters, like the brackets in BBCode. I know, probably every time I go to select some text between quote blocks, it’ll jump over the “[” or the “[/”, when means I have to type them back in, or it screws up the quote block. Worst yet, I CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO TURN IT OFF! That’s IF it’s possible. So if anyone knows how, PLEASE POST! I really don’t know where this comes from… I mean, a certain level of it may be fine, if it were optional, but when I start a selection, I click where I click because I want the selection to start there… not 2-4 characters away!

Recycle Bin on the desktop, need TweakUI to get rid of it.

This one bugged be for the LONGEST time, because I forgot about TweakUI, something that should be in Windows, but you have to download from Microsoft. For some stupid reason, in XP you can very easily remove all the other icons that used to be required to be there in 9x, EXCEPT the recycle bin (this includes My Computer, My Network Places, and My Documents). Why exactly is it so vital to be there? I have no problem going to Windows Explorer to get to the Recycle Bin. It was so annoying when I worked so hard to keep all icons cleared from the desktop, and that one just wouldn’t go away. Fortunately, you can fix it by downloading TweakUI.

You know you got em, so list em.

Imp

2

Whenever I open up IE6.0 in WinXP then press Win+E to bring up Windows Explorer, IE freezes, and I have to close EVERY IE window open before the Windows Explorer comes up, during this time I have no access to the task bar. Glitch that makes me hate M$ every day, losing web sites I was looking at. AAAARG. :<

3

Oddness… worked for me just now. But I can see how that’d be annoying.

Imp

4

don’t press Win + E and it won’t happen again %|

Martin

5

don’t press Win + E and it won’t happen again %|

Martin[/quote]

%| Well then, how am I supposed to browse files? %|

6

just use a shortcut in the quickstart bar %|

Martin

7

That’s where I got it. :slight_smile: EditPad Pro is down there too.

This reminds me of another annoyance, heck… guess we just open it up to the whole Windows topic, instead of just MS. But why is it that almost every program I install assumes I want icons in the program menu, the quickstart bar, AND the desktop, AND want a little agent in the tray? Program menu, that’s IT. NO program gets an icon on my desktop. The only things I let in my quickstart bar are Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Outlook Express, the Clear Desktop icon, and Edit Pad Pro. The only things that go in my tray are the clock, Norton AntiVirus, MSI system monitor (mobo software, shows temps, fan speeds, voltages, and even whether the case were open, if I had a sensor), MS Intellipoint (for mouse battery level), and EditPad Pro and Winamp.

The Worst are RealPlayer and Quicktime… I think both of them try to put their stuff in all those locations. Why would I want that? Don’t need the tray agent… my computer loads them fast enough without 'em. I’d never actually open them either, other than double-clicking a .mov, .ra, or .ram… why on earth do I need their icons cluttering my desktop and quickstart bar?

Doh… here’s another annoyance… open on startup. Why can’t they all just use the %^&$ing startup folder?? It really annoys me when something likes to start up with windows, especially when it’s something I didn’t want, and didn’t want to install (like MSN Messenger that installs with Windows), and then I have to hunt down how to turn it off in several different locations. I know Creative Labs ticked me off with that, because when I installed the SB Live 5.1 software, it put a virus on my computer. (I call it that, anyhow). It was a detector for their Nomad MP3 players. Loads into the sys tray, and it took me weeks before I figured out how to disable it… I wrote Creative Labs, but I don’t think they ever got back to me. Eventually I found it… it was in the options on a DIFFERENT program. Why wouldn’t NOMAD Detector be the place to put the option of NOMAD Detector starting up with windows?? Even better question… why install NOMAD Detector with a SoundBlaster, instead of with a Nomad???

Imp

8

A simple work-around (that’s not that great) is to leftclick once where you want the selection to start, then hold down shift and leftclick where it should end.

I hate that you cant get rid of MS IE.

I also hate programs that start up with windows.

I hate real player (unfortunately, it is necessary for too many things.)

I hate all the extra garbage windows installs when its fresh, and all the work it takes to remove the crap.

I hate the fancy menu animations and crap. I just want my menus to appear. Why does windows have to (try to) look nice?

9

oh cripes…WinMe is the motherload of annoyances!!!

open in new window? open can of “kick yo ass”!

my IE, you know those links that open new explorer windows? well 1 out of 20 times i click on an “open in new window” link, i get the blue screen of death, and then everything freezes… i have to end task explorer and half the time it goes back to normal, but the other half i get the ultimate blue screen of death in which case i must manually shut off my computer =\ bah…

taskbar blows…

it freezes… yeah, thats all, not much too it… i click start menu and it freezes =(

cntrl+alt+del

its annoying that these buttons have become instinct to me =\

shutting down

most of the time i have to do it manually… even with a fresh restart… start menu >> shut down>> freeze… bah…

win 2k is a little better but i cant get many of my drivers to work with it =\ bah bah bah…

bwwwwwwwaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

10

I don’t have Real Player or Quicktime on my system. I simply refuse. I know it’s a pain sometimes, but I’d rather deal with it that way. Real Player especially, last time I tried it, I said no to all the icons like 78430923 times and I still got one. Then I told it not to do the sys tray one, and it took it off, but if you ever used the player it would permanently put it back on.

My system is MY system, any program that uses my resources without me telling it to gets uninstalled and never used again, period.

I also refuse to have Gamespy, same thing with them and they are evil.

Windows? I hate that everytime I open the explorer, or go to DL something, it points to my Documents folder. In WinXP this is a huge pain because the MyDocuments folder is really buried, like C:\Documents and Settings\Jeffery McGregor\My Documents. Makes it stupid hard when using another program to find a file. And when I d/l or use WinZip, I have to back all the way out of it, then go forward to the file I want, and it never remembers, always defaults to MyDocuments no matter what.

11

Yes, WinME is awesome… 98SE is better, so (if you can), either step back down to 98SE, or up to XP as quickly as possible, hehe.

In WinXP this is a huge pain because the MyDocuments folder is really buried, like C:\Documents and Settings\Jeffery McGregor\My Documents.

Ah, you can change that. In fact, I changed the name too, it’s “My Stuff”, and it’s on my data drive at “D:\My Stuff”.

It’s actually quite easy to do, put your stuff wherever you want, let’s just say it’s like mine, “D:\My Stuff”. Put the directory there. Then right-click “My Documents”, and click “Properties” in the menu (You can also rename it from “My Documents” here). Then you get the property dialog, and it’s on the first tab, “Target”. Just enter the target folder, and that’s what’s identified as your “My Documents”. It also doesn’t need to be named “My Documents”, the folder can be any name you want, and different from what you may rename “My Documents” to, doesn’t matter (though it’s simpler if they’re the same name). There is a “Move” button on that dialog too, that may move the contents of the folder for you if you change the target, but I’m not sure.

Enjoy!
Imp

12

Isn’t that the truth. I went back to 98SE after doing the ME experiment for awhile and my hair is just now starting to grow back.

I don’t know why, but the thing that annoyed me the most about ME was the way Program Files was organized in the start menu. You couldn’t scroll down to find what you wanted, you had to deal with some kind of “tiling” philosophy their interface designers came up with. WTF!

Speaking of that, does anybody know how to alphabetize the Start/Programs folder in 98se? It’s possible through windows explorer, why not through the start button?

13

I have only been using a computer for a little over a year now and have used only windows (3.1, 95 and xp), so my qualifications entering this discussion are suspect, I admit.
My feeling is that the more you learn and the better you get, the worse windows sucks. However, having said that, I think that without their patronizing hold-your-hand-'cause-yuo’re-an-idiot attitude I may still have been trying to figure out how to use notepad. Windows is designed imho, to get as many people as possible to buy the product, period! This includes beginners like me, companies that have the inevitable turnover in staff, older folk who, when they were our age, thought the transistor radio was it, and people from countries and populations that don’t share the technological side of our culture or the way our thinking is structured by that culture and our education system.

Sure, there’s a lot of things that suck, but that’s because it’s time to move on.

%<

14

Um, you right click and select “Sort by Name”

15

Doesn’t work. Already tried that.

16

DOH!! lol… nobody seems to have noticed, but “awesome” was supposed to be “aweful”.

I hope you’re not still using Notepad. If you are, and you use it often, you’re about to love me. Hehe… go to Just Great Software. I’ve been using Edit Pad variants for several years. First started out as shareware, which you just renamed to NotePad.exe, and deleted or renamed NotePad.exe to something else. It wasn’t disabled, just on the honor system, and the price was a postcard… he collected them. It was awesome, much better and more flexible, and you could open multiple text files in the same window, on different tabs. This version is now available as freeware, I think he calls it EditPad Classic now. I own a license for EditPad Pro, which is even better. It’s available in several languages, includes a spellchecker, syntax coloring (you can download a custom syntax color scheme editor for free, if you use an obscure language, and know enough regular expressions to create your own color scheme). Several other features as well, EditPad Pro is worth the money (I think $40-50 US, and I believe it’s a life-time license with upgrades). There’s also EditPad Lite, a freeware demo of EditPad Pro, it’s more featureful than Classic, not as featureful as Pro, but it’s freeware.

Um, you right click and select “Sort by Name”[/quote]

Yeah, I know it does work in XP… perhaps it doesn’t in 98SE.

Imp

17

DOH!! lol… nobody seems to have noticed, but “awesome” was supposed to be “aweful”.[/quote]

I just thought you were being a smart ass. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah, I know it does work in XP… perhaps it doesn’t in 98SE.

Valarking is right on this one. The option is there but mine doesn’t work, never has. If the only change available is doing a clean install then I’m not interested — It’s not that big a deal.

My list of gripes is still pretty long though.

18

No, I don’t use text much at the moment. I used notepad as an example only because that’s where I started. I was sailing from Cape Town to Miami and picked up an old 486 laptop with 3.1 on it and in 3.1 you still had Cardfile and Clipboard that worked with notepad. Pretty nifty. Don’t know why they ditched it. I did all my logs on it… DR, stores, maintenance, the works. I’ll check out your link though for when I get the boat in the water again!

%<

19

i only have a few problems with windows, and they don’t annoy me that much.

The way downloads just sometimes cut out. amazing how a several meg download thinks it’s finished in less than a minute and stops downloading, even though the file isn’t full yet. And this can happen several times in a row, at any point in the download :frowning:

The way i have to adjust my video card if i wanna use blender, and have to re-adjust it to do some other stuff.

The way it limits my use of the hard drive even though there’s plenty o room left and im set as administrator.

All of these problems with windows are not as bad as one word: gator

20

There’s an easy way to fix that in IE. Go to “Tools”->“Internent Options”, then go to the “Security” tab. Click the “Restricted Sites” icon, then the “Sites” button. Add *.gator.com, and you should never get prompted to dl their software ever again (unless they start using a different domain).

Imp