If you’re anything like me, you may remember how Microsoft was going to improve Windows. Bring back the customer base that is annoyed with all the features that hurt their experience. Apparently, Microsoft hasn’t gotten to that stage yet. With another mandatory update last week, Windows 11 is being broken again.

Microsoft released Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 10 (KB5122878) and Windows 11 (KB5124008, KB5124012). This was a mandatory update that was supposed to be one of the year’s best updates, at least on paper. It restored Windows 10-era features, including a movable taskbar and a resizable Start menu, but unfortunately, it’s causing issues on some PCs. Yet, it’s the things it broke that is the bigger story.

Microsoft says the update breaks WSL-based apps and Remote Desktop sessions. But further reports found more bugs, including one that breaks File History backups and another that causes Explorer.exe crashes and system/GPU stability issues. Microsoft confirmed a bug in Windows 11 KB5124008 that breaks apps using HCS-managed Linux virtual machines with Plan9 shared folders. The integration between Claude Cowork is broken, which I’m not so concerned about.

Now Microsoft says that the security update released earlier this month is also causing problems with USB audio devices for some people.

More Windows 11 Issues from a Mandatory Update

Microsoft spent so much time over the last few years pushing AI onto its user base. Many of whom didn’t even want it, much less ask for it. This year, they made the claim to back off the heavy AI integration. As well as promise to improve the user experience to bring people home. Yet, this feels like Windows 10 again.

They spent the bulk of every update implementing new features and let broken ones linger. As we are more than halfway through the year, and it still persists. The internet being the internet, they will tell you to move to Linux. That isn’t always easy to do if you are not in control of what operating system you can use.

From my own experience, Linux is cool but it isn’t without its issues. There are still a lot of software that doesn’t work with Linux. It is fair to say that there are not a lot of alternatives in the Linux ecosystem from software that works in Windows or Mac.

While Microsoft acknowledges the issues, after their massive layoffs, there isn’t a whole lot of support. They admitted themselves that they use a lot of vibe coding. However, since Linux is making gains in percentage of the marketshare, there may be something to moving to Mac. The only lesson they will learn from is losing dominance. It isn’t surprising that they don’t care about their customers. They never have.