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.
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.
Yeah, we know.
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.
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.
I got them as soon as windows 11 was available
There must be some settings that can be toggled to turn them off.
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 ei does 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.
Think you mean dark patterns.
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.
I worked as a telemarketer in college to pay rent. I know exactly how you feel.
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.OneDriveIf you have linked an account to OneDrive, I’d advise you unlink it first.
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!
I Cant even laugh at this. Too soon.
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).
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.
Also recently made the switch, and I agree.
Fuck the corpos!!!
Spot a child.
Honestly, if anyone goes Linux now, they aren’t going back.
At no point has Microsoft gotten me to regret my decision to install Mint
Sad spyware and adware noises
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.
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
Until security updates are stopped in October next year…
I hope Steam OS 3 will be officially supported by then, it’ll be a nice advertising campaign from Micro
You don’t need valve to game on Linux, they just help a whole lot.
We don’t need valve to game on Linux but a lot of people still do.
I am willing to bet they won’t stop security updates for W10 next year.
Now? This pop-up has been there for more than a year.
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)
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.
