Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – Are thin clients ruining PCs?
windowscentral.com46 points by josephcsible 3 hours ago
46 points by josephcsible 3 hours ago
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be.
And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system.
They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street.
From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
"I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be."
No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
Yeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around.
Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
Honestly as a deeply antisocial person the Linux cult has always rubbed me the wrong way. Same reason why I don't have an iPhone.
Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
exactly, he's part of a problem
I could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.
This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years.
Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
Goes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
I recently started using COSMIC and I would definitely call it good, even if it has a few rough edges due to just recently coming out of beta.
I cannot see myself installing Windows 11, it's sad, I've been primarily a windows guy for my home computer since W95 and I'll miss it. Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life, once I disabled updates and all the nag screens it's been rock solid for me for many years. It's so important to be able to trust that your computer works the same way tomorrow as it does today.
I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.
I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater".
Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
There are two technologies propped up by having to earn a living: windows and the iPhone.
No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new.
Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job.
I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.
Author implies he was using a local account at the time of the error. Which answers an important question. I'd heard of people with Microsoft accounts getting locked out of their own computers, but that's a first I've heard of basic apps failing with a local account.
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me
I wonder if it works at all when no online connection to that store.
“But what if people used notepad without our permission?!” -dev/boss somewhere
Switch to linux, don't look back
Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.
I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.
If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.
I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.
If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.
I work in academia and I've gotten most of my people to switch to Macs and no, Linux is not an option here.
I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.
What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else?
The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
It's much harder for non-dev jobs where the management won't let you BYOD for whatever reasons, which could range from IT being too stubborn to allow you to keep company data on your own laptop that's not centrally managed, to everything including licenses for random 3rd party software the company is using being tied to the ActiveDirectory fleet of computers with centralized storage.
This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue.
The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine.
This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens.
When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.
I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.
Sometimes I prefer one machine over the other I rarely wish for anything other than sometimes being unable to transfer data between the two systems.
> I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed.
That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.
I would not describe the Linux desktop experience as the best of both Mac and Windows.
Let's go with different, a different world.
Microsoft is really shooting themselves in your foot.
It might be time to look at other options.
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me
I wonder if it works at all with no online connection to that store.
Reminds me of this MacOS problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
The subscription to his own machine had bugs that prevented him from using a basic windowed text editor and that isn't the last straw?
Most of all, first-party apps from Microsoft have been ruined by them. Use alternatives when possible.
>I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.[...] and Windows 12 is ultimately an agentic AI OS, I wouldn't be surprised if more people stick with a debloated Windows 11, just as others did with Windows 10
Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills
To be clear, this is the horrible "new" Notepad "app" that I absolutely hated and instantly removed when it was forced upon everyone. I doubt the old "edit field in a wrapper" one which has been nearly the same since Win95 has this problem.
(My newest machine is now running Linux.)
Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.
For what it matters, Windows Server 2025 still has the edit field in a wrapper.
They all still do, just like the old Explorer context menu. It's what you get when you remove the new abomination.
With Macbooks Air M4 starting at $1k/€1.1k, and apparently soon some even cheaper Macbooks coming up, it's really difficult to justify buying a Windows laptop those days and having to deal with all Microsoft bs, unless you have specific needs and being locked in.
The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense.
A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.
I believe this is related to known issues with KB5074109
It hit Both Win11 24H2 and 25H2.
The renaming of “my computer” to “this PC” was quite telling.
Every horrible windows story is yet another glorious day for linux.
Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.
> Pair it with Debian
A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_n...
My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
Debian Testing isn't really unstable - the dev wasn't exaggerating. But I'd also suggest Kubuntu (you can remove snap and all of its packages, and install Firefox and Thunderbird .deb's from the Mozilla repo)
> Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
So it was with Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8. It's not an impossible ask for Windows either.
> That is curated search done right.
Adding keywords in the relevant .desktop files should be enough to make this work in other DE's too. I just tried it in KDE (by adding a 'comment=... (like notepad)' line in ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.kwrite.desktop), it works as expected
It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.
If I had such a problem with my OS, I would have changed the distribution.
How can Microsoft legally do that? Notepad++ is GPL-licensed open source. It's on Github.[1]
Notepad++ isn't [Windows Notepad](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3)
Hilariously related, the title of this topic now looks to me like "Notepad--"
Oops, sorry. HN condensed the title to " Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – ...", and I misread that.