What Are Your Least Favorite Windows Features of All Time?

I Disliked the "Online Television" (an early version of what would become Windows Media Center in XP and Vista) feature in Win98. It never Really worked and at the time the internet connections available were too slow to deliver the shows.

The only thing that beats the "Online Television" is UAC in Vista

Every morning, I as part of the log in process, I have to press the absurd combination, "control-alt-delete." I can see why you might make a command that terminates a program difficult to key. But, my everyday login? C'mon.

Those annoying "Restart Now, Restart Later" pop-up after you've "updated" windows. Doesn't matter how many times "Restart Later" you click, it'll always come back up. ANNOYING!

Don't you guys have anything better to do? How about an article on distributed or grid computing for research at BOINC and World Community Grid?

Perhaps the greatest all-time annoyance is the wireless "bubble" message that appears by the system tray in Windows XP. You know, the one that displays every time you come in and out of range of a wireless signal and has to be clicked away. Yes, it can be turned off, but it's not immediately obvious to most users and its default behavior is to blink on and off like a traffic light.

I mean, what UI designer thought this was a good idea? Can you imagine every time your cell phone came in and out of range of a new tower it put up a message? Or, worse, an older TV displayed the message "Can view the broadcast with the antenna. Now we can't. Now we can..."

I don't know how many otherwise elegant presentations have been ruined by that stupid bubble popping up.

Perhaps I'm just the paranoid type, but ActiveX nearly goes without saying ('cause I said it). I'm all for user friendliness, but honestly, downloading an archive or executable to the Desktop and then proceeding to extract/run it myself seldom causes me to break a sweat. I'll gladly put in the effort to avoid drive-by downloads of malware. Thankfully the point is moot with Firefox, but that's off the subject.

My least favorite features are:

1. The constant annoying toolbar bubbles that pop up that say things like "Ethernet connection is down" or "Windows Update". They're annoying and get in the way.

2. Having other windows popup while I'm working. I usually have multiple windows up at the same time and when a window suddenly pops up when I'm trying something, that's pretty annoying.

3. Windows Media Player. Everything about it is very annoying, like the user interface, layout and overall features that all seem like an afterthought.

4.

The reboot feature after downloading automatic updates is criminal. Three days before my Ph.D. thesis was due, I was analyzing huge data sets and had several programs running. I left for a quick lunch, and when I returned found that my computer had automatically updated, and after not clicking the 'please do not reboot now' option, by default, the operating system rebooted my computer. I lost many, many hours of work, and quite nearly, my mind. Did the engineers not intend the operating system to be used for, you know, very important work, that is periodically all lost because of a built in 'feature'?

singe, I won't blame you for that. It happens to me, too. In Windows XP Pro, there's a group policy object editor that allows you to turn off the feature, but not available in XP Home... :(

Poor Microsoft for the design/engineering, but I still like Windows.

I'm not saying you should've saved your work before heading out to lunch, but maybe you need to get into a habit of saving your work so you don't lose it when Windows restarts, but it shouldn't restart...

This seems to be a safety feature to prevent vulnerable exploits, but I've never gotten any viruses, malware, etc. so I didn't see any reason to restart...well, never know... :(

Maybe the reason why I'm behind a router and disabled ICMP (ping) Request and that I kept Windows up-to-date...

Windows reactivation I hate it this year alone i have had to call someone in another country that I can BARELY understand to reactivate windows well over 12 times I am constantly checking friends ram, hard drives, video cards ect.. this FEATURE has to go

I have to agree that the automatic restart after updates is the worst thing I have ever seen. Drove me nuts when it happened.

The UAC in Vista is horrid as well. It's a great idea, but it is totally implemented wrong. It makes sense to as for permission if it is going to preform admin tasks, but it should at least ask for a password. Just poping up and asking for permission makes me want it to go away really fast. So I click allow really fast without paying much attention to what it says...

The Windows 98 installation was a nuisance itself! In Win98SE, the first installation process always came up with errors and to make the OS work properly you always had to re-install... I had to resort to Win98SE for about a week when my WinXP machine crashed and was waiting for an XP disk. That week went by soooo slow!

vista! Vista!! VISTA!!! Never again will I use a Microsoft operating system! Yes, I'm hyperventilating!!! I bought a PC with this OS installed and it nearly drove me mad!! I took it back and now I'm using my old PC with XP. Next machine I get will be immediately wiped and loaded with Linux!

The UAC - I'm a power user and in the first 30 seconds with Vista on my PC the UAC just simply drove me nuts!!! Good thing that it can be disabled or I would have switched back to little-less-than-Vista annoying WinXP... HHHAAATTTEEE!!!!!

I also just purchased a new machine with vista. The more I use it the more I find Ito diisike about. Too many steps becomes click click click. They have seemed to delight in hiding every control we use., I have bought every system M$ had including DOS (I started with a TRS 80 in 1980 b4 IBM), but this will become my llast. Having used SCO Unix along side M$ stuff, I will finally make the change to Linux or Unix. Severall of my friends who have wasted their money to purchase Vista have gone back to XP Pro.

Not only is User Account Control annoying, but when you actually disable it, a pop up periodically appears that says "UAC is turned off", or, if you happen to have more 'security vulnerabilities', "there are multiple security problems with this computer. " Not only is it annoying when it's on, but it even annoys you in death!! > <

Clippy was the absolute worst.

The Windows standard "start up" and "shut down" sounds are horrible.

There are several features that annoy me, like WGA, EULA, DRM, lethal Critical Updates, the list is endless. But the biggest Windows annoyance is that so many people believe the Microsoft hype. No reasonable person would take a race car out on the track without knowing how to drive. Yet the same person will buy a $2,500 laptop and try to use it, knowing absolutely nothing about the operating system, because the MS hype told them it was "intuitive." And God forbid any of them would even THINK of buying a Windows MANUAL! None of the people who bought computers with Vista did so at gunpoint. You CHOSE to get Vista. You can order any major brand computer with XP Pro, so you either believed the MS hype, or counldn't wait and bought one off-the-shelf with Vista preloaded.
And to Singe, I AM saying you should have saved your work. Get a clue. Word has a feature called Auto-Save. Use it.
And, yes, I do laptop remote tech support.

Thanks gosseyin about the comment on backing up- but MS Word is not the program that scientists use to analyze datasets (neither is Excel).

p.s Here's my full list of Windows annoyances

1- auto reboot after updates (see earlier posting)
2- the almost-unusable search function in Windows XP (that takes so long to find a file that they've provided an animated dog, who also gets bored of waiting and scratches the ground).
3- bugs, bugs, bugs- e.g. changing the time of auto-updates is not saved, the Windows Guinine Advantage Notification has installed itself on my computer no less than 10 times, etc.
4- Slow benchmarks on Windows Vista (we're supposed to pay $$ for an os that is unintuitive (see above), intrusive and runs programs slower than Windows XP??
5- Laptop-battery-sucking Vista Aero graphics.
6- Bloat- MS WIndows has more bits than the human genome. Largely, I think to run software for earlier Windows versions. Can we please have an option for a streamlined, legacy-free MS?

Gosseyn: I don't consider my laptop a race car - I just want it to be my VW Jetta. When I buy a car I don't expect to have to learn how to take the transmission apart and I don't expect to have to relearn to do the tasks I was using earlier versions of MS for either.
I just spent (wasted) a whole lot of time trying to get a windows vista laptop running and compatable with my sister's hardware with no luck. As it stands now her wireless printer conection is defunct because her printer is not supported by Vista and we had to replace her wireless router.
By the way we could not find ANY mid priced laptops in the San Mateo area that did not come with Vista installed as the OS.