Microsoft: Almost all Windows 11 core features are broken

[2muchcoffeeman]

Yep. I said that.

I'm not the only one.

It has been a troublesome week or two for Microsoft, for sure. Earlier today, the company fixed a Microsoft 365 outage that made files unusable; downtimes like this seem to happen on a fairly regular basis.

Meanwhile on the Windows side, it has probably been worse. The tech giant got blamed by Nvidia today as the latest Patch Tuesday is leading to performance issues in games. The GPU maker has released an emergency hotfix driver to resolve the problems.

This comes hot on the heels of the massive backlash that the company's Windows boss recently faced due to the evolution of the operating system into an agentic OS as unveiled earlier this week.

On the positive side though, following all that backlash, Microsoft acknowledged Windows has issues, and as if on cue, the company in a new support article has admitted that there are problems on almost every major Windows 11 core feature. The issues are related to XAML and this impacts all the Shell components like the Start Menu, Taskbar, Explorer, and Windows Settings.

Interestingly, while Microsoft is only acknowledging the issue in November 2025, this has been a problem since the July 2025 Patch Tuesday update (KB5062553), so that is four months. Also since Windows 11 25H2 shares the same codebase as version 24H2, the newest Windows 11 feature update is also impacted.​

It gets worse from there, as shown in the article below.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microso...ll-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken/

Further discussion on Slashdot: Microsoft Finally Admits Almost All Major Windows 11 Core Features Are Broken - Slashdot

 

[dixiehack]

1970s Chrysler thinks Microsoft has quality control problems.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Oh, and one of the new features is AI trash:

Microsoft’s warning on Tuesday that an experimental AI agent integrated into Windows can infect devices and pilfer sensitive user data has set off a familiar response from security-minded critics: Why is Big Tech so intent on pushing new features before their dangerous behaviors can be fully understood and contained?

As reported Tuesday, Microsoft introduced Copilot Actions, a new set of “experimental agentic features” that, when enabled, perform “everyday tasks like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails,” and provide “an active digital collaborator that can carry out complex tasks for you to enhance efficiency and productivity.”

The fanfare, however, came with a significant caveat. Microsoft recommended users enable Copilot Actions only “if you understand the security implications outlined.”

The admonition is based on known defects inherent in most large language models, including Copilot, as researchers have repeatedly demonstrated.

One common defect of LLMs causes them to provide factually erroneous and illogical answers, sometimes even to the most basic questions. This propensity for hallucinations, as the behavior has come to be called, means users can’t trust the output of Copilot, Gemini, Claude, or any other AI assistant and instead must independently confirm it.

Another common LLM landmine is the prompt injection, a class of bug that allows hackers to plant malicious instructions in websites, resumes, and emails. LLMs are programmed to follow directions so eagerly that they are unable to discern those in valid user prompts from those contained in untrusted, third-party content created by attackers. As a result, the LLMs give the attackers the same deference as users.

Both flaws can be exploited in attacks that exfiltrate sensitive data, run malicious code, and steal cryptocurrency. So far, these vulnerabilities have proved impossible for developers to prevent and, in many cases, can only be fixed using bug-specific workarounds developed once a vulnerability has been discovered.

That, in turn, led to this whopper of a disclosure in Microsoft’s post from Tuesday:

“As these capabilities are introduced, AI models still face functional limitations in terms of how they behave and occasionally may hallucinate and produce unexpected outputs,” Microsoft said. “Additionally, agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation.”​

Critics scoff after Microsoft warns AI feature can infect machines and pilfer data

 

[maumann2]

That answers some questions but raises others.

I've been watching my Levono Ideapad 1 glitch and reboot for about the last two or three months, thinking it was the hardware that was the problem. It seemed to resolve itself with the last Windows upgrade. But now it's doing it again despite the Lenovo Vantage tool showing no issues with processor, motherboard or memory.

I keep getting kicked off the router at random intervals, or the computer doesn't recognize the router on bootup. I've got fiber optic directly to the cabin so it "should" be a constant connection without drop outs. Right this moment, Speed Test is excellent. And I'm not seeing anything funky in the Network & Internet settings.

But there's just something that causes the laptop to lose the connection every 30-45 minutes. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's not a W11 issue. It's frustrating having it drop a streaming app. I've been trying to check if Task Manager is allocating a huge amount of memory to some other system or program but nothing points directly to a culprit.

Or maybe the computer is just getting ready to croak.

 

[Gym Beam]

An effective federal bureau of consumer protection would mandate all AI features be opt-in, not opt-out. I don't want anything to do with that crap and will avoid using Windows machines as much as possible in the future. The newer versions of Office are garbage, too.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

I'm not going to say "Dump Windows and install Debian instead," but I'm thinking it awfully loudly.