I Just Gave Up With Norton

Scannerman said:

*one more thing* When you poke fun at the old Harlot don't be surprised if people take personal offence. I've learned they often make the grievous error of identifying with her. She is their Santa Maria. They will think you're making fun of them. There will be times when you'll be required to elucidate. As for myself, meh... She sure does know how to dance! For a good time, call Windows.

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Because fanbois.

I use Microsoft stuff, and in general, I'm rather happy with them. Are they perfect? Nope.

I use Google's ecosystem much, much more, though, and I'm also rather happy with them. Are they perfect? Nope.

But there are always going to be folks that come in and tell you why OneDrive is so good. Same as why iPhones are so good. Or why AWS is so good. Or why Dodge is so good.

I get why people do the things they do - because they want to. But I don't get why people seem to think they have to tell every single person every single time that they use this, or that, when such posts are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

I chalk this up to fanboism. People who have an innate need to defend their choices in every corner of the world against imagined attacks on their character. And to me that smacks of self-righteousness.

Anyhoo, enough of my soapbox rant. I'm sorry to have initially stirred up this particular hornet's nest by making a joke towards Ants' comment about us not using OneDrive.

antspants said:

I don’t know why, I’m not sure what’s hard to understand about not wanting your stuff hijacked to the cloud by default.

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In my eyes, nothing.

In other people's eyes, though, it seems tantamount to a Cardinal Sin, doesn't it?

Again, sorry for opening this with my little joke. That was not my intent at all - I was making a joke at your use of we, knowing full well you were not necessarily including me in we, so it was a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor that (again) blew up.

johnlgalt said:

But there are always going to be folks that come in and tell you why OneDrive is so good. Same as why iPhones are so good. Or why AWS is so good. Or why Dodge is so good.

I get why people do the things they do - because they want to. But I don't get why people seem to think they have to tell every single person every single time that they use this, or that, when such posts are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

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I wholly agree, I've always wondered about the motives behind such actions; I try various software items recommended on here and if I like them I keep them and if I don't then it's simple, I use something else.

Been using Onedrive, before it was even named Onedrive, its a life saver to me, even used on my Android Phone if i wanna save something to use later on Desktop, i just upload it to Onedrive

As well as part of my backup strategy for The Desktop, Laptop

Documents, Photos, and Videos are stored on Onedrive these days, plus have previous Groove Music Purchased Music stored on Onedrive from many years ago when i had a Windows Phone, i bought a ton of music when it was in Microsoft Store, plus the 30 Free Albums gave back then.

I use Edge for my Daily browsing on Desktop, Gaming Laptop and Android Phone

johnlgalt said:

Yeah. mine was well into the 90s, we didn't have the Gateway until at least '92. And, the more I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a NAV Beta, and I used it simply because of how well NU performed and helped me both learn about my system as well as helped keep things running smoothly. It was a name (Peter Norton) that I trusted then.
We have anti-trust laws?

Seriously, though - issues with Edge and OneDrive are easily avoided - don't use them. if you use them, kinda hard to justify being able to uninstall them.

I keep Edge handy because it is good to use for access Microsoft account stuff. I keep Chrome around for the same reason dealing with my Google accounts. But I browse with Firefox and Firefox Nightly.

The ones they didn't buy out had an interesting ride, though.

Verizon Communications came from one of those 'baby bells', Bell Atlantic, and NYNex, and the baby bell of my area, Bellsouth, was bought up by the new AT&T that SBC transformed into.

US West bought QWEST, then that company bought CenturyLink, and is now Lumen. So, 3 of the original 7 baby bells never had to deal with SBC and are, to this day, still independent (technically, because Verizon came from a merger of 2 of those 3 lol).

But there also needs to be not just deep pockets for it but extensive research for the CAs, otherwise they get thrown out too easily as well.

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I actually liked Norton Utilities because I guess of Disk Doctor, Calibrate (non-destructive low level format for HDDs) and later the Registry Cleaner, the later never caused any issues for me. The one that others used which I did too was jv16 RegCleaner which was the one that worked well and I guess should something go wrong, you can always undo the changes later. I still have Norton Utilities 16 I believe Registry Cleaner running on my Windows XP machine currently about the last 20 years and it never gave any problems either, that machine is up 24/7/365 and the only reason I still have a Windows XP machine is for WinFax Pro as there are still places that are fax only without any other form of electronic communications and the other choice is using snail mail.

Verizon Communications was basically Bell Atlantic which already included NYNex + GTE merged into one. GTE at one point owned SPRINT (Southern Pacific Intelligent Network) as GTE Sprint and then merged to become US Sprint before selling it off to United Telcom and then known as Sprint.

SBC basically took over Pacific Telesis which included Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell, BellSouth, Illinois Bell and probably others before buying AT&T Inc. and then renaming themselves as AT&T.

US West did buy Qwest and kept the Qwest name. CenturyLink bought Qwest after buying Embarq when it was originally known as CenturyTel, Inc. before adopting a new name as CenturyLink. They later bought Savvis, Inc. which I was originally a shareholder of and how I became a CenturyLink shareholder. CenturyLink buys Level 3 Communications. In 2020, they changed their name from CenturyLink to Lumen Technologies since I was wondering where my shares came from. LOL.

I guess for class actions, these are probably lawyers who wouldn't have business otherwise and this does get them bigtime money. LOL.

Here's some trivia. When OneDrive was first implemented in 2007, it was called SkyDrive. Sky Communications in the UK took offense and Microsoft renamed SkyDrive to OneDrive.

TraderGary said:

Here's some trivia. When OneDrive was first implemented in 2007, it was called SkyDrive. Sky Communications in the UK took offense and Microsoft renamed SkyDrive to OneDrive.

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I am surprised that Sky Communications didn't sue Microsoft and prior to the Antitrust, Microsoft would have just bought out the company.

TraderGary said:

Here's some trivia. When OneDrive was first implemented in 2007, it was called SkyDrive. Sky Communications in the UK took offense and Microsoft renamed SkyDrive to OneDrive.

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Yeah, I remember the controversy over that. Brink even posted an article on it back in the Vista forums.

Dru2 said:

Yeah, I remember the controversy over that. Brink even posted an article on it back in the Vista forums.

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It's also interesting that when you look at the OneDrive source code, "SkyDrive" is still used throughout and was never changed to this day.

johnlgalt said:

Again, sorry for opening this with my little joke. That was not my intent at all - I was making a joke at your use of we, knowing full well you were not necessarily including me in we, so it was a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor that (again) blew up.

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No damage done at all mate
But… when someone is speaking “for or against” something, when they use the term “we” the would be referring to those that also agree with their thoughts, not the general population.

antspants said:

It gets to the point I can’t uninstall it, I’ll quit redirecting my user folders to another drive as I currently do, leave them empty on C and use the registry to change whatever needs to be changed for software save defaults to anything other than user folders.. Photos/documents folders will be forever empty. My settings, I am happy to have saved online. Yes.. I don’t care that people use it. Each to their own, if it works for them I say, awesome.

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antspants said:

I don’t know why, I’m not sure what’s hard to understand about not wanting your stuff hijacked to the cloud by default.

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If you have the time, please share with me the method you use to have such data as documents, pictures, etc. permanently redirected to another drive. For me, I find this a temporary measure with Windows defaulting back to the original C drive (which it consistently flips to One Drive) so I must be doing something wrong. I think there is something very unethical about having my stuff hijacked to the cloud by default and I'm tired of changing these settings. Furthermore, having my stuff indiscriminately hijacked so that my limited online storage (that I did indeed pay for) fills up faster is even nastier. Windows is being evil. That's the short of it.

Personally, I regard this tactic unconscionable and highly unethical. The only way I can reconcile it in my own mind and still keep using Windows is to remind myself that somewhere in that EULA I agreed that Windows reserves the right to be underhanded, less than forthright, and can do with my hardware whatever they wish to further the cause of the corporation. When I keep this in mind I can keep my head. I agreed to this. The EULA says I did. All hail Windows.

No, I'm not the only one with this complaint. I've read them here. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a fix for this. Temporary measures are not fixes. The best permanent fix is to stop using Windows. I just keep on reminding myself that I have chosen to roll with the punches. It comes with the territory. But, hey, I'm open to suggestions.

Fortunately, in the face of today's North American legislation, I also reserve the right to follow my own "unwritten" policies and to verbalize them. I also reserve the right to use other operating systems on my PC, which, for some mysterious reason, keep being invalidated regardless of how they are being employed. Just how that boot strap vanishes, even when it is not associated with a drive using Windows, has me scratching my head. So the war is endless. Who needs online gaming when Windows provides the biggest mind game going?

Almighty1 said:

I guess for class actions, these are probably lawyers who wouldn't have business otherwise and this does get them bigtime money. LOL.

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It is often the money that comes from new jobs after the fact of winning a class action. Sure, they get paid, but moving forward — reputation in the world of law is priceless.

TraderGary said:

It's also interesting that when you look at the OneDrive source code, "SkyDrive" is still used throughout and was never changed to this day.

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That’s very interesting. Surprising.

@Scannerman I've never needed to, but can't you go to Installed Apps and just uninstall OneDrive?

Scannerman said:

If you have the time, please share with me the method you use to have such data as documents, pictures, etc. permanently redirected to another drive.

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To honest mate, it would be something I would ask the community here if it comes to the point that OneDrive cannot be reeled in or removed. As it is, I haven’t had to do so.The comment is also a projection; Microsoft Word, Excel etc can be set to save somewhere by default. But there would be programs that you can’t, maybe?
The only thing I have ever redirected in a registry has been Plex and GTA V

Scannerman said:

For me, I find this a temporary measure with Windows defaulting back to the original C drive (which it consistently flips to One Drive) so I must be doing something wrong. I think there is something very unethical about having my stuff hijacked to the cloud by default and I'm tired of changing these settings. Furthermore, having my stuff indiscriminately hijacked so that my limited online storage (that I did indeed pay for) fills up faster is even nastier. Windows is being evil. That's the short of it.

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I haven’t yet done a fresh indipendent install of Windows 11, I’m still running off an upgrade. But I can only assume Brinks methods of disabling OneDrive still work? In which case, the very first thing I do on an install is unplug the network at first boot and deal with it, which is what I have always done with Windows Ten.

antspants said:

To honest mate, it would be something ai would ask the community here if it comes to the point that OneDrive cannot be reeled in or removed. As it is, I haven’t had to do so.The comment is also a projection; Microsoft Word, Excel etc can be set to save somewhere by default. But there would be programs that you can’t, maybe?
The only thing I have ever redirected in a registry has been Plex and GTA V

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That's yet another thing. I got my extra TB of storage with my family plan including MS WORD so it's very likely that somewhere in that plethora of settings I keep getting put back to the default with Windows Cloud Storage. What a rabbit hole indeed! Probably best to leave it be. At least I can still visit Windows forums and vent a little. It helps make things somewhat more tolerable.

Scannerman said:

At least I can still visit Windows forums and vent a little. It helps make things somewhat more tolerable.

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And there’s nothing wrong with that

antspants said:

I haven’t yet done a fresh indipendent install of Windows 11, I’m still running off an upgrade. But I can only assume Brinks methods of disabling OneDrive still work? In which case, the very first thing I do on an install is unplug the network at first boot and deal with it, which is what I have always done with Windows Ten.

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I have used Brink's method and I find it to be the best so far. OneDrive - Personal has made its way back into my sys tray and I'm fine with that as long as it behaves. I haven't recently checked how much storage I have left but I'm no longer getting warnings. It says my files are synched which I find surprising since I thought I shut that down. I just don't want to jump through all those hoops all over again for the whole thing to go and default on me again after the next substantial update. No wonder some people just turn off the updates!

Scannerman said:

I have used Brink's method and I find it to be the best so far. OneDrive - Personal has made its way back into my sys tray and I'm fine with that as long as it behaves. I haven't recently checked how much storage I have left but I'm no longer getting warnings. It says my files are synched which I find surprising since I thought I shut that down. I just don't want to jump through all those hoops all over again for the whole thing to go and default on me again after the next substantial update. No wonder some people just turn off the updates!

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Revo?

@Scannerman For years OneDrive was an option to use if you wanted to. I agree that Microsoft's deciding to implement OneDrive as the default and then redirect your Documents and Pictures folders to the OneDrive folder is wrong and, in my opinion, is a very poor decision. However, it's my understanding that if you don't want OneDrive, you simply go to Installed Apps and uninstall Microsoft OneDrive.

TraderGary said:

@Scannerman For years OneDrive was an option to use if you wanted to. I agree that Microsoft's deciding to implement OneDrive as the default and then redirect your Documents and Pictures folders to the OneDrive folder is wrong and, in my opinion, is a very poor decision. However, it's my understanding that if you don't want OneDrive, you simply go to Installed Apps and uninstall Microsoft OneDrive.

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Yes, well, that was my understanding as well. Admittedly, I've had a good work out with Win 11 and in the process I may have inadvertently re-activated OneDrive via Office 360 as I do have documents there and manuscripts for books I'm writing. I'm currently typing this on Windows 10 and I feel obligated to say that I still prefer Windows 10 to Windows 11. To be completely fair, I'm not really a big Windows 10 fan either. I still refuse to use Windows 10 on my work station, have never used it on my work station, and likely never will.

I never thought I'd being saying this, but I miss Windows 8.1 and I still have it on some PCs. Over time it has proven itself fairly reliable apart from that one instance with Windows Recovery which resulted in my biggest catastrophic system failure ever. When Windows says that it is going to overwrite drives C & D I expect it to do just that and not overwrite all the drives it is capable of accessing instead of doing what it stated it would do. Anyway, lesson learned. I still have my original Windows 7 Ultimate and despite all that people might say about it this has still proven to be the most stable and reliable of all.

I still like the idea of Windows going modular. If they could make a basic fundamental framework, very robust, very stable, and very affordable, I think they would be onto something. In this respect I think they were onto something with Win 8.1 and the tiles. I realize people don't like paying extra for each and every app they want to add to their OS but hey, we all need to make a living. There are some serious hard core benefits to the concept of employing a modular OS, not only for Windows, but also the user, in the way of protection, development, security, and flexibility. Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'm not trying to turn Windows into Linux. In fact I think both camps stand to learn a lot from one another.