Microsoft suspects some PCs might not boot after Windows 11 January 2026 Update

85 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by nsoonhui
(windowslatest.com)

66 Comments

jampa

9 hours ago

I am glad that I don't need to use Windows anymore. When I did, the LTSC version (the one made for ATM and Kiosks) was the only one that was productivity-friendly.

Microsoft doesn't want to accept that no one cares about Windows, and the OS is the thing that gets you to the thing you want to do.

I saw 2 instances of people getting "updating windows" in their personal laptops when they tried to present something and lost everyone's time. I imagine this happens a lot of times every day. And now they are just breaking everyone's system by forcing updates as well.

kyriakos

9 hours ago

If nobody cared about windows there wouldn't be any posts like this one everyday on HN. The problem is people do care and need to use windows which makes all these stupidity by Microsoft the recent years frustrating.

jmward01

8 hours ago

I am personally just a lurker. Windows used to be my only OS for a -very- long time (DOS 2.x, yes 2, was my first MS OS). Now I click on these just to see how far it has fallen. It is like that friend you drifted away from and now you look at their FB posts now and again to watch as they get crazier and crazier.

einr

3 hours ago

It's more like "nobody cares about Windows" as in: no one is impressed that you added Copilot into Notepad, no one wants you to move the cheese, they just want to get on with their actual work without being interrupted by "good things coming your way" which is inevitably just more annoyance, more bugs, more Copilot buttons.

Most people would probably have preferred if Windows had zero feature updates* since Windows 7, just security patches.

* Well, OK, fine. Task Manager is better now, I'll grant them that one.

expedition32

41 minutes ago

I am not going to defend MS but I have to say that the frustration is less than it was in the 90s.

Reinstalling Windows used to take an entire afternoon. Now I can do it in an hour.

Basically Windows and computers in general have always been frustrating.

dessimus

28 minutes ago

I'm not certain what point you are attempting to make, The size of Windows install has not smaller and therefore improving install time, but rather the hardware has gotten so much faster. Installing from a USB 3 key is so much faster than floppy or optical media, as well as NVMe drives are receiving the data vs old spinning rust drives.

charlieyu1

6 hours ago

We need something that just works. I guess Microsoft made me care because their products are unpredictable.

MegaDeKay

9 hours ago

LTSC is what mainstream Windows should be. It doesn't load up a bunch of apps you don't ask for or throw ads in your face all the time. Solid, dependable, reliable, and stable.

Moldoteck

5 hours ago

Msoft understands the position very well, that's precisely why updates are so bad. Windows is just an entrypoint. The actual critical parts are office suite, teams, visual studio & stuff - they are the cash cows and can't be easily replaced, hence windows will be picked even if it's hated

breakingcups

2 hours ago

Windows IoT (Formerly Windows Embedded) is the version made for ATMs and Kiosks.

Windows LTSC is meant for organisations favoring stability over new features.

Funnily enough, Windows IoT also has an LTSC version.

pinkmuffinere

7 hours ago

> “ Microsoft has received a limited number…”

I always find this wording funny; the “limited” conveys no information but downplays the issue in a non-specific way. I wish we could have standardized writing guidelines for press reports, to call out such weasel words

__del__

4 hours ago

we'll be working on that very strongly in the next period of time

voxadam

9 hours ago

I suppose that's one way to make Windows secure, keep it from running entirely.

nsoonhui

8 hours ago

Last Thursday windows 11 forced this update on my Acer machine. It caused me BSOD: inaccessible boot device, so I had to reformat my machine to get Windows running again.

So I am now very wary of this Out of Band Update[0], especially when it's not mentioned whether the latest update solve my issue or not. I don't know the same problem is still there, or whether this update makes the problem any better or worse.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358

heroprotagonist

3 hours ago

Ugh. I wondered what that was. I had to reformat due to inaccessible boot device as well, I thought the SSD had gone bad.

But I left it after the install, annoyed into abandoning the laptop to the shelf at the no-network first-login workaround to avoid a Microsoft account. I hate all the fresh laptop setup that's required afterwards to make Windows tolerable.

prmoustache

6 hours ago

> so I had to reformat my machine to get Windows running again.

I can hear everyone in choir saying "but why would you do that?"

If Microsoft would ever do that to me in an update, I would install an immutable Linux distro on my machine and run windows as a VM (only if I had a strong requirement for it). That way you can do snapshots you can restore from easily.

nsoonhui

3 hours ago

>> "but why would you do that?"

My bread and butter is Windows WPF cum AutoCAD-like application. My users are all on Windows. So I have to develop on Windows.

bdcravens

9 hours ago

I switched to Macs almost completely for personal and devlopment use about 13 or 14 years ago. However, last year I started a 3d printing side hustle, and got an HP laptop for running the print studio since the amount of hardware I could get for less than $1000 was hard to ignore. However, things like this, and other weird issues (my fonts have gone all wonky a couple of times after random updates) make me want to switch it over to a Linux distro (even though the software support for what I need is much better in the Windows world, and in some cases, better than even on the Mac)

ForestCritter

6 hours ago

I have embroidery software and cs3 suite that won't run on linux so I'm planning an offline windows 8.1 just for them on an old computer.

edg5000

8 hours ago

> the software support for what I need is much better in the Windows world

Please elaborate; can you name a few tools and what you use them for? Just curious.

bdcravens

7 hours ago

A number of the Autodesk tools and Solidworks, for modeling. Slicers can use APIs native to Windows to perform model repairs. Bambu Lab's farm manager only runs on Windows.

edg5000

5 hours ago

Not sure about Autodesk, but have you tried FreeCAD? I own a perpetual SolidWorks license but haven't even activated it. Used it quite lot on another license but I just prefer FreeCAD so much. It does choke on high primitive counts though. Probably has worse FEA (invokes external simulation tools) but that is an assumption, never did FEA. Mostly did parametric CAD, not much technical drawings either, can't say much about that.

For slicers I use PrusaSlicer on Linux (don't have a Prusa; it's really good for generic slicing). But I can see how Bambu stuff could be an issue if it's Win only and not Wineable.

giancarlostoro

7 hours ago

The Creality one runs decent on Mac and Windows, sadly on Linux its a nightmare, and technically why I ditched Ubuntu / popOS for Arch Linux, but I can't help but still feel it runs a little weirder + its out of date compared to Mac and Windows versions. My buddy used to use Orca slicer on my printer, that one iirc should run on Mac too, but I havent tried it.

hagbard_c

3 hours ago

SuperSlicer, PrusaSlicer and Creality Print work fine for me using Debian. Orca Slicer runs but reliably crashes when opening the preferences window, something which it has been doing for a long time according to the bug report. Cura also works fine om Debian for me. Which problems did you have running any of these?

wileydragonfly

8 hours ago

So sayeth the sea lion

kstrauser

8 hours ago

Not the person you replied to, but I’ll go. Try experimenting with ham radio on anything but Windows. As far as I can tell, they revoke your Apple developer’s license and confiscate your Linux install disks when you start selling radio hardware.

That’s not completely true. There’s good Linux and Mac software for lots of things. But approximately 100% of radio manufacturers ship Windows software. Far fewer support anything else.

I bought a new radio at Christmas. Before buying it, I ruled out alternatives that didn’t have 1st party or good 3rd party support. It’s like trying to buy a scanner in 2003.

ForestCritter

6 hours ago

Fixed my son's computer by shredding all evidence of Microsoft off his computer and installing Linux Devuan OS. Fortunatly his files were all stored on his separate ssd dut to a previous issue.

captain_coffee

3 hours ago

"suspects".... they are not 100% sure guys, there is only a vague suspicion that "some" users "might"

Can't believe how low Microsoft have sunk and how fast in the last few years

calrain

6 hours ago

Just today I dumped Windows 11 and moved to Linux, lots to learn but wow, so nice not to be inside their walls.

guessmyname

6 hours ago

> Just today I dumped Windows 11 and moved to Linux, lots to learn but wow, so nice not to be inside their walls.

Well, best of luck. I don’t regret switching from Windows to Linux decades ago, I learned a lot, but I can’t say the problems ever stopped. If anything, I ran into more issues than I did on Windows, many of them caused by things I did at the command line, and others due to quirks or bugs in open‑source software. Still, it was a long learning journey that ended up helping my career. I’m not sure you’ll have the same steep learning curve we did back then, but I hope the switch pays off for you.

8fingerlouie

3 hours ago

I've used Linux (and FreeBSD) for decades. My first linux distribution was Yggdrasil Plug & Play Linux Fall 1994 (https://github.com/jtsagata/Yggdrasil-1994). Windows stuck around for gaming.

My experience may have been different as Linux was less mature back then, but ultimately i had a lot of "issues" that required Linux knowledge to fix, so while it was "fine" for me, i wouldn't push it to my family for day to day usage.

Since then i've moved pretty much everyone to Mac. My parents, my in-laws, wife, kids, all use Macs, and the number of "support" calls have fallen from weekly to "once or twice per year", and that's compared to when they ran Windows.

Linux on the desktop is certainly better than it was a decade ago (i still lurk and install new releases from time to time), but it's still a far cry from being optimized for the average user that just needs things to work. Not saying it won't ever get there, but it will take some effort to make it frictionless.

pjmlp

an hour ago

Yeah, just last year I had several issues with a Gigabyte board that refused to boot Linux regardless of the UEFI incantation, paritions being used, or distribution, yet it had no problems booting the very same M.2 SSD if plugged via an external case.

Eventually it gets tiring, I still remember Yggdrasil, my first distro was Slackware 2.0, bundled on Linux Unleashed first edition in 1995.

pizlonator

8 hours ago

I had to renuke one of my gaming PCs this month so yeah

Except I think the problem happened just before Jan 13

But symptoms were almost exactly what TFA says

RobinHirst11

2 hours ago

man, its safer NOT to update than it is TO update... microslop fell hard

ronsor

10 hours ago

I've got to stop doing Windows Updates

imtringued

2 hours ago

Back when I used Windows, there were plenty of boot looping updates in Windows Vista, 7 and 10. You had three options. Either you disable Windows Updates, reinstall Windows or find a way to delete or prevent the specific patch that breaks your Windows installation.

On Windows 10 I was forced to disable Windows Updates altogether, because the updates never finished even after running overnight. I have stopped using Windows since 2018.

blibble

9 hours ago

just delete the service entirely, same with defender

it's great

my only remaining windows PC is for games, and it's on its own vlan with its own external IP

if it gets hacked: I simply don't care

brian-armstrong

8 hours ago

You don't really need Windows for gaming anymore unless you're playing the games that absolutely insist on kernel-level anti-cheat. Proton is extremely good on Linux these days.

girvo

7 hours ago

> unless you're playing the games that absolutely insist on kernel-level anti-cheat

Sadly, I do :( Valorant is the main one that keeps my Windows partition around, for better or worse. Also sadly still there's some performance overhead for Linux gaming today, I hope that goes away in the future (for Intel/Nvidia cards especially)

blibble

8 hours ago

I have a 2nd nvme in that machine for bazzite

not quite there for me yet I'm afraid!

jayGlow

8 hours ago

sometimes games just won't work on Linux, doom the dark ages refuses to work on Linux for me.

pilif

9 hours ago

You should care because once your PC is part of a bot network, it’s part of the problem

blibble

8 hours ago

it's running Microslop Windows, so it's born compromised

it's an OS with constant built-in ads and spyware

it would have been considered malware in the 2000s

wileydragonfly

8 hours ago

Herr derr derr!

KMFMS

shawn_w

5 hours ago

I had a KMFMS shirt back in the 90's. Lost it in one move or another, alas.

CamperBob2

8 hours ago

Not being an incompetent or inexperienced Windows user, I'm vanishingly unlikely to be infected by a bot network trojan... and if that does happen, rest assured, I'll notice it.

Windows Update, on the other hand, is part of my threat model.

koakuma-chan

7 hours ago

You can't do that. Eventually, something will stop working because it requires a certain Windows update.

nehal3m

7 hours ago

Then reinstall with a later ISO and cripple it again. On the whole that's probably more reliable.

stuaxo

5 hours ago

I suspect a company needs to pay some damages.

Now, where's the Louis Rossman video on this?

jackblemming

7 hours ago

How is this not considered destruction of property? How about big tech plays by the same rules as everyone else?

michaelmrose

5 hours ago

Because destruction of property is when you destroy property and windows can be reinstalled and even preserve the prior installations files.

kshri24

4 hours ago

Microsoft needs to go back to basics and keep the OS dead simple. No AI cruft. AI is good only for certain categories and specific ways of integration. It falls apart quickly if you do not know how to glue things together properly and just use it in anything and everything (for example: adding AI to Notepad was the stupidest thing Microsoft could do).

leptons

8 hours ago

Simple fix, move to Linux. (unless you're forced to use it like I am at work, for security theater reasons)

dboreham

7 hours ago

This is Tay Bridge syndrome: all the people who know how to ship an OS properly have retired.

quietbritishjim

6 hours ago

What is "Tay Bridge syndrome"? There are no Google hits. If you're going to use an obscure term (or make one up) then please define it.

Is it a reference to the Tay Bridge disaster? Looking at the Wikipedia article [1], it didn't seem to have anything to do with losing organisational knowledge due to retirement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster

eviks

5 hours ago

How does this explain all the fails when shipping the OS when those people were working?

l000tr

6 hours ago

they hire low quality engineers from 3rd world countries for years to save money, at some point even hr department was from these countries and prefer only people from same country / nation, what quality you can expect from such products

lofaszvanitt

8 hours ago

And noone asks why Windows looks, feels and operates the way it is. Isn't it strange that a megacorp creates these watermelon headed monstrosities and it gets worse after each iteration?

commandersaki

7 hours ago

Hasn't the answer always been legacy support.

charlieyu1

6 hours ago

Do they really have legacy support anymore? They just randomly break things with updates

samrus

7 hours ago

I think the general incompetence in the decision making behind windows is also a driver

JaggerFoo

7 hours ago

You mean the one I just downloaded and updated my laptop with? It installed OK.

I usually use MacOS and Linux, it's just that some software is Windows only, and I run MacOS on Apple Silicon - the windows program I needed only uses x86-64 architecture, so I can't use parallels (AFAIK).

I'm kind of hoping I get an update that bricks my laptop so I can install Debian over this MS Windows hellscape and run windows on a VM when needed. I may do it anyways after I get fed up with nagging MS messages and workarounds.