Rich Warren | Hype surrounding Windows 11 upgrade much ado about nothing

[aum]

My Chicago friend Mary is frantic about installing her new Windows. They told her she must move all her furniture to the center of the room.

 

That seemed a bit extreme until I realized these were real windows going into her 90-year-old home. Upgrading your real windows causes far more disruption than installing the Microsoft variety. I didn’t have to dust or move furniture after deploying Windows 11.

 

My apologies to all readers with a Macintosh. This will be the final column on Windows 11.

 

Updating my main PC inspired this ultimate missive. Unlike my other computers, the one on which I am writing this contains dozens of programs and thousands of files. This is the “mission critical” machine.

 

My first attempt at upgrading ground to a halt because there wasn’t quite enough room on the C-drive (the system drive). I deleted scores of unnecessary files. Then I downloaded the free version of Partition Magic to slightly enlarge the size of the system partition. This took about 5 minutes plus a 5-minute reboot while the partitioning software performed its magic. The actual Windows install took about an hour.

 

When the figurative dust settled, it left me staring at the exact same desktop with all the same icons as in Windows 10. All my files remained uncorrupted and ready to access. Every single program worked as it did before the upgrade. Some of my software dates back to 2000, and it all ran flawlessly. Even the picture of my dog that I use for my desktop background remained.

 

The only changes from Windows 10 to Windows 11 involved the start menu, the set-up menus and the position of the task bar. I realigned the taskbar to the left with three mouse clicks.

 

If you value your privacy and/or don’t wish to use Microsoft’s OneDrive, you probably should go through all of the settings. It’s fairly obvious which ones to disable. However, every privacy setting from Windows 10 carried over to Windows 11. There simply are more settings with Windows 11 than with Windows 10.

 

The best discovery involved log-on. You can log-on as a standard local user or a local administrator without a Microsoft account. All the computer pundits struck fear into our hearts about the necessity of logging on with a Microsoft account. Poppycock! Only if you install a non-upgrade virgin Windows 11 will Microsoft put you through that wringer. I have a Microsoft account but can’t remember my username or password. I set my PC to boot up in a certain way, and it still follows that routine, without phoning Redmond, Wash.

 

If Windows 10 tells you your hardware is not eligible for the free upgrade, that may be questionable. You can find dozens of websites explaining how to upgrade to Windows 11 without Microsoft’s blessing. Here is one: zdnet.com/article/how-to-upgrade-your-incompatible-windows-10-pc-to-windows-11-for-free/.

 

What some of these sites recommend may be beyond your scope of computing. In which case, you must weigh the cost of a new PC versus spending $100 with a computer specialist to perform the upgrade.

 

I strongly suggest that no matter how you upgrade your PC that you perform a complete backup onto a removable USB drive.

Use good backup software such as Macrium Reflect or Acronis. There also are several reputable free backup apps online, some of them from the manufacturer of your computer’s hard drive.

 

To quote the Bard, the whole upgrade frenzy is “much ado about nothing.” In a few years, we’ll repeat the whole charade with Windows 12.

 

This past July, I published a memoir titled “There’s No Man Stranger to Himself Than the Man He Used to Be.” In its 436 pages, I explain how and why I began writing articles about consumer electronics as well as narrating my career in radio. If you’d like to support a humble columnist, you can order the book online at tinyurl.com/36e8rfrp.

 

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Edited November 9, 2025 by aum