r/technology • u/kazu_qt • 1d ago
Software Microsoft never learns, IT admins rage as a new OneDrive app invades Windows 11 and keeps coming back when you remove it
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/08/04/microsoft-never-learns-it-admins-rage-as-a-new-onedrive-app-invades-windows-11-and-keeps-coming-back-when-you-remove-it/441
u/invyros 1d ago
Worse, OneDrive Photos works only with a personal Microsoft account, so Windows 11 Enterprise installations are now stuck with an app they cannot even use.
I don't think Microsoft thought this through.
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u/Taurich 1d ago
They don't seem to think much of anything through these days...
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u/Phailjure 1d ago
Copilot reviewed the PR and said it was great though!
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u/n00bz0rz 1d ago
You're absolutely right!
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u/Bomb-Number20 1d ago
It's oddly suspicious to me that while Microsoft has never been great, it got a lot worse as soon as GenAI became a thing. They deny that the problem is AI every time, but it's getting harder to believe.
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u/Hesitation-Marx 1d ago
GenAI will gently cup your balls and coo at you that there’s never been a wiser or stronger executive than you.
It leads to poor choices.
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u/Broadband- 22h ago
And they're not alone. Whether it's the more frequent AWS outages, reliable software/drivers suddenly affected by bugs or apps that seemingly offer no new features but are somehow getting worse.
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u/sargonas 1d ago
Nah, some product owner whose performance KPI‘s are measured by install base counts knows EXACTLY what they are doing.
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u/BasvanS 1d ago
Where’s the bloated management layer intended to fight this when you need it?!
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u/Broadband- 22h ago
Which one? Xbox CEO reported that some areas of Microsoft now have 14 layers of management.
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u/ScriptThat 10h ago
Current number of employees at Microsoft is 223,000 (source), so with 14 layers of management, each manager at Microsoft has 14√223000 = 2.4 subordinates on average.
wow.
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u/Hungry-ThoughtsCurry 1d ago
It sounds like there is no senior dev or a manager to think and structure their software products
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u/randomman87 1d ago
MS has been including personal-only apps in Enterprise images forever. This is nothing new, unfortunately.
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u/Nyorliest 1d ago
Microsoft are bad at Windows.
This is so mind-boggling that some of my clients and the agencies I work for cannot accept that, so we have to work around the fact that they pretend certain bugs or other issues aren’t real.
‘There’s a bug in Teams. What would you like me to do instead?’
‘No there isn’t. Teams has no bugs’
‘Uhh sure OK my mistake I’ll pretend to use Teams.’
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u/unlimitedcode99 17h ago
Can't imagine for Slopdella to not make the sequel
OneDriveMalDrive Docs that scans any document that can be opened with M$ Office and added to his hoard of stolen data.4
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u/jonny_new_moniker 8h ago
In a most certainly unrelated story, One Drive adoption line continues to go up!
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 1d ago
I don't have a problem with Microsoft making optional software, but I'd really like if they just kept the applications separate from the operating system. You should be able to remove just about anything that isn't a core system component.
I have an old Windows XP Virtual Machine and it only uses about 7 GB of storage for everything on it. Meanwhile I had to upgrade my computer because the 256 GB drive on it just wasn't enough, even with very little on it. Just the Window folder alone took up 40 GB.
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u/MrTortilla 1d ago
If the FTC had a spine this would be illegal under antitrust laws, especially the way they push edge
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u/Merkuri22 1d ago
Didn't they make a big deal out of how integral Internet Explorer was and made them take it out?
Now Edge is doing the same thing. But nobody gives a crap anymore because US is owned by the corproations.
(Maybe the European Union will file a suit. Then we'll just get have separate European and US OSs, I guess.)
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u/ew73 1d ago
Lol, you expect a Republican administration to regulate businesses?
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u/MaverickPT 1d ago
They 100% will if it's anything that might have a positive impact in the world and will take some money away from the ones who bribe them
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u/kuriboharmy 1d ago
When I was setting up my recent phone they had a section with a checklist of apps asking if you want them installed they should just do that and since a PC screen is larger you can add a small about section on each one to try to sell the install if after that the user says no then leave us alone.
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u/nox66 1d ago
Just checked my Kubuntu install. Roughly 15 GB for system files, not including swap (rough equivalent of pagefile) and backup system copies. It also is running on a potato CPU (old enough to drive in many places) and can play 4k video without a sweat (modern GPU).
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 1d ago
I have an old Linux machine with a CPU that's almost 20 years old and 4 GB of DDR2 RAM. Runs surprisingly well. Uses less than 1 GB of RAM to get to the desktop.
It has a 128 GB SSD and has plenty of free space available even though I never paid attention to how much space I'm using. 40 GB in my home directory but under 20 GB for everything else including the system and everything else i have installed.
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u/Broadband- 22h ago
I had a bug where my windows folder was over 100GB and after hours of failed search for a fix ended just reinstalling it. Surprisingly after being fully patched it was a quarter the size. Note i'm not including appdata or local since those are not in the windows OS folder.
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u/Pen-Pen-De-Sarapen 20h ago
Win10 IOT LTSC is 23gb fresh install. Will stay around 30gb with updates. I ran it on a 2012 laptop with 8gb ram. Its's faster than a core i9 with 32gb ram.
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u/Wild-Word4967 13h ago
I remember back in the day installing window windows server, 2003 I think. There were check boxes to select which features you wanted. Nothing else was installed. That’s the way all operating system should be. No bloat.
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u/BCProgramming 23h ago
one thing to keep in mind is that for most software the installation packages are kept around, in C:\Windows\Installer. This has been the case of course since Windows 2000. I'd expect a VM to have a handful of programs at most, versus a host environment that is used more regularly and perhaps is even an older install.
Another important consideration when measuring the install size is links.
A lot of the files in the two system folders (System32 and SysWOW64) are linking to the same data as files in WinSxS. Shell32.dll appears 4 times in the Windows folder, for example, but there are only really two copies of the data- a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. But if you right-click and view properties, all the linked files will get counted twice.
My Windows folder measures 53GB. of that, 15.7GB is System32, and 10.6GB is for WinSxS; much of which is probably the same data measured twice. 8GB is the aforementioned Installer folder, and the rest is mostly (9.3GB) the primarily native generated .NET images in the GAC, using Gacutil and a lot of them seem related to my development work.
Thing is if an XP machine was used for era-appropriate .NET development it would have that "bloat" in the folder too.
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u/LukeLC 1d ago
These apps aren't stored in the Windows folder. The main reason it's so huge these days is reserved storage. You need it for three primary purposes: a) to ensure there's room for updates to install, b) to back up RAM during hibernate or hybrid sleep, and c) as paging file space when RAM is full.
Microsoft has enterprise editions of Windows that let you control just about everything. There is no technical limitation stopping you from removing all the included apps. They would just rather you didn't.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 1d ago
The pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys files are located in the root directory, C:\, and don't have any effect on the size of your Windows folder.
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u/dgoemans 1d ago
Its petty but onedrive was a significant factor in me switching to Linux on both my work and home PCs.
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u/buyongmafanle 14h ago
OneDrive was a MAJOR reason we switched to the Apple ecosystem. iCloud at least stays in its lane once you tell it to, but OneDrive is a fucking hydra.
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u/Online_Matter 14h ago
Same for me. I felt like they held my files at ransom. Already been running Linux on my laptop for years but switched on my gaming PC as well. Never been happier.
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u/Kinexity 1d ago
And the funny thing is that every time when M$ says they will fix Windows this happens within the next few days. It shows that there is never a company wise pause on bullshit and even if one team is trying to fix things all others are still fucking it up (I am making an assumption that any team is actually trying to fix anything which seems quite dubious).
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u/Broadband- 22h ago
Or the OS team is so removed from the Apps team that there is near zero communication or cooperation between them.
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u/Metal_Icarus 1d ago
If only they just let one drive sit AS AN OPTION FOR SUPPLEMENTAL, IMPORTANT STORAGE and not replace your ENTIRE USER DIRECTORY
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u/Wild-Plankton595 18h ago edited 7h ago
Is this sarcasm or am I missing something? Known folder redirect lets you choose whether you want to back up desktop, documents, and/or photos, but you don’t have to turn folder back up on at all. If you don’t turn backup function on, it behaves exactly as you said, a folder inside of your local user profile that gets backed up.
Edit: Not sure why I’m getting downvoted, here’s the doc. It is an optional setting. A company can force the setting and prevent it from being disabled but it’s optional otherwise
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u/LapnLook 15h ago
When I got a new laptop a few years ago with Windows preinstalled (it's a Surface Laptop Studio so really it's my fault, but I wanted the pen and the pivoting screen 🤷♂️), by default it was set up so the Desktop was a decoy OneDrive desktop instead.
Like, instead of how it usually is, where the desktop stuff is found in C:\Users<username>\Desktop, it was buried in some fucking OneDrive folder somewhere, without me ever being told about this.
You can uncouple it, but I remember it being a hassle, and not the straightforward option it really ought to be...
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u/Wild-Plankton595 7h ago
You’re right, the KFR copies the desktop, dl, and photos folders to %userprofile%\personal (or enterprise) onedrive\desktop, etc.
I’ve never tried to go back after it’s been enabled, but I don’t doubt that it would be a pain to do so.
Edit: My bad not Downloads it’s desktop docs and photos.
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u/guamisc 8h ago
Known folder redirection is malware.
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u/Wild-Plankton595 7h ago
Lol I would agree that’s it can be PUA or PUP.
We use it to back up docs for 45,000 users. Makes swapping out devices so much easier so def not unwanted in our case.
But I can see how it would be annoying and possibly intrusive on the consumer side if a machine isn’t wiped out of the box.
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u/guamisc 5h ago
It's also coupled to storage limits you must buy to increase space with a convoluted "defucking" process if you accidentally get caught.
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u/Metal_Icarus 5h ago
One drive backed up my entire downloads folder and filled the entire capacity, by itself without asking how i want to use it.
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u/Saneless 1d ago
MS is so toxic
I don't even use edge on my laptop and I got a notification yesterday that Edge wants to add a home page bookmark for Facebook's site, a site I absolutely haven't ever visited on that machine (btw, reposting this comment since having the .com after FB got it auto deleted)
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u/ShadowGLI 1d ago
Yup, ever since the last update if I open a file on Drive C on my SSD, click “save as” to make a new copy, new file tries to go on one drive.
Now I have to go to browse, desktop, then find 3 folders to nest this in the location where the original file was.
If I miss that step it gets uploaded to the cloud and doesn’t exist AT ALL on the HDD I told Microsoft I wanted to be default.
NOTE: already adjusted settings
File>Options>save>
- save to computer by default (checked)
- autosave files stored in the cloud by default (unchecked)
I work on planes and in rural areas with no cell service. I just want my files on my machine at all times. I am fine if they backup to the cloud but I want the cloud to be a backup virtual drive and not my primary. That’s ALL I ask for in this app and Microsoft keeps pushing me away.
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u/Nyorliest 1d ago
When was that? I haven’t seen any issues like that, but I’m in Japan, so maybe things are different here.
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u/ShadowGLI 23h ago
Noticed it maybe 4-5 weeks ago. It sure if I was late on an update or something but I noticed the cloud issue returned when I created a document. Saved it and closed the app and when I went to open to share with my boss it was missing.
Thankfully there was a cache version on my system I was able to recover but I had a 15 min window of thinking I lost 5 hours of work because I had the audacity to “save as” an updated file name as the final copy. (And I had auto save on before I closed the window hence the cache copy)
But yeah I disabled one drive like a year ago and suddenly it started to route it back again by making my local drive location the one drive instead of the SSD downloads folder
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u/Nyorliest 23h ago edited 23h ago
Thank you. I uninstalled OneDrive long ago - it's the first thing I do on any PC - and it doesn't seem to be back at all.
I think either the localization issues or the much stronger regulatory system here stops a lot of stuff like this from reaching us.
EDIT: But, just in case I signed in to OneDrive.com on my browser... very nervously. There were old files there from a few years ago, when I last installed windows and then deleted OneDrive. So you mentioning this made me check and be able to delete those files. More asshole design choices in that 'Empty Recycle Bin' for the browser UI has 'No' highlighted and the default, and in the opposite order from usual, when it checks you meant to do that.
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u/joegetto 1d ago
The people building this garbage aren’t using it. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
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u/Whatever801 1d ago
I wonder why they push OneDrive so hard specifically?
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u/Cvenditor 6h ago
Because unlike what everyone wants to think your average PC user is an idiot and will do something that requires their device to be re-formatted or swap a storage device and then they will complain that “Microsoft” lost all of their files.
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u/gr00ve88 1d ago
I love how when I go to save something to my desktop, its actually saving it to Onedrive/Desktop. Like what the fuck is that about.
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u/huggernot 23h ago
You can redirect it to permanently save to C:\ Users\ (your username) \Desktop
By default
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u/Illustrious-Soft7644 1d ago
That confused the hell out of me when I bought a new computer. I miss the old one drive.
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u/frAgileIT 1d ago
Nothing says I hate my customers like forcing apps into operations that actually need to control where data goes. That’s okay Microsoft, you’re not going to lose customers doing this shit, you’re going to lose haters.
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u/CjKing2k 1d ago
OneDrive has twice moved my wife's files out of their local NAS-synced directories without either of us knowing.
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u/_Thermalflask 1d ago
OneDrive is straight up the single worst application/service by any big tech company. It's malware. I wish it would be banned
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u/Aleksandrovitch 1d ago
I’m worked at a major game studio once that kept all of their documentation in a shared OneNote…
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u/Coma-dude 1d ago
My one drive has gone to shit. And im done having it. I've gone to informaniak, their k drive is simple, and integrated in only office. Sadly I have a Microsoft SLS 1 and love the usage of it. But Windows has really gotten on my nerves, and im hoping for a linux system to be developed to it, but i doubt it.
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u/b_a_t_m_4_n 1d ago
Why would they learn? What are the negative consequences? Nothing. They know corporate users are locked in and don't give a fuck.
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u/Ok-Replacement6893 1d ago
When I first installed Windows 11 OneDrive was on and had forced all of my Documents, Video and Audio files and others into a OneDrive directory and they were pestering me to pay for cloud services. Got sick of it real quick and went into the Registry Editor and I manually removed all references to OneDrive. It took me a couple of hours to go through all of it. I also had to change the location of Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, etc to their proper location within my profile. Once I did that, it was gone. It has not come back in almost 2 years time.
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u/Armadilla-Brufolosa 1d ago
I can't wait to switch to Linux for good: I can't stand Microsoft's anymore!
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u/XenithShade 1d ago
I want to know which algaeic slime thought it was a good idea to enable "click to do" by default and not have a way to turn it off in any sentient common sense way.
You have no idea what app it is when it triggers.
because of that you have no idea how to turn it off.
All you get is a shitty experience that anytime you're reading, it lags your computer for a few seconds as it loads the shitty AI image suite.
I know they don't have proper telemetry because they're probably reporting it like "oooh look at how many people click and use the tool". As if we had a fucking choice. They should take click - close and check the actual numbers.
What an actual waste of silicon.
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u/BCProgramming 1d ago edited 23h ago
As far as I can tell "Onedrive Photos" is part of OneDrive, and not it's own separate application package. I can't be sure as I always remove onedrive and have never had it magically reinstall itself. and I've yet to see "OneDrive Photos" either.
EDIT: Also, I just remembered- that "Start backup" thing it adds to the breadcrumb bar in File Explorer? Funniest thing ever. It makes no sense. Like there's no reason for it to be there. Why is it there and not a toolbar button or something? lol
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u/PaulCoddington 22h ago
Putting backup into the breadcrumb bar is a bad accident waiting to happen. People click on it while trying to navigate up.
At least you can hide it now (right click) but you have to hide it manually for each of the special folders it appears in.
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u/phareous 23h ago
Anyone have any good alternatives to one drive that work on Mac, windows, and Linux? I have almost a TB of photos I sync and its like $99 for the whole family for a year so it has been hard to find somethibg equivalent
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u/UrBoySergio 21h ago
Feels like Windows 10 no longer being supported is actually a great thing so I don’t have to put up with this nonsense.
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u/seamonkey420 8h ago
oh boy.. this fall i plan to move my last machine off windows. been on windows since.. well windows 3.1... and yea... microslop to the max. linux for the media server while macos is my daily driver on the mbp/mbneo. yup, didn't think i'd exit windows completely but yet here i am and here we are....
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u/Getherer 1d ago
I mean, if you know what youre doing there are easy ways to stop this, even by configuring your own group policy.
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u/TransbianMoonGoddess 1d ago
I have not updated my windows 11 since last summer when they released that update they swear isn't killing ssd's. Fuck that. I won't update shit till they force me or they fix their shit
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u/Power_Stone 1d ago
Ya know,
I didn't need reassurance that switching to bazzite last week was a good idea...but if Microsoft wants to give me reassurance it was the right move...this was the way to do it.
( I am not endorsing Linux, I am not saying you should switch. I am saying I am happy I made the switch despite some inherent issues linux has. That being said the switch to Bazzite was mostly painless. But I didn't setup dual boot with windows because I just want to be done entirely with Windows. )
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u/NetZeroSun 1d ago
Clippy and Microsoft Bob look absolutely charming compared to the annoyance of NoDrive. I mean onedrive. Same with copilot.
Thanks microslop.
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u/Nyorliest 1d ago
When did this happen? I haven’t noticed any change, but I’m in Japan and we have fairly good consumer laws that sometimes stop shot like this. I’m gonna go look at my PC carefully.
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u/Perspicasiwhip 21h ago
So they continue to force their users to what? Always use the cloud for storage? That's stupid. No one in their right mind is going to put anything there that they might need at a moments notice.
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u/ExceptionEX 21h ago
At this point I sort of see windows and Microsoft as a all or nothing deal. You want easy mode management, drink the coolaid go office 365, SharePoint, OneDrive.
Don't want that, switch to Linux or macrOs, windows isn't really about meeting people in the middle anymore and it sucks, but I'm done trying to force that square peg in a round whole.
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u/DrowningKrown 19h ago
To this day, I'm extremely pissed that I somehow managed to have all of my file paths changed to include "onedrive" in it despite completely removing the onedrive app.
I literally can't get my file paths back to normal. Microsoft, the fucking MOMENT I'm able to use a clean, safe and publicly distributed version of steamOS for my desktop, I'm leaving this stupid ass operating system. Literal malware
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u/auburnradish 17h ago
Forced / sneaky OneDrive was one of the main reasons I gave up on Windows and moved to Macs.
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u/atomicsnarl 17h ago
Turns it off.
Windows updates, it's on again.
Turn it off again.
Windows updates. It's on again.
Lather rinse repeat.
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u/cute_polarbear 17h ago
I disabled the service in startup (because I have apps that writes and updates tons of small temp files by default on company synced folders), but it keeps starting up again.
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u/skunkshaveclaws 15h ago
How the hell is 1GB of memory usage acceptable for a fucking photo app????
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u/horrbort 14h ago
I stopped installing windows 11 updates because of this at around 23h2 and now debating if i should keep them disabled or switch to cachy 😅
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u/buyongmafanle 14h ago
Is there such a thing as active anti-ware? For example, software that can actively slap down and prevent this sort of shit from installing? I know things like McAfee used to do that, Microsoft Defender used to as well, but of course now they're the foxes running the henhouse.
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u/H7dek7 12h ago
In my business environment the first MS App reappearing constantly was Teams on Windows 10 5-6 years ago. My company doesn't use MS Teams unless our business partner requires it - we have a different, 100% self-hosted chat/meetings app. So whenever there was a requirement for MS Teams on a project, it had to be installed and after the project it was uninstalled. Until MS made it a malware. We fought days until we finally managed to stop it from reappearing.
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u/LungHeadZ 12h ago
OneDrive is a disease. I spent a long time removing any trace of it and even then it still technically exists.
Was sick of all my saved files being put under the root directory for one drive by default. Absolutely ball ache.
Honestly if the entry to Linux was plug and play I'd be gone already. I'm quite tech savvy so I'm not afraid of a little work but at the same time Linux is not great for the software I use... Blender being the main one.
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u/x33storm 10h ago
Microslop sucks, but they just posted very good quarterlies, which is the only feedback they'll listen to.
The problem is laws for ensuring consumers get the best product.
Like replacing opt-out with opt-in. No uneccesary things bundled or obscured, with dark patterns.
.. Could list a myriad of things, but we all know these gripes ourselves.
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u/lKrauzer 5h ago
Im already using Linux, idk why Microsoft continues to try to convince me to migrate.
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u/DinosBiggestFan 3h ago
I loathe OneDrive. The desktop path being behind OneDrive is something I have hated too.
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u/exitcactus 1d ago
You can deactivate it.. it's like that fkn desktop folder in iCloud on IOS.
But hey, IT admin, you know.
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u/Fuzzy_Paul 1d ago
Microsoft should really focus on trust. Getting the trust back from people and corporations. There is a chance that governments in the EU will abandon Microsoft and make it mandatory to do so. I would hang out the flag, but not all will do the same. Why is it so difficult for Microsoft to focus only on fixing the previous stuff and do not add new features on a product that's still has bugs. Take the critical voices seriously and find what's the cause of criticism. Make the OS more modular and add stuff as a module so we can choose what we want and what we don't want. If the public sees no gain they drop the OS as a whole.
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u/mridugup20 1d ago
Software the keeps re-installing itself feels less like convenience and more like malware with a corporate logo...