Windows 11 launched back in October 2021, and to put it bluntly, the crowd went mild. It wasn't really anticipated as something special or hypeworthy, largely thanks to the additional hardware requirements the operating system imposed. Still, it promised a modern and intelligent experience, yet just a few years later, the operating system has been struggling with bugs in its core functionality, shockingly stagnant user adoption numbers, and an overall skeptical audience.
While Windows 11 has been around for just over four years, Windows 10 users are still clinging on, with Extended Security Updates now rolling out for free for users in the EU, or for users who link their Windows 10 to a Microsoft account. The Windows 11 experience has somehow degraded since its initial release, and Microsoft's own actions have been the driving force behind user discontent.
Windows 11's core features are faltering
An operating system that doesn't work right
It's frankly ridiculous to say it, but key parts of the Windows 11 interface have simply not been working reliably. Only recently did Microsoft itself admit via a support bulletin that "major Windows 11 core features," including the most essential components like the Start Menu, Taskbar, File Explorer, and Settings app, can break after recent updates. These issues were said to stem from a problematic XAML software component introduced in a July 2025 update.
The fallout of this alone has been severe: Explorer.exe and ShellHost processes crashing, the Start menu failing to open with critical errors, and even Settings app silently refusing to launch are among the symptoms Microsoft documented. Essentially, nearly every major shell feature of the OS has been affected. These bugs didn't surface overnight, either. In fact, they've been plaguing users for months, and the support article notes that updates since July 2025 triggered it That means many users have endured broken taskbars or non-functional Start menus on a daily basis for quite some time. Microsoft has provided temporary workarounds involving manually re-registering certain app packages via PowerShell, offered as a stop-gap while engineers "work on a resolution."
In other words, as of late 2025, the core user interface of the four-years-old Windows 11 remains in a degraded state; an astonishing situation for an operating system that's supposed to be Microsoft's flagship. It's not often that Microsoft openly acknowledges such broad failures, but to users of the operating system, I'm sure that Windows 11's problems haven't gone totally unnoticed. Funnily enough, it all seems to coincide heavily with Microsoft's newfound focus on AI.
Windows 11 has become so fragile
But why?
Why has Windows 11 become a strangely fragile operating system? There's no simple answer, but we certainly have clues. The first, and one that has proven to be a statement akin to shooting one's self in the foot, was company CEO Satya Nadella stating proudly that up to 30% of all code written at Microsoft is now AI-written. In other words, nearly a third of new code being added to products (presumably including Windows) might be generated by AI tools rather than hand-coded by human engineers. Microsoft touts this as progress in developer productivity, but I can't help but wonder whether this influx of AI-generated code has impacted software quality or been the catalyst when it comes to introducing unforeseen bugs.
Many would be quick to refer to Windows as a buggy operating system long before the advent of AI, and in many respects, that's certainly true. Yet the timing of these particular stumbles align with the company's AI hype cycle. Correlation is not causation, and we have no clue what role AI plays in Microsoft's recent Windows woes, but the perception is growing that Microsoft's AI focus is diverting attention from the software polish that, once upon a time, Microsoft would have been more than happy to claim of Windows.
Even looking beyond the technical issues, Windows 11's trajectory has been marked by an increasingly aggressive push toward features most users didn't ask for. Copilot integration, once positioned as an optional assistant, has become deeply embedded throughout the operating system. The taskbar now features a persistent Copilot button that many find intrusive, and AI suggestions appear in contexts where users simply want to perform basic tasks without algorithmic intervention.
This aggressive feature addition stands in stark contrast to the seemingly-unfinished nature of Windows 11's core experience. Basic functionality that existed in Windows 10 remains absent or poorly implemented. The context menu in File Explorer, for example, took over a year to properly accommodate third-party applications, forcing users to click through an extra "Show more options" menu to access familiar tools. The taskbar still lacks the ability to be moved to different screen edges or to ungroup application windows... features that were standard in Windows 10.
A growing trust deficit
Users have been burned already
Out of all of this, though, I'd argue that the most damaging aspect has been the erosion of user trust. Windows 11 launched with stringent hardware requirements, including TPM 2.0 and specific CPU generation minimums, ostensibly for security reasons. Yet perfectly capable machines were left behind, fueling resentment among users who saw their hardware artificially obsoleted. Microsoft later softened these restrictions slightly, but the damage to goodwill was done.
Then came the advertisements. What started as "suggestions" in the Start menu evolved into more persistent promotional content throughout the operating system. Users have seen advertisements for Microsoft 365, OneDrive storage upgrades, and even third-party applications integrated into the OS itself. For an operating system that most users paid for (either directly or through their hardware purchase), this monetization felt like a betrayal of the traditional software model.
All of this aligns itself with the reasons that many users have been held off on upgrading to Windows 11 in the first place, and have stuck with Windows 10. Windows 10 officially reached end-of-life in October 2025, meaning Microsoft has ceased general support for it Despite that, roughly 1 billion PCs are still running Windows 10 instead of Windows 11, according to figures revealed by Dell in an earnings call, and it suggests that Microsoft is facing an uphil battle when it comes to user migration.
For some additional context, Windows 11's adoption is lagging behind the pace of past transitions. Dell's data indicated that Windows 11's rollout is roughly 10 percentage points behind where Windows 10 was at a comparable point in its lifecycle. Sure, consumers and businesses are typically slower to embrace new OS versions, but this gap is significantly larger than you'd expect for this point in time. Even with Windows 10's retirement, users are choosing to stick with an older operating system. Simply put, a lot of users don't feel they're missing out by staying on Windows 10. In fact, with the current reports of Windows 11 bugs, many might feel they're actively dodging a bullet.
Complicating things further, even as Windows 11 struggles with basics, Microsoft is forging ahead with an ambitious re-imagining of what Windows should be. The company has stated that the future of Windows involves evolving into an "agentic" OS, and the company recently published its Fara-7B model aimed at achieving exactly that. This means Windows 11 will likely, in the future, have even more Copilot-esque features embedded directly in the operating system. It's a bold vision, but not everyone's excited about it. Microsoft is aware of the pushback, and has made most AI features optional, but some, such as Copilot, are still a foundational core aspect of the system in a way that can't simply be "removed."
What happens next?
Microsoft has a growing problem
The question facing Microsoft now is whether Windows 11 can recover from this challenging period, or whether the damage to user confidence has become irreversible. The company finds itself at a crossroads: continue pushing forward with AI-centric features while the foundation crumbles, or take a step back and focus on stability and reliability. What users are asking for isn't revolutionary... unfortunately, it's remarkably simple. They want an operating system that works reliably, where the start menu opens every time, where the File Explorer doesn't crash during routine tasks, and where updates don't introduce more problems than they solve. These should be baseline expectations, not a set of features that are considered ambitious demands.
Microsoft needs to consider a fundamental shift in priorities. This might mean declaring a feature freeze for new AI integrations until core functionality is returned to its former glory. It could involve more transparent communication with regard to bugs and realistic timelines for fixes, rather than vague promises of resolutions "coming soon." Most importantly, it requires acknowledging that an operating system's primary job is to, well, operate. That includes everything that an operating system is expected to do, where AI assistants and cloud integrations should be considered secondary.
The irony is that Microsoft has the resources, talent, and experience to fix these issues. The company has weathered operating system controversies before, from Windows Vista's performance problems to Windows 8's interface backlash. In both cases, Microsoft eventually course-corrected. But those corrections came after the company listened to user feedback and prioritized stability over feature additions. Time is running short, though, and the 500 million users that are still on Windows 10 despite its end of life status could pose a real problem. Microsoft can't assume that consumers will eventually upgrade to Windows 11 out of necessity; users have options, and the number of users willing to explore them has been growing.
Microsoft's flagship operating system doesn't need to be revolutionary, nor did it ever need to be. No, it merely needed to be reliable. Microsoft can't deliver on the bare basics of that expectation currently, and when users can't trust what's already there, why would they trust an "agentic" system that claims to be capable of operating on the user's behalf, when the system can't even reliably do that?