Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

This is absolutely insane
My condolences to all Windows 11 users.

It's becoming common knowledge that:

• It's not a matter of if but when will xyz service/application be breached and what are the potential damages it could do to me and others?

"I assume every online service is not if; it's when is it going to be breached? Right? So I operate under that assumption, that everything is going to be breached at some point. And so that's why Recall was so scary to me where it's like, I don't care how secure they say it is, like you look at Spectre and Meltdown no one thought these things were going to affect millions of CPUs and here we are, right?

• Steve from Gamers Nexus

[Level1Techs] Microsoft Is KILLING Windows | ft. Steve @GamersNexus

Microsoft has been the single most effective marketing asset for GNU/Linux distributions in recent years.

Okay, this might be a non-issue: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2697#issuecomment-2403792309

To those that arrive here from any Youtube or Twitter posts, please know that disabling Recall via DISM works fine, and preserves the modern File Explorer (though some might consider this an anti-feature). CBS correctly disables it, and the disablement is preserved through reboots, just like with any other feature.

Edit: of course, the big problem here is that it's still present (even disabled) and hence malware could turn it back on without you realising. Ugh.

Thank goodness for Linux.

Linux is here to welcome you

how the fuck could they have possibly done things in a way that makes explorer tabs depend on recall?

if they can’t even separate out recall from the rest of the operating system then i have absolutely no faith it will be secure.

it was vastly easier to install linux mint than it is to figure out registry editing or whatever the fuck i'd need to avoid this

What the actual fuck, microsoft?

Windows Debloat Tool:

https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools

I run this on any new Win install. I also suggest Portmaster so you know where your data is going (I use it on Linux too!)

https://safing.io/

However, if you can, it is really worth switching to Linux. Linux is built as a tool by the people using the tool. Windows is making a product. Enough said.

If people would like to "try Linux before you buy," check out DistroSea. It spins up a virtual machine of whatever distro and flavour you choose to try.

https://distrosea.com/

There are a surprising and growing number of Linux compatible tools. Software is usually why people have a hard time switching. If you're dependent on Photoshop/Adobe, check out:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Gamers should check out:

https://www.protondb.com/

This site shows how well games run on Proton (compatibility tool) and people offer solutions to get them running if there's any snags.

Ahahaha, holly fucking shit.

They literally added some OS in their spyware.

Welp. Time to buy a NAS to back up all my stuff and rebuild this pc with Linux.

I remember them doing this with Internet Explorer back in the 90s.

"We can't remove this thing we don't want to remove! Look! It's hastily integrated with the OS! We can't remove it ever!"

For years... well pretty much since I had a PC, I had a Windows partition. Why? Well because I (sadly) paid for the damn thing (damn OEM deals). Plus, I admit, sometimes they were things that only ran on Windows.

For few years now though, everything, literally, from the latest tech gadget to playing games to VR, works on Linux.

Few weeks ago I deleted the Windows partition. I didn't have to. I didn't boot on it for months. It didn't affect me.

Still, I now feel ... safer, more relaxed, coherent.

When I see shit like that, I feel even better!

Explorer has had so many dependencies attached to it that if even one of them sneezes, the entire desktop environment crashes and has to restart.

Actually insane when you think about it. Why the hell is a file explorer the root process of the desktop??????

I've only ever forced stopped thunar once and it was because I was messing with some thumbnail settings. Naturally the rest of my system worked as normal, as well as the other thunar windows open lol.

I won't upgrade past 10 anyways and if I can't run 10, back to Linux I go.

Looks like I picked the right year to switch to Linux on my primary pc.

So.. how does this exist in corporate environments where PCI DSS is necessary? Is the government also going to have to deal with fallout from this?

I wonder if there will ever be a point where legislation dictates features from an os vendor.. we lost control of our hardware when they started forcing updates. I'm sure someone will hack a DLL or something to allow explorer to run but kill this component... But should we really need to hack our systems to protect ourselves from spying?

Inb4 Linux - I ran Slackware in the early 90s, and my server still runs a deb based distro.. but when I want to play Forza, I'm pretty limited with my choices, etc.

how the fuck do you even begin making recall a dependency for explorer?

screw Microsoft..i hope people will consider to switch to Linux

I love winutil. Makes debloating windows a lot easier.

MIT license:

• https://files.community/
• https://github.com/files-community/files/

Explore a beautiful Windows-first design. Manage all your files with increased productivity. Work across multiple folders with tabs. And so much more.

It looks nice, and has extra features like tabs, tagging 7zip/archive management, cloud drives, git integration, comparing file hashes, etc.

The only issue I had was performance, it took a long time to start each time. I'm planning on trying it again sometime later

Glad I moved away from Windows on all my personal computers. Fedora with Plasma is so similar to Windows and so much better. If my non-tech partner can use it, then anyone can.

Only problem is that Windows is better at resizing content on high resolution (4K) monitors. And ordering multiple monitors on the login screen doesn't always work right, but it's fine once logged in. And it takes a bit more to set up than preinstalled Windows that's on most computers when you buy them. But if it was preinstalled and set up already for the hardware like Windows usually is, it would be way better for nearly everyone.

So, I just bought a new laptop. It came with Windows 11. But anyways, I'm writing this comment from a freshly installed Bazzite Linux OS.

I hope every SWE looks at this and remembers how not to conduct oneself.

Wow this doesn't affect me at all thank fully

As much as I would love this to kick MS in the backside, it won’t. The public at large has no idea what this is or why it’s bad and evil. They will buy a computer, it will come with Windows, and they’ll use it like they always have. Companies and Govts will gripe initially, but give in because their ancient VB enterprise apps only run on Windows.

Didnt they try this same shit with IE decades ago until they were forced to decouple it from explorer?

Fuuuuuck....well....my laptop was my last windows device. It came with 11 installed, and the only reason I keep using 11 is because I have had no success in running my DAW in wine. Guess it's time to give it a go again....

Might be a stupid question but this requires a NPU right? I told some fellas about it and there response was something like does not matter because they have older hardware so it can't run anyway. So what happens to win 11 PCs with no NPU?

Is it possible to disable this organization-wide for the handful of windows devices we have? Or do we have to subscribe to some kind of device management service from MSFT? We currently use standard o365 subscriptions

The companies will do anything to make having the ai capacities built locally an acceptable thing via "cool" features like this or apples, and I think it is because once the devices can do the processing locally, it allows them to stop processing it themselves on their servers. This will also allow them to use microphone and why not camera data as additional data points without having to send and process the actual microphone data. The only local software is open source AI implementations that are being used by FOSS applications, with no network access.

To me this isn't about shareholder value and buzzwords, this is just the excuse to shove it into the OS. It's a more long term game they are playing: the one of reducing their costs and improving the value/accuracy of the data that they get, since it will be pre-digested 100% locally in the background, which is not limited by network latency and bandwidth.

So, iirc, recall was a copilot+ PC "feature". Will this recall integration be the case on "normal" x86 PCs as well?

I moved all my personal stuff over to linux Windows about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, there's still a few things in my life that requires windows...

Edit: I can't type, apparently

/s just in case

Good thing I don't use Tabs.

What happens if you copy explorer.exe from a prior release of Windows and replace the recall-infested version?

What's an alternative to explorer?

Unfortunately, just switch to Linux is not an option.

THIS IS WHY I AM STILL ON WINDOWS 10 AND DUALBOOTING LINUX

Judging by the comments in this thread this will be the one defining mistake that kills Microsoft.

Just use explorer patcher on win,10 22h2, fixed

Permanently Deleted

Just like systemd became a dependency for stuff that never needed it in the first place...

Oh my fucking god.

If I still knew anyone who uses Windows I would be laughing at them.

The freaking out over an optional feature that you need specific hardware for anyway is unreal.

If Fedora had announced this as a feature you'd have wanked yourselves into a coma.