WINDOWS 11 PAIN IN THE *******

When I upgraded to windows 11 after being hounded by microsoft, I have been plagued with various problems since. Now, the most recent problem, win 11 will not recognize any of my external drives, including a couple of the My Passport drives. Also, whenever I plug in a thumb drive, it will not show it on the desktop. I have to go to the : This PC , in order to read a thumb drive. However, none of my ext. will even show up in the: This PC, window.
All of the Ext. drives show up ok, on a Windows 10 PC.

Perhaps an upgraded Win 11 is not as good as a real copy??. My wife has the real version & the ext. HD's as well as thumb drives, show up in her : This PC. OK but not on her desktop.

Anyway, if I cannot get Win11 to perform better than this, I may need to dump it & go back to 10 before it fades away.. Thoughts??

External drives do not usually show up on the Desktop in any version of Windows, they are always in My Computer / This PC.

How are you connecting the drives? Can we assume that you are using a USB port and cable to connect them?

In Windows 10 and 11, I always add the Control Panel and the other icons to the desktop.

https://www.minitool.com/news/how-to...o-desktop.html

Place a check mark in all 5 check boxes in step 4 of the instructions at the link above.

Once you have the Control Panel icon on the desktop, double click on that, select View By Small Icons, then click on Device Manager. Look for any errors, especially in the USB section(s).

Windows 11 may need updated drivers for some of your hardware. Post the make and model of your computer or motherboard so we can check to see if that might be the case.

Note that you only have 10 days to revert back to Windows 10, assuming that Microsoft lets you do that.

Thanks for the reply, jdc. My main PC is a Dell XPS-8930. Being that the unit does not have USB 3.0 ports in the front, I use a hub. I also use a second hub for various external HD's. I also use control panel. However, I place mine in the task bar as with most all icons. As for hard drives, thumb drives, etc not showing up on the desktop, I have never had that problem with any operating system. Why they never worked for you, I haven't foggiest idea. I collect music files, movies, TV shows, & all types of videos, etc. That's why I use multiple ext. HD's. I have been doing this for many years. Windows 11, has now made me turn a corner. It does not work well with the way I operate: editing movie, video, music files, etc. The cut & paste function leaves a lot to be desired. The only way I would revert back to Win 10, would be to remove the HD (SSD), reformat & reinstall win 10.

Another problem I have with the win 11 upgrade, is that it is always temporarily freezing the pc. The mouse & keyboard etc, wont function. The desktop shows up ok, but I have to keep jingling the mouse till the freeze is over, generally a few seconds, but quite annoying.... I am convinced that the upgrade does not equal a genuine copy...

Try connecting the external drives directly to the read USB 3 ports with just a cable to see if they are detected there. Report back the results.

I am not sure how you would get a drive icon to show directly on the desktop. Post a screen capture of what you are seeing.

Windows 11 is still beta software, and you are one of the beta testers, unfortunately. There are ways to set it up to work more like the way you want it to instead of the way Microsoft wants you to work. We would need details on the specific issues you would like fixed to make suggestions. Microsoft has changed the video editing and other functions. Software from other vendors may be a better option for that. Screen capture functionality has also changed, but can be changed back.

Freezing would be caused by some program that is running. To correct that we would need to determine which program is causing the issue. Does this happen only just after starting the computer, or at intervals after the computer has been running for a while?

jdc, my setup is in such a way that pulling ext. drives off the shelf to set up manually is a pain. They are sort of built in with the pwr supplies underneath a huge 10' desk & cabinetry once used for amateur radio equiptment. A hobby, I had for years. I have decided to dump Win 11 on this pc, & go back to win 10. My hobbies are more adaptable to 10 rather than 11 anyway. I do have win 11 on another pc of which I can stay informed on win 11's progress.

Thanks once again jdc, for all your input. At my age, I really need to stay on the path of the least resistance..........

FWIW I've made shortcuts to my removable USB drives and leave them on my desktop. They still work even if you you temp unplug then replug them in.

A new problem arises.. I removed the SSD drive that had the windows 11 upgrade. I installed another nearly new formatted SSD drive & tried to install windows 10. The tower will not boot to bios or anything. I happen to have several SSD drives & regular drives used but formatted & checked OK. The computer will not recognize any of the drives. The pc is running but no screen display whatsoever.

I thought that perhaps win 11 might have affected the bios, so I removed the cmos clock, thinking that if the bios had been changed, this would fix that. No luck. The computer will only see the drive that has win11, nothing else. I even tried a dvd with win10. No luck with that either. Now I have this feeling that win11 has done something to the tower that will prevent it from running anything but win 11. I know that this is absurd, but what else is there ??

You need to make sure that the BIOS is set to boot from USB or CD/DVD.

Possibly useful links:

https://www.dell.com/community/en/co...ccf8a8de55b3c7

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/e...ndows-10-8-1-8

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals...fc5&lang=en-us

https://www.dell.com/community/en/co...ccf8a8de04644e

I understand that jdc, however, the pc will not display anything, Bios, Boot order or what ever. Aside from the cpu fan running, the pc appears to be dead. It will only come alive if I hook the hd with win 11. Win 11 will not even allow me to enter the bios................

This is really the pits. This Dell XPS 8930 will now only run with Windows 11. If I don't accept this, I have a dead XPS 8930. I cannot imagine what Microsoft did to cause such a behavior. I cannot even update any of the drivers including the bios. It's ether keep Windows 11 or trash the pc altogether.

I don't think Microsoft has anything to do with the computer not booting without the Windows 11 SSD installed. They would be in trouble if they did that. There should be a way to get into the BIOS / UEFI without a drive installed, or at least with a drive with no OS installed. If the drive failed you would need to have this capability.

Do you not even get a Dell logo? What happens if you press F2 repeatedly while power on the computer, both with the drive installed and without? The F12 key should also get you to the one-time boot menu.

More links:

https://www.minitool.com/news/window...-settings.html

https://www.pureit.ca/how-to-access-...%20BIOS%20menu.

https://www.steadfastsolutions.com.a...ndows-11-bios/


Is this computer still under warranty?

As i stated before, I get nothing! no dELL logo, no F12, or ANY OTHERS. I"ve been trying to clone the working hd so as to have something to work with without losing all my files. The cloning dock ran a copy,& paste rather than a clone.
So I will make another stab at it tomorrow. Ya, I can't believe that MS could do something like this, but I have rebuilt this pc several times by removing, reformatting & installing a fresh copy of win10 with no problems at all. But somehow, Windows 11 has disturbed something & I just cant put my finger on it. Thanks for staying with me.................

Try getting into the BIOS / UEFI with the Windows 11 drive installed. If you cannot do that, you may have a hardware failure of some sort. Try the F2, F12, and other methods listed in my last set of links. Report back results.