Windows Repair Toolbox

Basically, yes. I think we've all come to expect freeware to also be free (libre) software. I certainly am in favor of free software as well, but I think that we assume at this point that if you aren't making money from it and you aren't releasing the code, you have something to hide. However, the interesting thing is that back in the day, shareware was often closed source unless you paid to register it, in which case you got access to the code (depending on the publisher, obviously).

It's not 'no reason' :-)

They are being scrutinised for a reason.

And that reason is the in the very nature of the software. What it does, and what it wants access to on the system and so on.

Until it becomes popular, it is sold to Avast, and becomes spyware.

Such is the circle of life for system utilities in Windows land.

It's possible, but would you really be surprised if you installed it and later discovered it contained spyware/malware?

I would be surprised if I got something from a well-known, reputable company that turned out to be malware. Something from an Internet rando? Not so much.

For increased safety, I've settled on using software that is open source, has a paid version, or is from one of the usual suspects.

"Not gonna audit it myself, though. I'm sure everyone else has gone through it."

-Open source enthusiast, probably.

That may be it.

i've got cut/copy/paste on my context menu in 11...

check out autoruns [0] for easily cleaning context menu, startup junk, etc.

[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/aut...

> Ironically, Windows 10 and 11 easily have the smoothest install of any version of Windows ever.

Since introduction of WIM it's the same for all versions. WIM was introduced with Vista.

> It's still a mystery to me why every other version of Windows is terrible.

Because you conditioned yourself on the meme-train. There is no 'bad' Windows, there are just new versions which were needed to pave their way for the new tech.

Chicago really pushed the availability of the computer for Average Joe.

Millenium was a swan song for 9x line and included a bunch of tech from the business line to improve the reliability of the OS, including Automatic Updates, which were promptly disabled by k3w1 h4x0rs to 'save resources' and to 'fuck with Bill'.

Vista had a ton of internal changes like integrity levels, new WDM and WDDM (finally the graphic drivers crash didn't mean 100% reboot of the system), totally revamped WinSxS (I think you forgot what DLL Hell was - Vista is the OS what hit the nail in the coffin) and a ton and ton of things what you probably think came in Win7. It didn't help what MS didn't manage to tell the OEMs to fuck off with their shitstock and hence - 'Vista Ready', using 4200RPM drives with 512Mb of RAM. In 2007.

Win8 was a difficult beast, which should had transform the human-computer interaction but again manufacturers told MS to fuck off and that's why there is still only 10% of notebooks with a touchscreen on the market. Everyone shat on Windows Store while simultaneously happily blowing the walled garden of iOS (and Play Market and Steam were a thing too, for years at that moment).

Win11... yeah, this is shit. The development was taken over by pumpkin latte guys with McAirs who for sure doesn't eat their own dogfood.

Also people forget (or don't even know) on what awful hardware Windows runs sometimes yet it's always Gates himself who is at fault what a cheapass Shitsco 9999 with a bubblegum instead of a thermal paste BSODed again. Hey, man, if you got IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL that it's 90% hardware, 10% drivers of the said hardware. Mac fanboys really love to boast about stability of their shiny overpriced shit, without even thinking about how many variations of HW (even without HW revisions) there are for Apple computers and for Windows computers.

Systems don't really get slower over time because of used disk space. It used to be somewhat true when HDDs, and bad ones at that, were more common. Nowadays though what's left on your 2 TB <$70 2 GB/s SSD storage matters little so long as your drive isn't near completely out of space to the point it can't place things easily. Background apps/injections are another thing though. You can never uninstall an app for 10 years and your computer will be none the slower for it as long as you disable them from automatically starting up, loading 5 background services all the time, and having poorly written hooks into things like Explorer which constantly get loaded every time you open a file dialog.

Tinkering for tinkering's sake can definitely be fun though and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes poking at things, and sometimes breaking them, is a great way to learn new things or even just scratch a casual itch.

Hm. Looks like it's just giving you quick access to tools that already exist in windows.