Tom (tired of the computer)

it was so jarring to boot up my windows 7 machine and discover the start bar search worked

It feels insane to be someone who really likes using windows 11... But it's only because I've done a bunch of group policy tweaks to fix everything that's really really annoying about it - far too much dicking around to be justifiable.

but also if you can edit group policy on your version and wanna completely disable web search it's worth doing imo

the only saving grace is the little deer plush wallpaper

i like that it does show settings, but just one, and not even a useful or relevant one

• Regedit
• navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
• If there is no Explorer vaule in Windows, create one.
• right click in the right hand pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value
• Name the value "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions". Double-click it and set its value data to "1"
• reboot
• never deal with bing results in your start menu again.