Windows 11 January Update Breaks Notepad

https://winbuzzer.com/2026/01/22/windows-11-january-update-breaks-notepad-snipping-tool-and-other-apps-xcxwbn/

by Aldipower • 6 months ago

60 25 6 months ago

bfrog• 6 months ago

SpywareOS couldn’t even be bothered to allow text editor functionality, wasn’t in the KPIs of user activity monitoring and monetizing

mossTechnician• 6 months ago

Partway through this article, Winbuzzer asks me to "Install Winbuzzer Prompt Station." I don't think this is a legitimate source.

It looks like most of the article is a rehash of this Windows Central article from a day earlier:

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...

Aldipower2• 6 months ago

The Windows central article you are linking lacks a lot of additional information. The Winbuzzer article is better imho calling it not legitimate is a little bit harsh.

gruez• 6 months ago

Partway through this article, Winbuzzer asks me to "Install Winbuzzer Prompt Station." I don't think this is a legitimate source.

It's just a first-party ad. There's even a "PROMO" tag above. The fact that it's first party, combined with the fact the site isn't too popular is probably why it didn't get blocked by your adblocker. But it doesn't make the site less of a "legitimate source" than say, The New York Times, which also has ads.

davisr• 6 months ago

I love what Microsoft is doing. Keep it up!

baal80spam• 6 months ago

The slop must flow!

fjlunky• 6 months ago

The market loves it too, MSFT is up 6% this week. There are likely other things that drive this but my hope is that the share price is increasing on the idea that these patches are so disastrous that even Microsoft should be able to see that their current strategy isn’t delivering a good product.

embedding-shape2• 6 months ago

I just had to boot Windows yesterday for some quick work (adding Windows support to my browser I've built from scratch) and since I barely have any tools on the Windows installation, I used notepad.exe to edit stuff.

And of course, it has a very obvious bug, any file shows "$filname.$ext.txt" in the title bar, regardless if it's a .txt or not. So opening config.toml shows as config.toml.txt.

Seemingly Microsoft got rid of the entire QA department, judging by the amount of bugs. Seriously, does the developers who implement these changes not open up the application they're editing even once before they push this out to customers? What the fuck is going on?

techjamie• 6 months ago

For the time that you were using Windows, you are the QA department.

embedding-shape2• 6 months ago

I'm a shit QA department though, because I forcefully shut down my computer when I get too frustrated, and never send any bug reports to Microsoft...

robotnikman• 6 months ago

Seemingly Microsoft got rid of the entire QA department, judging by the amount of bugs.

Unfortunately they did, back when the new CEO took charge in 2014

olig15• 6 months ago

Not trying to defend windows, but this is probably more likely down the stupid defaults Windows has by the fact it hides extensions by default. So if you name a file foo.pdf, you’ll see it as ‘foo.pdf’ but it’s actually called ‘foo.pdf.txt’. I can’t for the life of me figure out why this is the default, but it’s been this way for decades.

honeycrispy• 6 months ago

This is heartbreaking in a way to see what's become of it. Windows was my childhood playground. I can't not feel some kind of attachment and a desire to save it.

1970-01-01• 6 months ago

Notepad has been broken since they added telemetry to it a decade ago. I'm not joking. If you break telemetry globally, notepad will crash, along with calc and paint.

Aldipower2• 6 months ago

Recently I've installed Windows XP on an 20 years old machine to run an old software synth on it. Man, was XP a slick and neat system from today's perspective! Back in the days it felt sluggish, but now in comparison, I think it was one of the best Windowses ever.

nikanj3• 6 months ago

When it came out it was universally hated, when SP2 came out it was hated again with renewed vigor

doubled112• 6 months ago

I even recall that people were concerned about spyware and user tracking in XP because it required online activation.

It's amazing what would trigger outrage back then vs what it all looks like now.

brandon272• 6 months ago

From a UX and simplicity standpoint, in terms of what a typical user touches and experiences in an OS, I think XP SP2 was Windows at its peak. The UI seemed minimal, balanced and practical compared to the obtrusive mess that exists today.

ch_123• 6 months ago

SP2 came out it was hated again with renewed vigor

Was it? My memory is that SP2 was the point at which most outlets considered to be "good".

nikanj3• 6 months ago

Microsoft forum user Kave discovered the problem on Tuesday when trying to access work-related information stored in Notepad. “Getting the error code 0x803f8001 for most my microsoft apps including my Notepad app which has important information and URLS i need for my job. This is getting pretty paralyzing,”

It's always good to get some end-user perspective. "Hmm, notepad can't open a text file anymore" is such a trivial hurdle for power users, but completely blocks regular users

DerArzt• 6 months ago

MS Teams shipped being able to edit MS office files but not .txt's. This news about Win11 breaking notepad isn't that surprising. They've been cooked for a while now.

willio58• 6 months ago

It's always amazing to me when a 3.5T market cap company can't make their basic software included in their flagship OS (that costs money by the way) _extremely_ stable and reliable.

The AI push is insane for sure, but this was happening to Windows well before that.

replooda• 6 months ago

"Microsoft is a corporation that turns updates into chaos," but Notepad's got to be a new low.

rich_sasha• 6 months ago

Ha, I remember a Notepad clone was my first Delphi project.

I'll see if I have a copy of it somehow still laying around 20 years later. Microsoft seems to be struggling and I'd like to help if I can.

Windows 11 January Update Breaks Notepad

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