The reason I do not use 3rd party patches on Windows.

[Suff]

If you're using ExplorerPatcher or StartAllBack, this is why your computer won't start

[Workingman]

I use ExplorerPatcher on W11 and everything works fine. I also have AdGuard, Tabs Plus and New Tab Page extensions for Edge. Just make sure that you are on the latest versions of things.

The only time I got the black screen of death - computer would not start - was with an official Microsoft upgrade (22H2) to W11 over a year ago. It was a widely reported cock-up and it took MS till Nov 22 to fix it.

And every time Edge gets updated, fairly regularly nowadays, I have to go in and change things back to my liking, though it does not touch the ones made by the extensions. All you get is unecessay bloat. I am seriously thinking of dropping it for Firefox. My old favourite, Opera, is now Chinese owned and is not trustworthy. Chrome is just a no-no.

[Suff]

However Microsoft was the company who had the Motto "the job is not done until Excel won't run". Also they changed Windows 3.11 more than 30 times to stop it running on top of DRDOS.

They expired my trust in them supporting 3rd party extensions. Especially extensions which re-enable features they have explicitly disabled to create a new "experience" (read totally crap hellscape).

There is always the risk.

[Workingman]

If Microsoft stopped their managers and script kiddies from making Window "better" there would not be the need of so many customisation apps. They even have their own store for such things!

The other thing is that the customisation apps tend to use what is already in the OS but we, the ordinary users and purchasers, are locked out of.

Microsoft has forgotten that the majority of Win users were brought up on Win 3.11 to Win 7 where we could get in and change all sorts of things to our liking. It now concentrates on the poor sods who only know things from the disastrous Win 8 to Win 11. They know nothing else so just go with the flow.

People like me hate them for it.

[Suff]

People like me hate them for it.

Me too. I will not forgive them for turning a Windows box into a Chrome box. There is a reason I don't buy a chrome box. Because the interface sucks and Google don't give a crap what you think about it.