Microsoft Removes The Whiff Of Vista From Windows 11 Insider Preview

Great news! Microsoft has finally squashed a Windows 11 Insider bug. No, it still hasn't "Made the Start Menu Great Again." No, you still can't drag the taskbar wherever you like. But yes, it simply kills the bug that played the Windows Vista boot chime on startup.

The bug was introduced in a Windows Insider Preview build of Microsoft's flagship operating system in June. Affected users found themselves on the receiving end of the Windows Vista startup sound – a noise usually followed by a deep sigh or groan as the follow-up to Windows XP lumbered onto users' screens almost two decades ago.

Microsoft acknowledged the bug as a known issue (it wasn't an Easter egg or something snuck in to remind users of one of the times the company dropped something a bit whiffy on their hard drives) and wrote: "This week’s flight comes with a delightful blast from the past and will play the Windows Vista boot sound instead of the Windows 11 boot sound. We're working on a fix."

An eagle-eyed The Register reader spotted that, more than a month later, the company has finally got around to resolving the issue. Microsoft said, "Fixed an issue where the Windows Vista boot sound was unexpectedly being used instead of the Windows 11 boot sound."

Our reader commented that the bug was "Proof that Windows 11 is really the new Windows Vista."

Hmm. Reviled by users: check. A hardware compatibility nightmare: check. Festooned with unwanted gadgets and widgets… yep, that too.

That said, in retrospect, perhaps Windows Vista was given too much of a hard time. It represented a significant shift for Microsoft from the architecture of Windows XP to something a bit more modern, which laid the groundwork for Windows 7. It was also a time before Microsoft developed its Copilot obsession and a desire to slurp as much user telemetry as it could from customers.

Who are we kidding? It was awful.

• Windows 10 turns 10: Dying OS just worked, lacked compatibility chaos
• Microsoft's next Windows 11 update is more 'enablement' than upgrade
• Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress
• Critics blast Microsoft's limited reprieve for those stuck on Windows 10

At the time of the whoopsie, one of Microsoft's Windows Insider bosses, Brandon LeBlanc, joked that "I went in and had some fun with the sound files in Windows and thought folks needed a blast from the past ???? You did say how much you loved Vista," before confirming "It's an actual bug."

LeBlanc was coy about how a bit of Windows Vista appeared in a test build of Windows 11. We can but hope that other blasts from the past might also be revived in the present. The Start Menu and Taskbar from Windows 10 would be a good start. ®