computing Tech Radar Windows

Fed up of adverts creeping into Windows 11? You won’t like Microsoft’s latest update, then, although it does provide some important bug fixes

March 12, 2025
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  • Microsoft has just released a new update for Windows 11
  • Unfortunately, it brings an advert for PC Game Pass into the Settings app
  • Not everyone will see this, though, and this update applies a raft of useful bug fixes, particularly for File Explorer

Windows 11 just received its latest update, and as is quite often the case, there’s good and bad news – important fixes for File Explorer is the former, and yet another advert being officially introduced to the OS is the latter.

Yes, in case you didn’t realize, yesterday was 'Patch Tuesday', and the March cumulative update for Windows 11 was released.

Let’s get the dubious move out of the way first, then: the mentioned ad is placed in the Settings app, on the home page panel, and consists of promotional activity for PC Game Pass.

The positive news here is that it will only appear for certain Windows 11 users – those who are PC Game Pass subscribers – the reason being that it’s an ad that offers a referral for friends who might want to join the service, too.

In other words, this gives you the ability to invite friends to try PC Game Pass for free (for a 14-day trial, or at least that was the case in testing).

Right, onto the File Explorer fixes, which, for those who might be unsure, is the app that powers the very folders that you use on a daily basis (most likely) to deal with your files.

As Bleeping Computer reports, there are quite a few cures for various File Explorer blues, including an important one, whereby Windows 11 now offers much-improved performance levels when opening folders that have a large quantity of media files within them.

A problem that meant the right-click context menu was also sluggish to appear with cloud-based files has been resolved, too. Also, regarding files in the cloud (OneDrive), the thumbnails for these now show properly in Windows 11 search results (whereas some thumbnails previously wouldn’t be displayed).

On top of that, an issue with the address bar overlapping files when in full-screen mode with a File Explorer window has been remedied (and URLs entered manually in the address bar are guaranteed to work, whereas some were failing previously).

There are quite a number of bug fixes in this patch, in fact, including some work on the Start menu (where the colors were wrong in the Account Manager flyout), and a cure for an odd sound-related issue. The latter saw the PC’s volume increase to 100% when the device woke from sleep (a rude awakening indeed for some unsuspecting Windows 11 users, no doubt – and another in an unfortunate collection of recent audio bugs).

Also, a glitch that caused some apps to not recognize a connected scanner has been smoothed over, too.

There are the usual security patches here, as you’d expect, and also some work on features, including useful new shortcuts for the scan mode of Windows 11’s screen reader tool, Narrator.

Acer Aspire 14 AI Laptop powered on to the Windows 11 login screen

(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)

Analysis: Ad aggro and File Explorer remains wonky – yet Microsoft deserves some credit here

So, another advert has made it all the way through testing into the finished version of Windows 11 – and I can’t say I’m impressed with that. Okay, so this advert might actually be useful, I don’t dispute that – it is at least targeted at PC Game Pass subscribers, and they might genuinely want to give their friends the chance of a free trial (to try out some coop gaming with them).

That said, this is still an out-and-out advert – not some kind of ‘suggestion’ or more subtle prod to use a Microsoft service – and the more of this that’s brought into Windows 11, the more I feel that Microsoft is crossing lines it really shouldn’t be crossing. (Not in a paid-for operating system).

To give Microsoft credit where it’s due, we have witnessed some recommendations (in testing) of late that could prove genuinely useful, so the company isn’t going entirely in the wrong direction with Windows 11’s various nudges and prompts.

Furthermore, it’s definitely good to see the work on fixing File Explorer, although there have been a lot of bugs affecting it, and some annoyances still remain. Notably, only last month, the February 2025 update caused chaos with File Explorer falling over for some folks.

This is an area Microsoft clearly needs to fully smooth over, as it’s a central part of the Windows 11 interface, so it really doesn’t look good if there are glitches hanging about in the works.

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