the new update will permanently remove them from your computer

This week, one of the most anticipated launches in the personal computer sector finally took place – Windows 11 24H2; Also known as Windows 11 2024 Update, it brings a lot of new features as well as many AI-powered features.

However, with all this new material coming into the system, something had to come out. Microsoft’s priorities are different now compared to when Windows 11 was released; and now the company is completely focused on integrating Copilot into all parts of the operating system and cannot waste time on continuing to support little-used programs.

Perhaps that’s why Windows 11 24H2 is a system update that removes most of the programs and items we’ve seen in a long time. As Microsoft itself said, More than 40 components have been removed from Windows 11; which means that when we install the update, they will no longer be on the system, and many cannot even be installed separately. For the average user, they are “disappeared” forever, although there are already some “tricks” to restore some of the affected applications.

To be fair, many of the removed components are already obsolete or have had a replacement either in Windows 11 or as a separate app. For example, Internet Explorer has finally been removed from Windows, which may be a problem for many companies that still support web applications that only run in this browser; The solution is to use the Edge browser in Internet Explorer mode to get similar functionality. As for Edge, the original version of the program, which was based on Microsoft’s own code, has also been abandoned in favor of the current version, which is based on the same code used in Google Chrome.

These are understandable changes. The hardest changes to understand are those that eliminate components that have no direct replacement; The most controversial example is WordPad, a word processor that was permanently removed from Windows 11. WordPad was initially widely used because it allowed you to open Microsoft Word .doc files completely free of charge and without the need to purchase an Office license.

Times have changed, and Microsoft now prefers us to buy a Microsoft 365 subscription, which includes Word and other office and work applications. For this reason, the company has decided to remove WordPad from Windows 11 installations and also does not allow it to be downloaded from official media. As a replacement, the company recommends Microsoft Word if we are dealing with .doc files, or Notepad for regular text .txt files.

The good news is that we can continue to use WordPad thanks to the “trick”, although we will have to do this before installing the Windows update. If we still have WordPad on our computer, all we need to do is backup copy of the folder “C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories”; we can copy this folder anywhere (for example, to our personal folder) before installing the update; Once the update is complete, we will be able to use the wordpad.exe executable file without any problems.