Windows 11 Start Menu Promotes Microsoft 365 with Annoying Pop-Ups

With people getting a free upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, Microsoft missed out on quite a bit of revenue. While I don't have Microsoft's profit books on hand by any means, I can imagine that the company wants to find a way to get its users to pay them in some shape or form, even if it's not for Windows 11 specifically.

Right now, Microsoft has a few big subscription-based money-makers, one of which is Microsoft 365. As such, we've seen the company advertise Microsoft 365 in all kinds of ways to get people subscribing and giving revenue to the Redmond giant. Now, we've seen a report that a new Microsoft 365 pop-up has been annoying people via the Start menu, and it doesn't seem like you can turn it off.

As reported by Windows Latest, there's a new pop-up that will appear when you open up the Start menu. It reads like this:

Action advised - back up your PC

We want to ensure that you always have access to your files, apps, settings, and passwords by backing them up in the cloud.

Continue

If you click on the "Continue" button, you'll be taken to Windows Backup, which uses OneDrive as its storage method. It seems the end goal for Microsoft is to get people using Windows Backup to keep their stuff safe, which then encourages them to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription to increase their storage space.

The worst part is that Windows Latest tried very hard to find a setting or option to disable this recommendation. After turning everything off, it noticed that the pop-ups were still happening. There's even a toggle called "Show account-related notifications," which doesn't disable the pop-up when turned off, but Windows Latest notes that the toggle won't get rid of "required notifications," which Microsoft may deem these pop-ups to be.

If you do decide to use OneDrive to store your computer's data, it's not a bad option by any means. In fact, its native integration with Windows may be a deal-maker for you, especially if you want a trouble-free experience of creating a PC backup. However, if you're willing to apply a little elbow grease, here are some alternatives you can try:

• I replaced my Google Drive backups with Syncthing, BackBlaze, and TrueNAS Cloud Sync, and it's so much cheaper
• 5 best cloud storage services for storing long-term backups
• How I use my NAS as a secure backup server for both of my PCs
• I use Wake-on-LAN and a NAS to back up my PC even when I'm away from home