Uninstall it then. 🤷🏻‍♂️

When you set up a new PC, OneDrive automatically starts syncing files based on the Microsoft account you sign in with.

I wish that Microsoft’s cloud storage service was opt-in instead of opt-out.

I set up dozens of Windows machines for users every month. There is literally a page during the out of box experience that prompts the user as to whether or not they want their Desktop, Documents, and Pictures mapped to OneDrive.

The person writing the article and anyone else complaining about this are mashing “next” without paying attention and then complaining it wasn’t set up the way they want.

I actually do use OneDrive for those locations, even going so far as to symlink AppData game save locations over to OneDrive so that everything is the same between my laptop and desktop.

I haven’t had the issue the author describes with AC Valhalla or with Rockstar Games Launcher.

After you set up a new device, OneDrive doesn’t automatically download the entirety of its contents. Files are downloaded “on demand” when the system tries to access them, and I bet that’s what caused the stall the author described.

The only inconvenience I’ve ever suffered from having game saves in OneDrive was with Call Of Duty’s Modern Warfare reboot. The settings config file lives in the Documents folder, so each time I launched the game on my Desktop or Laptop I would have to edit the settings to suit that device.

Really, this is the games' fault, at least if they were released in the last ten years. That's how long Documents has been a subdirectory of OneDrive by default. If you've built software that can't handle that gracefully and released it since, that's just negligent. It's not like the windows documentation doesn't tell you places that wouldn't have this problem where you can store machine-specific data.

I can understand how this might be annoying but I’m pretty sure it’s convenient for OneDrive users. Why doesn’t he just disable syncing on that folder? How many times is he changing PC?

I set up a Windows PC for a friend, and he insisted on using his M$ account (bad decision). That caused the Desktop folder (not Downloads, not Documents, just the Desktop) to be stored in OneDrive. So as I tried to load his old PC's Software hive, to extract the windows key, it crashed the PC. No problem, the original hive was still exported on the Desktop. I just rebooted into the boot stick and tried to load the hive there. After searching for the Desktop folder for 30 minutes, I finally located it in the OneDrive folder. And despite it being there, and taking up space, according to dir, it couldn't be accessed, like wtf?

• Who wants to share the desktop, but not Downloads etc? In contrast to the other user folders, the desktop is filled with program links that won't even work anywhere else.
• And why not make it accessible in a live boot? Like, it was obviously accessible to some degree, but not readable somehow? Wtf?

I hate games that use the base Documents directory. So many new subfolders in there. We need a //Games folder instead of /Documents/My Games or whatever it is called nowadays. At least it isn't /My Documents anymore. That damn space was a problem causer.

You can decline using OneDrive during installation. And after installation you can uninstall it or just disable the service.

That's it.