Samsung disabling Windows Update?

http://bsodanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/06/samsung-deliberately-disabling-windows.html

by firloop • 11 years ago

316 142 11 years ago

bsodanalysis.blogspot.com

smaili• 11 years ago

Fantastic discovery! Kind of makes me wonder if there are other OEMs doing the same kind of thing and we just never noticed it.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

we just never noticed it.

Quite likely if those who would have the knowledge to look into such things are also those who would just reformat the drive and install a fresh copy of the OS.

tracker12• 11 years ago

It's funny, but that's usually the first thing I do with new hardware... though it's also because in general I put in more RAM, and an SSD. Discovering my new rMBP (from August) can't have the memory upgraded and wasn't using the same msata interface as everyone else was disappointing. I typically DIY my own desktop builds, but laptops are getting way too locked down for my taste... I would expect memory, storage and battery to be user servicable on a > $1k laptop.

Between Sony, Lenovo and now Samsung... I'm getting really sick of this kind of crap.

UnoriginalGuy• 11 years ago

If this is true (and frankly I know for a fact it is, as I just downloaded the linked file containing Disable_Windowsupdate.exe, which is signed by Samsung Electronics CO and downloaded from Samsung's own servers) then Microsoft should pick up the phone and threaten the heck out of Samsung, Microsoft while somewhat neutered by anti-trust still has a great deal of power over OEMs and stuff like this is a perfect time to [ab]use it.

tantalor• 11 years ago

Yet, Microsoft is responsible for allowing such software to run in the background with no notification or authorization by the user or means to disable it.

monochromatic• 11 years ago

Yes, it's almost as if executable code is... executable.

pilif2• 11 years ago

It's really hard to find the correct middle-ground. Would you prefer if Windows worked like iOS where there are serious limitations on what apps can do in the background and where every application has to go through a central authority for vetting?

Or do you propose a solution that gives both freedom to the user while also not allowing something like this to happen?

Yes, there are whitelisting solutions (built into the OS by MS, btw), but they are a real pain in the ass to use - there's just too much stuff running on your machine at any given time.

zamalek2• 11 years ago

means to disable it.

1. Right click on the taskbar.

2. Click "Startup".

3. Disable what you want.

4. Click "Services"

5. Disable what you want.

This omits "Scheduled Tasks" (cron jobs) which can be set to execute on user logon. This is the single one that Microsoft still need to address.

Does whichever operating system you are comparing to Windows have a one-top-shop for the vast majority of startup configuration? Of the "big 4" (Mac, Linux, BSD, Windows) as far as I know this is a unique feature.

Proof-of-point: I have a copy of Linux, without telling you what the distro is, tell me how to disable the firewall (just an example of background software on most Linux distros).

no notification or authorization

Does that operating system of yours do this? Which of the "big 4" do? I know that Linux and BSD don't.

Microsoft is responsible for allowing such software to run in the background

So Microsoft is responsible for everything every Microsoft-stack developer on earth does? Does that mean that RMS is responsible for closed source software because some of it is made with GCC?

serge2k3• 11 years ago

If they didn't they would probably get sued and bashed on HN for promoting walled gardens and abusing OEMs.

Google has a similar problem with Android. They solved it by having anyone who wants to include Google services to fall into line.

Apple goes to extremes on iOS to prevent things like this.

crdoconnor5• 11 years ago

Honestly, as a Linux user this kind of makes me chuckle.

Microsoft has spent so much time abusing their market dominance, trying to cripple linux on the desktop that it's kind of funny for once to see a company which they can't strong-arm doing the same thing back to them.

electic• 11 years ago

Let the past be the past. The new MS is making some good moves. However, this is not MS's fault. When you operate in an OEM type environment, you will run into situations like this.

For example, if OSX was an OEM offering, companies would disable services and make unsavory modifications.

The reality, is like Lenovo, we have a bad vendor here and probably think twice before buying PCs from Samsung.

stinos• 11 years ago

trying to cripple linux on the desktop

according to what I hear year after year again ('still not the year of desktop linux') they even succeeded. lol.

serge2k3• 11 years ago

have they?

or have they just let the open source folks continue to talk and talk about "YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP" while releasing software that is different combinations of buggy, ugly, or a terrible UX.

na85• 11 years ago

Ultimately it's just another item on the long long list of why anyone should not buy Microsoft and Samsung products.

Samsung's terrible engineers coupled with a proprietary OS means users lose.

mariusmg• 11 years ago

Yes, it's clearly Microsoft's fault here. Geez.....

bentcorner• 11 years ago

Isn't there a method by which Samsung can deliver to Microsoft the set of drivers required for their hardware, to solve this exact problem?

Is this a matter of Samsung not wanting to go through the WHQL process?

crdoconnor5• 11 years ago

It's possible that Microsoft have been covertly throttling the WHQL process to punish Samsung somehow. They are competing head on with Microsoft in a number of other markets (tablets, etc.), and WHQL is not really subject to much, if any, legal scrutiny.

PlzSnow• 11 years ago

absurd nonsense

SmellyGeekBoy3• 11 years ago

Yes, I hear 9/11 was an inside job as well...

peteri• 11 years ago

As far as I know WHQL is automated so it's unlikely. i.e. you test it rather than MS and submit the results to them.

MS then sign the driver package and pass it back.

Don't think there are any humans involved.

firloop• 11 years ago

Meta: I submitted this post with the article's title but it seems the mods have changed the title to something less loaded.

imrehg• 11 years ago

That's weird. I don't think I like that the mods can tone down an article title, when submitters are expected to use the original.

If the article title makes a wrong claim, the comments and the voting mechanism will take care of that, does not seem to be the call mods should be making....

taspeotis• 11 years ago

when submitters are expected to use the original

Except for all the cases that they are not expected to use the original [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ubernostrum• 11 years ago

The guidelines are:

* If you use the original title, that's wrong; you should use a less-sensationalized title.

* If you use a less-sensationalized title, that's wrong; you should use the original title.

I hope that clears it up.

dang• 11 years ago

HN has never had a "original titles only" rule. If it did, anyone could get whatever they wanted on the front page just by giving a post a manipulative title. That's why the guidelines ask to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

Is this one misleading? I can't say. In cases where we are in no position to judge the accuracy of a dramatic claim, we sometimes add a question mark. It's a lightweight way to make the title provisionally conform to HN's guidelines while the community sorts out what's going on.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

Samsung provides their own updating software? I'm not surprised... consumer hardware and the drivers associated with them is in general a horrible mess of workarounds and I feel it's only going to get worse.

For example if there is USB 3.0 on laptop, the ports may not work with the installation of updates.

That's a pretty minor problem compared to what I've heard: automatic BIOS updates, which happen silently and brick the machine without any prior warning.

Ironically it is the "update culture" that brought us this whole mess in the first place; pushing out software (and hardware) that barely works "because we can always update it later", patching around bugs, and then realising that your patches break if someone else changes a piece you depend on, and so forth, thus leading to ultimatum situations like this.

vcarl• 11 years ago

When you enable Windows updates, it will install the Default Drivers for all the hardware no laptop which may or may not work. For example if there is USB 3.0 on laptop, the ports may not work with the installation of updates. So to prevent this, SW Update tool will prevent the Windows updates.

So they "fixed" the problem of their driver getting overwritten by disabling all OS level updates? Oof. Screams shoddy development if this is true.

kbenson• 11 years ago

I wonder if it was meant to be a short term fix until some drivers passed certification or something? Or maybe their software update selectively runs windows update to find updates and notifies the user? I wonder how long it's been set up this way? None of these are good, but the details may mitigate quite how bad it is (in spirit, if not reality).

jbdigriz2• 11 years ago

Is this even true? Windows updates only drop critical updates and can't think of a case where updated Windows drivers were automatically installed over existing drivers without explicit request or prompting to do so (except perhaps for critical flaws where the driver itself compromises security). Just yesterday I had to manually find and select an optional driver update for Intel HD graphics which one would expect to be in category of "autoupdate" if this were true...

Disabling ALL of Windows Update for this questionable reason seems entirely out of line. If their own SW Update software is already present, why not instead track said drivers and simply alert the user that vendor specific drivers must be used, offering the ability to restore them?? Makes no sense...

ascagnel_• 11 years ago

Generally, Windows Update will update your drivers to the most recent version MS has available -- but they mandate WHQL drivers, so they're rarely the most recent. For example, while MS has nVidia drivers up on Windows Update, if you have a more recent version direct from nVidia, it will not overwrite that.

This situation is 100% on Samsung. They've put hardware out there that they can't target properly to overwrite the generic version.

CountSessine• 11 years ago

Sounds to me like they put defective rev of a USB3 host controller on the board, and they need their own driver to work around it, but the host controller is going to identify itself generically enough that Samsung can't rely on PNP ID matching to pick their work-around driver. Hence they disable windows update to avoid getting a driver update that would stomp their workaround driver.

Whatever it is, it sounds really sketchy.

busterarm• 11 years ago

It's because we don't do recalls on computers...and we should.

Faulty hardware like this goes out _all the time_. Eons ago when I sold computers, HP had a line of high end laptops (~$3500) with 2 slots for RAM (back when that was a big deal in a laptop...) and we found out that the second RAM slot's pins were not connected to anything on the motherboard. On every single laptop we opened (30+). Literally they had just pins on a board with no traces and advertised it as a 2-slot laptop.

HP stonewalled us (Circuit City flagship store, so we had corporate involved) and kept trying to get us to sign an NDA before they would confirm the problem or offer a solution. We said fuck that and shipped several thousand of the things (the chain's entire order) back to them as defective.

They caved, like they should have, but complained about it the entire time.

gruez• 11 years ago

Why couldn't samsung's service just programmatically uninstall the default windows drivers and install their own? Was that too hard compared to just disabling windows update?

rubbingalcohol• 11 years ago

Most vendors I've dealt with have their drivers certified with Microsoft's WHQL program and pushed out automatically through Windows update. I'm not sure why Samsung couldn't have done it this way.

daemin2• 11 years ago

Maybe the stuffed up the hardware so the ID's they use actually map to other devices by other vendors.

frik• 11 years ago

If Samsung blocks the Windows 10 "important" nagware patch KB 3035583 that installs autimatically on Windows 7-8.1 (except on PC with Domain/AD) than it's a service to the user.

It replaces the Windows Update dialog with an Windows 10 advertisement and it adds a second start button to the startmenu that lauches an advertisement app. If you click the wrong button it will automatically download Windows 10 in the background - Microsoft's way to not repeat the Vista, Win8 and Win8.1 launch fiascos. To each their own, some also like the Ask toolbar that comes with Flash installer.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2907472/operating-systems/w...

Zweihander• 11 years ago

Adware vs Malware is an important distinction. No one here is claiming Microsoft are saints but what Samsung is doing (if true) is at best Lenovo level malicious negligence.

interurban2• 11 years ago

Windows 10 isn't released yet, so there's no way that I'm aware of for it to download Windows 10 in the background.

JadeNB2• 11 years ago

Although the language is a bit cagey, it seems like at least parts of Windows 10 will be downloaded before the official availability date:

Between reservation and when your upgrade is ready, the files you need for the upgrade will be downloaded to your PC to make the final installation go more quickly.

(from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-faq > What happens when I reserve?).

JadeNB2• 11 years ago

This seems a bit like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend [even if also the enemy of my friends]." Without debating the merits of the Windows 10 patch you describe, surely it's not Samsung's place to decide on the user's behalf to block not only that, but all updates?

detaro• 11 years ago

Yeah, and they could limit the graphics card to text-only mode. Improved battery usage AND it protects users from seeing advertisement videos and images online.

deciplex• 11 years ago

I don't know why this is getting downvoted - it raises a good point. What Samsung has done is definitely Bad News, but Microsoft has set a precedent recently that they will abuse the Windows Update app's special place on Windows installations to serve up advertisement to users. If Samsung also sets the precedent that OEMs will disable Windows Update - even if the reason for it here is poor - we might be better off.

Animats• 11 years ago

Normally, you'd expect a major hardware vendor and a major software vendor to be talking enough to avoid such problems. Does this indicate that Microsoft and Samsung are not getting along? That's quite possible, since they compete in tablets now.

MichaelGG• 11 years ago

Eh normally you just expect hardware vendors to be so incompetent at writing software that this isn't too surprising.

nivla• 11 years ago

I don't understand, why is Samsung pulling stunts like this all the time? It would make sense if they were trying to get up the ladder but they are already there, they hold an unquestionably large market share of Android. Things like these won't do any good in the long run but only prompt consumers to actively avoid the brand.

Some of the things that really surprises me:

[1] http://gizmodo.com/samsung-rigged-the-s4-to-unnaturally-perf...

[2] http://www.neowin.net/news/samsungs-gamepad-is-a-microsoft-l...

[3] http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/09/technology/security/samsung-...

darkmighty2• 11 years ago

I think the most simple explanation is that they can get away with it without substantial backlash.

ars• 11 years ago

Still doesn't explain why. Are you suggesting they are doing it just for fun?

rtpg• 11 years ago

The simplest explanation is that Samsung has mostly shoddy engineers and designers.

The voice recognition thing is that they outsourced the voice recognition, so are just piping all conversation to them.

The gamepad thing is "oh we need a gamepad, the 360 is popular right"?

the benchmark thing is "our manager wants us to beat these specific benchmarks, let's just overclock for the benchmarks the manager mentioned"

I mean, it doesn't excuse them of course, but I imagine this is mainly a consequence of a lot of people whose job it is to meet their manager's checklist of features, and not caring about the products themselves.

MichaelCrawford• 11 years ago

amazons alexa is an always on internet connected "speaker" that answers your questions.

i expect amazon intends to obtain acceptance by not copping to the fact that it also has to be a microphone.

geon3• 11 years ago

The gamepad is a complete non-issue. It is as similar to the xbox controller as the xbox controller is to the dreamcast controller, which in turn is similar to...

It is the rounded rectangle all over again.

fr0styMatt2• 11 years ago

I agree with this. I can't fathom how the controller looks similar, except that the buttons are the same colour, or close.

The shape is totally different. I don't get it.

kijin• 11 years ago

Samsung hardware is top-notch.

But they're a hardware company first and foremost. Most hardware companies tend not to be great software companies. The company culture just isn't designed for producing great software. See also: Sony.

I can't think of a single piece of software made by Samsung that gave me anything other than a thoroughly negative experience. Even their phones function best when they are not burdened with a Samsung ROM.

tonyedgecombe• 11 years ago

You can't be great at one without the other, companies like Samsung, Dell and HP have failed to recognise this for a long time.

eveningcoffee• 11 years ago

I think that they believe that they own the hardware customer bought and not the customers.

lmm• 11 years ago

They're a hardware company that aren't very good at software. It sounds like they found out that USB3.0 stopped working on some of their test machines, did the simplest 5-minute fix and called it good.

ademarre• 11 years ago

I'm fed up with these hardware vendors incessantly messing with software. Why doesn't Microsoft tighten up its OEM licensing terms to put an end to this kind of thing?

bskap2• 11 years ago

Because the US and EU have repeatedly told Microsoft that they're not allowed to force OEMs to use their software.

viraptor• 11 years ago

I'm not sure this applies. "You're not allowed to disable updates" is not even close to "You cannot install any browser other than IE".

Encosia• 11 years ago

A little anti-trust action against you by the government will do that. Though it may not have been solely consumer friendly in the past, strongarming OEMs to avoid these kinds of messes was one of the things that got them in trouble 15 years ago.

jriordan• 11 years ago

Microsoft owns Windows. Licenses it to OEMs. If Microsoft didn't have a problem with OEM's disabling Windows Update, then then would have prohibited it in their license agreement.

Aloha2• 11 years ago

I'd be very surprised if the OEM license doesn't include such language - just because its there doesn't mean Microsoft is aware of what the OEM's are doing.

Qantourisc• 11 years ago

There is also the possiblity nobody considered this to be a problem ... ever ...

scrapcode• 11 years ago

Of course this is ridiculous in the lens of a privacy aware techie. In the lens of a consumer-first corporation such as Samsung, is this possibly the result of "convention over configuration" from the eyes of management demanding this kind of (de)functionality from their devs?

I think we should start focusing on a fundamental shift on what management means and how accountable that position is.

Mikeb852• 11 years ago

To be fair, Windows generally updates itself at the worst times, rendering your computer inoperable for an absurdly long time (a typical Windows update often takes longer than updating to a completely new version of a typical Linux distro).

OEMs should just throw their weight behind one of the commercial Linuxes and be done with the madness. They want to compete with Apple and OSX, that's their chance.

nitramnitram2• 11 years ago

Wait a sec.. Apple has like 8% market share for desktops while Windows has ~80%. And Linux has just a few percents.

Mikeb852• 11 years ago

If you look at market share for consumers, Apple is doing much better.

HP, Lenovo and Dell still rule the enterprise, but Apple does very well with consumers. And more and more enterprises are moving to cloud based solutions, buying tablets and negating the 'need' for PCs, even if for the time being they're still buying cheap PCs.

vxNsr• 11 years ago

Well this is a truly terrifying turn of events, though the most amazing part is that chat agent was any help at all, I was expecting a recommendation that he call the support line or an outright denial. so samsung can at least be commended for giving their staff at least a little training.

darkhorn• 11 years ago

If you install Turkcell's 3G connection app (which comes with the dongle) you will see that it disables internet sharing forever.

Zekio• 11 years ago

Well at least nobody was surprised by this, so that is good right?

Jokes aside, this is ridiculously fucked up.

curiousnoob• 11 years ago

I don't quite understand why this is fucked up. Could someone elaborate? (I'm not doubting that it is fucked up at all. I would just like to understand it)

Is it that the developer of the OS is offering users a free better version and the OEM is preventing its users from benefiting? Why would Samsung do this? What could their incentive be?

tacticus• 11 years ago

The OEM is disabling all updates. Security patches and better drivers (that are published through windows updates from the ODM). not just new features.

Would you like winodws xp blaster boxes to return.

lucb1e• 11 years ago

TL;DR: Samsung's software is meant to install device drivers for your laptop. Because there are also drivers in Windows Update that Samsung considers conflicting, they disabled all of Windows Update to prevent those drivers from being installed.

pja• 11 years ago

This is about as end-user hostile as the Lenovo Superfish thing. By the sounds of things, Samsung has managed to ship some of their laptops with devices that fail with the standard windows devices drivers, but don’t have their own pci-id which would allow Samsung to ship a custom driver. Samsung’s solution to this is not to issue a hardware recall & replace the laptops, but to expose their customers’ private personal information to every future malware author on the planet.

In some ways, this is worse than Superfish. Superfish was at least not deliberate; it seems pretty clear that Lenovo really didn’t understand the full implications of what they were doing by installing it on their laptops. There’s no way that Samsung doesn’t understand that by disabling Windows Update they are trading off their customers’ security against the cost of a hardware recall.

(It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Microsoft actually has ways of blacklisting driver updates under Windows Update & will liaise with OEMs to help them sort out problems like this - it wouldn’t be that hard to maintain a list of 'if the hardware looks like this then install that driver instead of the standard one'. In which case Samsung is simply trading off a bit of management time against their customers’ security which is even more unacceptable.)

polymatter• 11 years ago

its probably a short term fix while they work through the process of working out how to identify the defective machines and isolate them properly within Windows Updates.

still incredibly dodgy though.

k2point0• 11 years ago

That's weird thing that I have heard about Samsung Windows Updates.

yrro• 11 years ago

I'm amazed that you're allowed to do this and still ship with the Windows logo!

galfarragem• 11 years ago

Is it safe/efficient to uninstall all bloatware from a laptop? I own a Samsung and over the years I've unninstalled the obvious bloatware without any problem. I wonder if I can delete all of them.

SmellyGeekBoy3• 11 years ago

I've taken this approach on others' PCs before with great effect (msconfig is your friend) but sometimes it's just quicker to do a clean install. I tend to triple boot Linux / Windows / Current-tinkering-OS-of-choice on my own machine so I'll usually dedicate at least a day to getting everything set up when I have a new one.

nathankleyn• 11 years ago

First thing I do when I get a new laptop is wipe it completely and do a fresh install. You can selectively restore the drivers/software you actually need.

Of course it goes without saying that this isn't something most of the millions of unknowing Samsung customers are likely to be able to do themselves, let alone be aware it's even a good idea.

rossng• 11 years ago

I'm not that surprised. SW Update and Easy Settings are among the two worst pieces of software I've ever used.

If I press the volume keys on my (i7, Ivy Bridge) Samsung laptop, I often have to wait several minutes before anything happens.

Better yet, a clean Windows install on that machine will always fail because for some reason the laptop lets Windows install the bootloader to the mini cache SSD - which the BIOS doesn't recognise.

I'm not going to be buying another Samsung PC.

jug• 11 years ago

Wow...

For example if there is USB 3.0 on laptop, the ports may not work with the installation of updates. So to prevent this, SW Update tool will prevent the Windows updates.

Pretty sure this sentence causes brain damage just by reading it. I hope this receives Microsoft's attention. They take Windows Update very seriously these days and will probably flip over this.

saturdaysaint• 11 years ago

Microsoft should start some kind of initiative to make building your own laptop more like Google's Project ARA. No manufacturer is doing a thing to advance the Windows platform but there's actually a competitive, vibrant market in a lot of aftermarket part categories (on desktop) - look at the shootouts for CPU fans, keyboards, cases, monitors. I'd gladly pay a little bit more and sacrifice some mobility to be able select a high quality frame, top-notch keyboard, silent/high quality PSU and lack of crapware.

I built a fast but near-silent Windows PC for music a few years back and I'm still impressed by what a great system it is.

Samsung disabling Windows Update?

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