Microsoft takes PUPs behind the shed with gun in hand Remond has updated its paid System Center Endpoint Protection and Forefront Endpoint Protection services with a feature to kill spammy and advertising injecting programs operating from within enterprise networks. The upgrades will help system admins to eliminate potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) from networks that are not …
Beat me to it. I would also reference the “Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service”.
In fact it does. Microsoft can be a real hoot. Gather round and hear my tale.
I have 2 HTPC's running fully licenced Win 8.1's. One HTPC runs on 2.5" spinning rust, the other on SSD.
After much nagging about Win 10 it decided to have a go at it where it could do the least harm, and 'applied' for the Win 10 'upgrade'. After a few weeks the install came through and i ran it. Af few programs like Bitdefender were nixed for being 'incompatible', but they were quickly reinstalled.
Now this HTPC runs on an Intel 3225 with internal graphics, and I wasn't best pleased with the performance, especially playing HD sources. The OTHER HTPC, however, runs an AMD A8 APU which much more muscle, especially in the graphics department. This HTPC, as you remember, has a conventional HD, so it takes a while to boot up, which can be annoying for a Home Entertainment system.
So I yanked the SSD from the Intel box and put it in the AMD box. To my great surprise it booted without isues, and after installing the correct drivers for the AMD APU and some ancillaries I found myself with a HTPC in perfect working order;
This must have been totally unacceptable to Microsoft, because when I booted the system yesterday it informed me I needed to activate Windows. Upon clicking the appropriate buttons, I was warned that the product code was invalid, and I needed to input a new one. But the code from the Original 8.1 installation does not work anymore (remember, this is a real license) and when Microsoft pushed the OTA Win 10 install, it did not issue me a new product code.
So the free Win 10 'upgrade' has now resulted in a 'Win 8.1 invalidation'.
Oh well, I have some unused 7 licenses left, or I could try XBMCBuntu (or is that called KodiBuntu now ?)
"I booted the system yesterday it informed me I needed to activate Windows."
This is by design. The license key is tied to your "PC" - i.e. the specific hardware - and if it's an OEM license - then it's non transferable!
If it's not an OEM license, then you should be able to select the "activate by telephone" option and tell them you have swapped the system board and get the key transferred.
No, it's not an OEM license, and if memory serves you could re-install 7 three times before it required you to do the 'call microsoft support' dance.
Point being, win 8.1 keys do not work on 10, but you're not issued a 10 key to replace your 8.1 key when you 'upgrade'.
They WERE going to fix this with the 1511 build, but apparently they haven't.
Really? Is that truly and honestly what you think? That Microsoft is going to remove MySQL and other competitors from computers under control of its operating systems? Christ on a Bike, your tin foil hat is leaking. Oh, and before I forget, you win first mention of SLURP in this thread. Well done dood! And don't worry, your *Sheeple* pals will rally round and downvote me to hell and back.
Now look what you made me do. I'm gonna have to stop reading these Microsoft, sorry, SLURP comments; they're getting increasingly moronic.
Perhapy the poster is slighlty cynical of these seeminglty endless 'Best Intentions' things that come out of Redmond.
yopu must know the sort of thing
- Seems like a good idea on paper but in practice... err sorry, we goofed.
Who will control what programs are on the 'nuke' list? If is is only MS then who will stop them from accidentally putting a competitors product on the list eh?
Remember, to err is human, it takes a computer to really fuck things up.
Lets see what happens in reality eh?
If that make me one of his 'sheeple' friends then fine. I would not like to have to come back and say 'we told you so...' in a few months time.
Seriously, what's this "Slurp" crap? Are these guys twelve fucking years old or something? Nobody has ever called Microsoft that until a couple of weeks ago and now, suddenly all the usual suspects are at it, pretending as if it's something that has already attained currency.
A cynic would suspect that the PR arm of a competitor has fired off a few emails to its stable of tamed bloggers...
As an adult, if I have a beef with a company, I make sure to use their actual name so that everyone knows who I'm talking about, and there can be no doubt about who I'm criticising. But "Slurp"? That could be anyone: Google, Amazon, Facebook or Birds fucking Custard.
SLURP is Yahoo's web crawling spider:
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN22600.html
It's been that way for ages. But it makes no sense at all in this context, so someone seems to be trying to reuse the term.
This is a valid point. Here, I'll even remove the straw-man for you...
This sounds good on the surface, Microsoft is helping customers. However, is there a list of PUPs or will Microsoft remove "unwanted" apps such as <any non-Microsoft product>? Who is doing the defining?
RE: "Who gets to decide?"
The user probably when the PUP detector tells us what it found.
RE: "Ask Toolbar...Personally, I think it's garbage - but I guess some people use it."
Hence the name Potentially Unwanted Program. *Potentially*. I expect Slurp is also going to break with tradition and not present a list of what it found so the user can choose what to remove but will instead just remove whatever it wants to. There you go, another scary possibility to keep you awake at night.
Be careful what you ask for - it's only matter of time MS will replicate W10 experience with MS Essentials/Defender removing software they don't like across all Windows versions. Clueless home users get what they've paid for anyway.
OTOH, corporate servicedesk will get flooded tomorrow with bunch of alerts (for clueless corporate users).
was a real regular client. Call me out to clean out his machine each month after he received his disability check. I finally talked him into using Spybot S&D in addition to the virus suite. Oh, and AdAware as a backing agent. I haven't heard from him in years on that topic.
So long as it's effective and targets fellow corporates (looking at Adobe (nee Macromedia) and Oracle (clickware)), I've not a problem. I still won't have it as anything but a tripwire though. That's all Windows Defender was tasked for. My software was the armed sheriff on regular patrol patterns and frequent posses.
So when did Potentially Unwanted Programs just turn into Unwanted Programs ?
I know of several legitimate apps that are marked as PUP's by AV products - examples include remote control apps such as VNC and password recovery apps such as MAILPV which recovers Outlook passwords. This is really handy when helping users upgrade to a new machine and they can't remember their password.
Luckily this isn't a problem for me any more as I don't upgrade anyone any more as there is no viable Windows platform to upgrade to.
Those are marked as PUPs because they're the vectors used by phone-scammers. The sequence goes something like:
1 Call customer, tell them there's a problem
2 Guide them though to showing some arcane system log and tell them it's a list of viruses
3 Ask them to go online and install a remoting client.
4 Go in and install ransomware. Tell customer that problem "may come back", but things look okay now.
5 Wait a few days for ransomware to trigger, and collect the money.
The AV rules are to catch a problem at step 3. It does inconvenience legitimate users, though.
Arguably that's not a problem with the tools, but a problem with people being gullible.
Lots of things have the "Potential" for misuse such as a knife, yet the tool is still necessary. This is the point I'm making about the "Potential" being forgotten and just removing things that might be bad. This is just yet another example of people trying to make decisions for us.
When did The Register become such a hideout for paranoid conspiracy theorists? Microsoft release a tool to make it easier for admins to remove crapware from their computers, something you'd think would be a good thing, and within seconds the tin-hatters in the comments section have turned it into a method for Microsoft to purge competitors products from computers, whether you like it or not, and are working themselves into an indignant froth about it.
Get a grip, people. We know that there are concerns about some of the things Windows 10 does. But how about we actually stick to what it does actually do, rather than making stuff up based on nothing but conjecture and paranoid fantasy?
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