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Microsoft Forces Desktop Search On Windows Update

An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that the blogosphere is alight with accusations of Microsoft forcing Windows Desktop Search on networks via the 'automatic install' feature of Windows Update — even if they had configured their systems not to use the program. Once installed, the search program began diligently indexing C drives and entire networks slowed to a crawl."

7 of 579 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Enough with the stealth auto-"updates" dammit! by should_be_linear · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You are crying loud, but nobody is listening. I was user of MS products and dev tools until 2004 and always thought how great it would be if I could submit this or that bug to some bugzilla. But I can't. Unless your problem is visible to Joe Sixpack (like Excel's calculation), MS don't really care.

    This is main reason why I think that MS dev tools like VS.NET simply cannot compete with open source NetBeans/Eclipse. I always get to some corner cases where I need author or real expert, someone that understand source code of the product, to assist me with my issue. And I never achieved that with MS products.

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    839*929
  2. Re:What's worse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It shits on Google's desktop search from a very great height.

  3. this entire article is flamebait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Unfortunately, this is the users' fault for setting updates to automatically download. By now people should know that _any_ automatic update feature is suspect and should be reviewed before being downloaded. I understand that a lot of people assume they can trust certain companies like MS or Norton, but the facts just don't really point in that direction, do they?

    Ultimately, this is not a stealth update. When you choose to setup Windows Update to automatically install updates YOU have implicitly CHOSEN to install anything Microsoft throws at you. I have multiple XP systems and none of them are set to automatically download - only to notify me of the availability of updates. Just as I did, all Windows users have this choice, therefore, this was neither a stealth update, nor a forced update.

  4. Re:What's worse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You only missed the point... ENTIRELY.

  5. Re:What's worse... by costas · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Now, forcing WDS down users' throats is beyond the pale, but saying that GDS is better is just false: WDS has a better UI than GDS (and not just because it's an actual Windows app), does a much, much better job indexing mail than GDS (it can actually handle mail being moved between folders and indexes attachments just fine) and has better indexing behavior: it deals with moved/deleted documents better and its index doesn't grow out of proportions like GDS', nor does it seem to 'forget' documents.

    On the other hand, WDS daemon may eat a bit more CPU at times, it doesn't index Firefox histories and obviously doesn't integrate with Google's web search, which is the only killer GDS feature as far as I am concerned.

    Admittedly, the above is based on my experience with GDS ~12 months ago: I switched to WDS and never looked back. I'd be happy to give Google another shot if they've improved their product.

  6. Re:Can someone confirm this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Flamebait? Moron mods.

  7. Re:Similarly as Beagle.... by nschubach · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Why does lsass have to continue running after you log into your PC and generate your key? It simply doesn't make sense for a login service to remain running. You should be able to shut it off and thus further disallow people from logging into your PC. This is nothing like "killing the kernel on Linux."

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    Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.