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Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware
An anonymous reader writes "A recent Lenovo automatic software update has the great feature of displaying annoying pop-up ads for Lenovo products. What's worse, it appears that many users are unable to turn the advertisement 'feature' off, subjecting them to pop-ups every couple of hours. Gee guys, a note about your 20% off sale in my e-mail wouldn't have bothered me that much, but you really had to pop up over top of my PowerPoint slides? I'm sure that all of my office colleagues will be running to order ThinkPads ..."
The last thing Lenovo wanted to happen is to dilute the Thinkpad brand and screw up a good thing, when they purchased thinkpad from IBM. Knowing this, I bought a Thinkpad, and the thing totally blows, their customer service is bad and they install way too much crapware on the PC by default (even more than the average manufacturer). Way to go guys...
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newegg.com, where any serious builder does his shopping.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
My T61 will probably be my last. I waited about 2 months for repair to be done on plastic pieces that wouldn't latch close properly. One location was never fixed, even though I clearly labeled it.
Recently extended my warranty only to look it up the other day and see that it shows as expired.
My model doesn't show up on their support site when trying to download drivers/software, but does when I enter the serial.
Plus the aluminum cage made it thicker, heavier, and less elegant. And now that they're in the hands of Lenovo, I wouldn't be expecting any improvements.
If anything, they'll ruin the line by adding their own touches. When will purple backlighting on buttons make its appearance? The T400s is sporting lights on volume buttons and the caps lock key. The thing must look like a Christmas tree in the dark. And don't get me started on the Esc key that's TWO ROWS HIGH. Walk away, folks.
If you uninstall "message center plus" it fixes it.
I just bought my brother a little lenovo and was shocked at the amount and general crapiness of the lenovo apps it came with. One of them was crashing at bootup. Its amazing how bad the situation is with OEM crapware nowadays.
I spent 30 minutes doing uninstalls. Err no thanks Lenovo, I dont need your unstable wireless manager when the MS one is just fine.
Once I cleared it all it ran like a top. I wish MS would step in and stop them from ruining otherwise decent laptops.
I finally figured out what app was causing it and disabled it in msconfig. I can't remember what it was right now, but when I get home I will reply to this with the name of the app to disable.
According to the article its called Message Center Plus. Here's uninstall instructions from the linked thread:
Just go to control panel and uninstall [Message Center] in add/remove programs.
Next time you use System Update when it tries to reinstall Message Center Plus, click on the plus sign and instead of selecting it in the enlarged menu choose hide the update. Then you won't see it next time you run System Update. Of course if Lenovo brings out new releases of Message Center Plus you will have to hide them too.
And here, also from the thread, instructions to disable it without uninstalling:
start-->runs-->type msconfig--->go to menue tab --> startup ---> in the list of startup items--->
unhook
[ ] MCPLaunch
&
[ ] Scheduler_proxy
-->apply--> ok then a restart is required--> system
after restart
-->set in the upcoming message a hook , so that it next time didnt comes up..
How about all you HARDWARE manufacturers sell me HARDWARE and stay the fuck out of the SOFTWARE business. Unlike Windows which I've only "rented" from Microsoft, I BOUGHT your damned hardware. It's now MINE. When I update a BIOS or install a driver, what I want is a BIOS or a driver, not you shill for some lame-assed POS software. Fuck off already. Assholes.