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Samsung Cripples Windows Update To Prevent Incompatible Drivers

Posted by Soulskill on from the that's-not-how-this-works dept.

jones_supa writes: A file called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe — probably malware, right? It's actually a "helper" utility from Samsung, for which their reasoning is: "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." Too bad that the solution means disabling all critical security updates as well. This isn't the first time an OEM has compromised the security of its users. From earlier this year, we remember the Superfish adware from Lenovo, and system security being compromised by the LG split screen software.

18 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. What? by DanJ_UK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You've got to be fucking shitting me?

    --
    - Dan
    1. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've seen windows updates fuck a LOT of drivers over the years. Like picking up video drivers that either screw the display (video modes all fucked up) or even make the machine BSOD (so much for WHQL). Sometimes a driver rollback (in device manager) was enough, sometimes you had to boot with last known good config or safe mode to even get to the desktop. I could live with that much, but nowadays MS has pushed 12+ updates as "important" that are simply nagware to install that Win 10 abomination so I've finally disabled automatic updates.

    2. Re:What? by taustin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Second semester law school: unconscionable contracts are unenforceable.

      Aside from any contractual obligations between Samsung and Microsoft that would affect this, and you can bet there are some.

      The lesson here, boys and girls, don't get legal advice from first semester law students. Consult a real lawyer.

    3. Re:What? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's especially insane because, while grabbing drivers from Windows Update is the default behavior, you can turn that off without disabling Windows Update.

      "System Properties" -> "Hardware" -> "Device Installation Settings". There's not even any registry grovelling or other esoteric nonsense involved.

      Things just get worse because, even if enabled, the Windows Update provided drivers will only be applied if no drivers are available locally(if drivers are available; but Windows Update has newer ones, they'll be listed as optional updates; but only installed with manual user intervention). So all Samsung has to do is add their drivers to the OS driver store (pnputil -a, not very hard) and the OS will apply them before even heading out to check for new ones, unless there is something egregiously wrong with them(if memory serves, unsigned drivers are treated as lower ranked than signed drivers when determining 'best driver available', and drivers that don't list the PCI/USB PID/VID, but have been forcibly applied, may also rank lower than drivers that do specify the matching PID/VID).

      So, in summary and conclusion, this whole thing is an unbelievable clusterfuck and it isn't even clear why Samsung would think it necessary in order to ensure the drivers that they want installed get installed; much less how they could possibly think that the security consequences were worth it. Only its finite complexity saves this situation from fractal stupidity.

  2. Terrible twos by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Samsung: You're terrible programmers!

    Microsoft: No, you are terrible programmers!

    Kids, kids, you'really both terrible.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    1. Re:Terrible twos by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem:
      Drivers to accommodate lack of open standards.
      Back in the good old day,
      CGA/EGA/VGA they followed their specs.
      Serial and Parallel they followed a common spec.

      Then Windows came popular with the support of drivers. This allowed hardware makers to stop playing by the rules thus creating a huge sets of incompatible SVGA (Visa more or less won) Then we went to 3D and all was lost. USB, different Wireless drivers.... Network cards...
      For some reasons allowing this is good, because it allowed them to innovate and create new features. But on the other side, it threw out the idea of Open Hardware standards out the window.

      Because the lack of such good standards, It creates systems that have driver issues.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Wow ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, basically they have shit hardware or shit drivers, and the only way they can think of to fix this is to prevent your operating system from trying to apply updates?

    This sounds like incompetence all the way around, and is on-going proof of why I hate OEM laptops. Because they fill them with so much garbage.

    It seems like every time I hear anything about Samsung, I find myself thinking "nope, I would never buy their crap".

    And, once again, corporations put their own crappy "innovation" ahead of the needs of their customers.

    Pathetic.

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    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Wow ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If the hardware doesn't work with default Windows or Linux distribution, it's shit. (think clean install).

      Years ago at work, we got some new desktops.

      The desktops had 4GB of RAM, but the Windows XP Pro on them could only see 3GB. One of the guys decided to put Windows 2003 on the machines to get access to all the RAM.

      It turns out there were NO drivers for that hardware which existed for Windows 2003, and even getting back to XP Pro proved exceedingly difficult because ... it was almost impossible to find the drivers again as they basically weren't published anywhere. Essentially this machine could only work with the OEM image made up of drivers and other custom crap which were almost impossible to find.

      To add insult to injury, whatever idiot had ordered them got us some new-fangled wide screen monitors. The problem was that while the actual resolution of the monitor was a 4:3 aspect ratio ... the actual pixels were flattened so that in its native resolution the screen drew circles as flattened ovals.

      I 100% agree with you. Because non-standard crap from vendors makes for utter garbage machines.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Wow ... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This one is completely on Samsung.

      There is nothing stopping them from getting WHQL certification of their OEM drivers and submitting them to Microsoft. If their drivers are written properly (with proper hardware identification strings for PCI / USB / ACPI devices) then they will apply before generic drivers, and this isn't even a problem.

      Funny how we don't hear about this from Acer / Dell / HP / Lenovo / etc...

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  4. If true then Samsung is dead to me by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If true then I guess I won't be buying any Samsung computers anytime soon. A company that stupid simply isn't worth doing business with. Add this to the Samsung TVs that listen to your living room and the bloatware on their Android devices and I pretty much can't see any reason to buy from Samsung these days.

    1. Re:If true then Samsung is dead to me by DontBlameCanada · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its an issue because Samsung's voice recognition wasn't done on the TV. They shipped the captured audio to servers in their back office, unencrypted iirc. So your intimate small-talk with your partner is recorded live and sent out to some nameless destination free for all to listen to. I don't know about you, but I consider that an incredible invasion of privacy.

  5. Re:well done. by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm trying to calculate just how much Kool-Aid you have to drink until "the OS decided to reboot all on its own" becomes acceptable behavior.

  6. Re:Not exactly like Superfish by idontgno · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not malicious. It is stupid and ignorant, but not malicious.

    Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

    --Clark's corollary to Hanlon's Razor after Clarke's 3rd Law

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  7. Re:Unfortunately, they're right by neilo_1701D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I allow Windows Update to "update" the driver for my Bluetooth stick, it doesn't work any longer.

    I've seen that problem before on a Bluetooth stick. The real issue was that I had purchased some Chinese ripoff clone of another product (I didn't know at the time that's what I was doing. We learn.); and the original company had released updated drivers to Microsoft. These new drivers worked just fine with the oem product, but something in the ripoff product didn't work with the new drivers, and the stick stopped working. I had to back the drivers out, re-install the original drivers and mark that particular update as "do not install".

    I've no idea if the original company (who had their gear ripped off) spiked the driver deliberately or simple broke it by accident.

  8. If only... by chrish · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I could have sworn MS had some way for OEMs to get drivers certified, and provided by Windows Update directly...

    --
    - chrish
  9. Tha's a tough one there... by Minwee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Surely there must be a way to have avoided this.

    Maybe Microsoft should set up some kind of... Lab. To certify the Quality of Hardware for Windows. And maybe they could make it really simple for vendors like Samsung to send them copies of drivers for certification so that Windows Update would be aware that they existed.

    And maybe, instead of demanding millions of dollars in fees for this service, they could charge something simple up front like just $250 and then not cause any more problems. Then Samsung would have been able to run through a quick certification process and avoided all of this trouble.

    Man, why does Microsoft make it so hard for vendors to get their devices supported?

  10. For large values of stupidity by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is not malicious. It is stupid and ignorant, but not malicious.

    Sufficiently large values of stupidity asymptotically approach maliciousness. In other words if the action is dumb enough there is no effective difference.

  11. Re:and I thought Linux had driver issues by nvm_my_comment · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Linux driver have come a long way. 15 years ago it was a nightmarish hell 10 years ago hell. 5 years ago, mostly with wifi not working out of the box and often sound. nowadays it usually just works. The next battle is better video driver, firmware blob included in some device, and anything ARM.