Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Samsung To Stop Blocking Automatic Windows Updates

Posted by timothy on from the just-keep-the-door-unlocked dept.

A few days ago, we mentioned that a piece of (nominally) utility software from Samsung was blocking critical security updates. Understandably, this isn't what users typically want. The Register reports that Samsung has now back-pedaled, though, and will be issuing a patch in the next few days to fix the glitch. (Users were able to manually install the updates anyhow, but the expected, automatic updates were blocked.) However, as the Register notes: The thought of a computer manufacturer disabling Windows Update will have had the Microsoft security team on edge. But there's also Windows 10 to consider. When the new operating system comes out, Windows Update will feed in fixes continuously, and if you're not a business customer those updates are going to be coming over the wires constantly. Enterprise users get Windows Update for Business, which allows them to choose when to patch, presumably after the plebs have beta-tested them.

23 comments

  1. Validation by sphealey · · Score: 4, Informative

    = = = which allows them to choose when to patch, presumably after the plebs have beta-tested them. = = =

    Besides ordinary business concerns about stability and continuity, if you are running in a regulated environment (e.g. biotech) you are prohibited by law from installing those patches until your validation group has tested them.

    sPh

    1. Re:Validation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When the new operating system comes out, Windows Update will feed in fixes continuously, and if you're not a business customer those updates are going to be coming over the wires constantly. Enterprise users get Windows Update for Business, which allows them to choose when to patch, presumably after the plebs have beta-tested them.

      Pure FUD. I use Windows 8.1 Pro at home and I will get a free upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. This is a home version of Windows, not Enterprise.

    2. Re:Validation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Learn to read and maybe you'll understand, you illiterate fuckwit.

    3. Re:Validation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We know. Everyone's getting free upgrades to Windows 10, that's old news. That doesn't make anything FUD though.

  2. Enterprise users by dissy · · Score: 1

    When the new operating system comes out, Windows Update will feed in fixes continuously, and if you're not a business customer those updates are going to be coming over the wires constantly. Enterprise users get Windows Update for Business, which allows them to choose when to patch, presumably after the plebs have beta-tested them.

    I saw the entry "Windows 10 and later upgrades and service drivers" show up under the products & classifications options on our WSUS server a good 3-4 months ago.

    Interesting wording I thought, since all other entries under the "Windows OS" group are named specific to a major windows version, and as far as I remember have never said "and later".

    It looks like Microsoft is really serious about copying Apple versions now, with the "10" not really being part of the version string but just being there, and using the minor version section as the new major version number.

    Yeay for needless confusion!

    But at least it still isn't as bad as Nintendo product naming I guess.

    1. Re:Enterprise users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever considered eating your own turds?

  3. Heaviest workload on Earth by Blaskowicz · · Score: 0

    It's funny to install windows updates if you have a somewhat slow (in modern terms) computer. Go get a torrented Windows 7 with updates rolled in till a few monthes ago. Install Windows.. with the custom stuff (updates + script that installs IE and .Net) it takes about two hours to install.
    Then it takes about an hour to boot, reboot, install Firefox (downloaded with ftp.exe), change wallpaper etc., install some shit and an AV (this is a single core low power PC with 1GB and old HDD)
    Then it takes a shit lot of time to find Windows updates. Two days later, it's still not finding them!
    I give up. PC's getting a pain to use, I go for upgrading it to 1.5GB or 2GB. cool, turns out I've plugged a 2GB module in, it now has 3GB. The PC still is miserable but has a lot of ram just like my everyday beast!
    Wait.. Now the fucking "windows updates" software that was stuck at "checking for updates" now finds updates (about 63 of them). WTF? (I had tried some .bat file found on the net to "unstuck" it, but dunno if the RAM ugprade did something or it wanted just one more reboot..)

    So, in conclusion (tl;dr) there's some dark ugly voodoo that determines if Windows Updates will actually work. If it does, it's of course extremely CPU and memory intensive : if you have 1GB RAM or perhaps even 2GB RAM (which runs very low if you use programs) the PC could be so much fucking slow at installing updates that you run the risk of getting infected. I mean, two days of running Windows with unpatched old zero-days and what not! It makes me feels really dirty. Also, it's self evident that Windows 7 is about as bad as Vista on resources use.

    But it was not like that time with XP + IE6 where I got obviously infected before I was even done setting it up.
    Not sure if the Windows 7 PC is infected or not. Got to 98% memory use and swap hell with only windows (indexing etc. disabled), avast and firefox running (and task manager) ; firefox was only taking less than 20%. Had to kill firefox and disable the antivirus (killing firefox through task manager didn't go so well : not working, and "firefox is not responding" message not coming because of swap hell. Firefox got killed just when I had opened a command prompt which would have served me to kill it)
    Got enough RAM to run, you guess it.. Windows Update! I installed that one critical update available and rebooted.

    1. Re: Heaviest workload on Earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your miles may vary. Have a dual core Adam with 2gb Ram on Intel mb and have never had problems with it ever.

    2. Re:Heaviest workload on Earth by sribe · · Score: 1

      ...dunno if the RAM ugprade did something or it wanted just one more reboot...

      RAM. I went through this recently building Windows 7 VMs from an orginal/early ISO. With 2GB RAM, it stalled and would never finish the updates. With 3GB it got further, but still stalled and showed no further progress after being left running overnight. With 4GB, no problem, you can actually update the OS!

    3. Re:Heaviest workload on Earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude. You seem to know what you're doing. Unless your wage depends on installing windows, have you considered running something else? I'm not promising it will be a hassle free experience, but if you're willing to learn, in a few weeks you'll never look back.

      Do you know why *nix users tinker so much with their OSs? Because they don't need to spend their time and energy on silly things like that.

    4. Re:Heaviest workload on Earth by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      I cared enough to waste that much time writing that too long post above. That shall be a reminder to how much time is wasted installing windows. Yup with another OS and an equally slow PC you can be done in about 20 minutes.

    5. Re:Heaviest workload on Earth by CaptQuark · · Score: 2

      You tried to install Windows 7 on an old machine with only 1GB RAM?!!

      Microsoft's minimum system requirements say it will run on 1GB RAM for 32-bit or 2GB for 64-bit systems, but you already found how well that works. The practical minimum for Windows 7 is 4GB. Anything less is like trying to drive a dump truck using a chainsaw engine.

      --

  4. Hey! by freeze128 · · Score: 1

    Who are you calling "plebs"? I'm offended!

  5. I Wish Mine Had Been Blocked by Toad-san · · Score: 1

    My desktop system is in an update error loop (0xC1900101-0x20017) that apparently has no solution. Win 10 tries to update, reboots, fails without warning, reboots. I have to run a fortunately free boot disk which removes the attempted update, but certainly doesn't solve the basic problem. "Disconnect all external devices" .. yeah, fine, no improvement. So I'm stuck at Build 10074, and wish I could figure how to stop all updates entirely! (Oh, and trying to reinstall Win10 Pro Insider Preview from an .iso image doesn't work either.) Talk about being screwed .. and it worked so well too, until that update. Time to wipe and reinstall, I guess. Or just drop back to my Win 7 (fortunately saved on a separate hard drive) and wait for the official Win10 release.

    1. Re:I Wish Mine Had Been Blocked by ledow · · Score: 2

      Or, like EVERYONE tells you to - backup your damn machine. P.S. If your backup doesn't get you back to exactly where you were last week, it's not a backup, just a bad data copy.

      Also:

      https://4sysops.com/archives/d...

      However, for years, people have mocked my decision to NOT have auto-updates turned on. I only press update when I know that my machine is backed up, there's a fix I need to deploy, and I have the time / willingness to do it.

      No, my machine doesn't have viruses etc. (I've had precisely one in my life and that was from a demo copy of Sin on a PC magazine coverdisc - which shows you how long ago that was!) because I abide by simple security practices that mean Windows doesn't NEED to run lots of random third-party executables to do what I want.

      There's a reason that MS *can't* block WSUS for business users being used to stop automatic updates for Windows 10. Because we'd tear their fucking heads off. Windows updates have caused shit like you describe since their introduction. Sure, most people won't notice, but if it only happens to 1% of computers regularly deploying updates the chances are that none of your friends will have had those problems. But similarly, with the same odds the chances are that in any large deployment AT LEAST one machine will fuck up from automatic updates every month. Fuck adding that to my IT burden.

      In work the other day, one of my users was accidentally given a brief window when they could receive updates from Windows Update instead of WSUS (I'd accidentally pulled them out of the client group on WSUS while looking for a test machine). In that short opportunity, it took it upon itself to update from 8 to 8.1, thereby breaking the finance software that we use permanently. Additionally, the desktop now gets a crash in in a mp4 video dll every 10 seconds that you can't stop crashing without reverting the update associated with it. Seriously, no newer patch fixes it or I'd deploy it in a second. And I had to give them RDP to a plain Windows 8 machine to finish their finance stuff temporarily while I revert their config.

      Seriously, automatic system-level updates without user interaction is the most stupid fucking idea in the history of bad ideas, not to mention not being able to PERMANENTLY say no to a particular update, and having NO proper way to system restore to a point before the update applied and stop it (in the majority of cases - I've yet to see system restore do what it promises but I've dealt with lots of users have accidentally restored their personal laptops back to factory settings or unrecoverable states using it!).

      If you work in IT and haven't yet realised this, I really pity you. Servers, internet-facing services, maybe but there you have the tools to deal with this crap and STILL shouldn't be blindly pushing updates anyway.

      Unmanaged clients that aren't eligible for WSUS because they are home-use? Back those fuckers up and turn off automatic Windows Update.

    2. Re:I Wish Mine Had Been Blocked by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Or, like EVERYONE tells you to - backup your damn machine. P.S. If your backup doesn't get you back to exactly where you were last week, it's not a backup, just a bad data copy.

      I have a different suggestion: Don't run a beta build of an OS if you have any data on your machine that is even remotely dear to you. Even the vendor suggests running it inside a virtual machine.

  6. Automatic updates broke Samsung laptops recently.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't run Windows, but my daughter does. THANKFULLY, she is the only family member that insists she run it. She already hates her laptop because its slow. Just a couple of weeks ago, the keyboard and mouse just stopped working. I managed to boot Linux on it, so it seemed the hardware was still good. Some research pointed to forums lit up with other Samsung laptop owners complaining about this. Some found the solution - a recent windows update caused the Samsung driver for the keyboard/mouse to be replaced, rending it unusable.

    Seriously, as the technical support for this entire family, this is the last thing I need.

  7. glitch? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    ... Samsung has now back-pedaled, though, and will be issuing a patch in the next few days to fix the glitch.

    It was a *feature* not a "glitch" and that was/is the problem.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:glitch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly! Windows automatic updates should be disabled by default! The automatic updates ALWAYS want to install at a highly inconvenient times...such as at shutdown or startup, or in the middle of an important task. The user should get to decide IF or when updates are installed on their machine! Linux mint does this. Its update software lets the user know that there are updates available, and the user decides which updates to install, and when to install them.

      Windows automatic updates is just one more way for M$ to try to control what users do on their own computer.

  8. Re:Automatic updates broke Samsung laptops recentl by Rhywden · · Score: 1

    Well, let me put it this way: What kind of crap is Samsung shovelling out that the basic keyboard/mouse drivers which run on basically _anything else_ are able to render Samsung's hardware inoperable?

    Plus: What kind of inept stunts is Samsung pulling that their drivers are automatically replaced?

    Then again, given their track record with the developer's nightmare that is Tizen, this shouldn't surprise anyone. I mean, what is one supposed to think of a company who thought that an error message like "NAUGHTY PROGRAMMER!!! SPANK SPANK SPANK!!!" is a good idea? (Seriously: https://developer.tizen.org/de...)