Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 0xffffabcd 3979 days ago
Upgrade notification is now adware? are you serious? You don't even have to pay for the upgrade and you'll have a lot to gain from it and for us developers, it's a good thing aswell since it might reduce the number of old IEs/plateforms we have to support. I expected more from an HN user..
3 comments

It's only a notification until you can't turn it off. It's incredibly difficult to get rid of it on a non-domain attached windows 8.1 machine.
For me it was an icon next to the clock. Once I reserved my upgrade I just hid it in the action center and it never popped again.
It's still there and running though.

That's like you know there's a hissing cockroach living under the sink but you just close the door and stick your fingers in your ears.

The other option is to remove kb3035583
Still appears on mine if you remove that and block it. Lots of people have reported that.
You also have to hide the update to prevent WU from reinstalling it for you, but actually not even that will permanently disable it.

This is because Microsoft will release "updates" to that package, with the totally unintended side effect of unhiding and reinstalling the update. So even if you uninstall it, and hide the update from WU, it will still find a way onto your system.

So yeah, like I said and despite the downvotes, it's fucking adware. Bordering on malware.

I consider it adware because there is no way to get the notification to go away. No obvious way, anyhow, and rather than search around for the "correct" way of doing it, I uninstalled the update and hid it in WU.

(Actually I did a brief search, and didn't find anything.)

So at this point, maybe you're right and it's not adware. I'd consider it borderline at least, but fine. Whatever.

However I got a second notification some weeks later, from the same package which I had already uninstalled and hidden remember, after it apparently reinstalled itself because MS released an 'update' to this package. So despite uninstalling it and following all the steps required to clearly communicate that no, I do not want this fucking thing on my PC, MS decided they'd push the update to my system anyway.

At this point it's no longer borderline. It is harassing behavior from something that is very obviously adware.

Is it a "notification" or a longterm limpet on the hull? I looked at a relative's W7 machine and there was a promotional application ("GWX" - Get Windows X?) running permanently with no apparent way to decline its offer or uninstall it.
There is a way to uninstall it by removing update kb3035583