This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
every submit a help desk ticket to Asus asking wtf is going on
It is a part of the ASUS Armoury Crate software that is pre-installed on some ASUS PCs.
Always flash new OS if you buy a computer.
That won’t get rid of it unless you also manually go into the BIOS and disable the install ASUS Armoury Crate setting as explained in the article.
If you don’t do this it will automatically reinstall even on a fresh install of Windows. Some of these bloatware programs will even install without an internet connection! This absolutely ludicrously stupid feature is called WPBT and is used by lots of manufacturers. Luckily it doesn’t work on Linux (at least for now…).
Yup. And here i am, always telling people to first read the linked article, before they write.
That's wild that it's a BIOS setting. Just an extra level of fuck you.
I don't think it reinstalls itself if you install Linux
For now...
awesome, merry christmas
Who green lit this? I really hope that person gets fired immediately.
The lack of any visual link to ASUS isn't even the biggest problem for me; it's that ASUS rolls out a program that (presumably) puts itself in autostart by default and just pops up without prompt at all.
Edit: There's a fucking setting in the BIOS to auto-install ASUS' bullshit software? And it's enabled by default.... jesus fucking christ
Most computers firmware can store a Windows executable. Microsoft pushed for an addition to the ACPI tables called WPBT. That stores a Windows exectuable in the firmware. It is of course totally used for the intended purpose...
I'm always dismayed but not surprised by how many people don't know about Windows Platform Binary Table, which has existed since Windows 8. It's not exactly the type of feature that Microsoft or the board vendors would want to publicize, seeing as it gives them persistent rootkit capabilities on the same level as UEFI rootkits.
Most normal people's model of Windows security is "if something goes wrong then I wipe the disk and reinstall Windows," and WPBT completely breaks that model, and has been doing so for 12 years.
Thankfully there are ways to disable it:
You just cant make this shit up. Truly is year of the linux desktop.
I feel like there would be no "Year of the Linux Desktop", but rather the year of "Oh wow when did we hit 20% already?" A death of a thousand cuts is more plausible.
I'd love to know if this was just some guy who went 'let's ship it to all our customers!' or if this was a C-level 300 hours of meetings type of thing which concluded that spreading christmas ~~malware~~ cheer was the right move.
Why don't every vendor with an installed app make a similar banner?
It would be so festive, and I bet people would love it, to have 20 or 30 such occurrences every time you need to use your computer during holidays.
It would of course be optimal if each has an animation and a tune, that need to finish before you can escape.
Weird that only Asus had this brilliant idea? It's so awesome when you are not in control of what happens on your computer.
/s
If you want to take back control, Linux is your best option.
An unsolicited Christmas card through a letterbox would have at least been less worrying.
