Samsung Is Quietly Disabling Windows Update On At Least Some Computers

Samsung is intentionally disabling Microsoft Windows updates on at least some computers, according to reports.

Microsoft MVP Patrick Barker made the discovery and documented the details on his blog after trying to help a user troubleshoot issues with his Samsung machine.

"On my home forum Sysnative, a user (wavly) was being assisted with a WU issue, which was going well, aside from the fact that wavly's WU kept getting disabled randomly. It was figured out eventually after using auditpol.exe and registry security auditing (shown below later) that the program that was responsible for disabling WU was Disable_Windowsupdate.exe, which is part of Samsung's SW Update software," Barker noted in the post.

Samsung, describes the update tool as: "You can install relevant software for your computer easier and faster using SW Update. The SW Update program helps you install and update your software and driver easily."

However, there's a fix for that:

"If you are a Samsung user, with the above said, for now regarding any questions on how to actually get rid of this, I'm going to say just uninstall SW Update traditionally via Windows' Add/Remove (or Uninstall a program) list. If after doing so you notice the same occurs as above, well then that's a different story and it'll have to be uninstalled manually, or wait for a tool from Samsung like Lenovo did with Superfish," he suggested.

"Windows Update remains a critical component of our security commitment to our customers," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. "We do not recommend disabling or modifying Windows Update in any way as this could expose a customer to increased security risks. We are in contact with Samsung to address this issue," said Microsoft.