Windows Update is a tool created by Microsoft which will help users look for new updates that can be installed and applied to the user’s current Windows-based machine. It’s pretty standard fare and something that most of us probably don’t really think too much about. However it seems that if you’re the owner of a Samsung laptop, this might be of interest to you.According to researcher Patrick Barker (via Gizmodo), it has been found that Samsung has apparently be deliberately disabling Windows Update on its computers. Instead Samsung will use their own utility called SW Update which pretty much does the same thing and also updates the bloatware that Samsung installs on its computers, except that in this case the app is created and maintained by Samsung, not Microsoft.
According to Barker, he found that the utility has included an executable titled “Disable_Windowsupdate.exe” which as the name implies, will see SW Update disable Windows Update in favor of itself. Even if you were to re-enable Windows Update, the utility will disable it whenever you reboot your computer.
Barker then asked a Samsung rep as to why that is the case, in which the rep replied by saying, “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.”
Now if you do not like the idea of Samsung’s utility messing around with how Windows should operate, you can choose to uninstall SW Update, after which your Windows Update tool should resume functioning as per normal.