Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware 186
An anonymous reader writes "A recent Lenovo automatic software update has the great feature of displaying annoying pop-up ads for Lenovo products. What's worse, it appears that many users are unable to turn the advertisement 'feature' off, subjecting them to pop-ups every couple of hours. Gee guys, a note about your 20% off sale in my e-mail wouldn't have bothered me that much, but you really had to pop up over top of my PowerPoint slides? I'm sure that all of my office colleagues will be running to order ThinkPads ..."
Lenovo has officially jumped the shark (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lenovo has officially jumped the shark (Score:2, Informative)
The thing is, they had the easy restore that made it easy to do a fresh install with all crapware removed.
I was a big supporter, as it was way better than running PC Decrappifier, now this is totally the suck.
Re:Lenovo has officially jumped the shark (Score:3, Informative)
I realize it shouldn't be required, but it's not difficult to go through the Add/Remove list and get it all out. They're nice enough to have similar-looking icons for all the crap that does nothing except hang. One of their helpful applications refused to close, so every time I shut down my computer and walked away I came back to be greeted by a box asking if I really wanted to end this one process that refused to die. That's what triggered the mass uninstall.
Re:this is dumb (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How is adware formed? (Score:2, Informative)
who annoy thier user. becuse these user cant fright back?
it was on slasdot this mroing a user in ofice who had kill her three popups. they are taking the laptop back to the shop too get repalcement my pary are with the colleges who didnt see the persentration; i am truley sorry for your lots.
Re:Its over (Score:4, Informative)
My T61 will probably be my last. I waited about 2 months for repair to be done on plastic pieces that wouldn't latch close properly. One location was never fixed, even though I clearly labeled it.
Recently extended my warranty only to look it up the other day and see that it shows as expired.
My model doesn't show up on their support site when trying to download drivers/software, but does when I enter the serial.
Plus the aluminum cage made it thicker, heavier, and less elegant. And now that they're in the hands of Lenovo, I wouldn't be expecting any improvements.
If anything, they'll ruin the line by adding their own touches. When will purple backlighting on buttons make its appearance? The T400s is sporting lights on volume buttons and the caps lock key. The thing must look like a Christmas tree in the dark. And don't get me started on the Esc key that's TWO ROWS HIGH. Walk away, folks.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Informative)
If you uninstall "message center plus" it fixes it.
Re:this is dumb (Score:4, Informative)
I just bought my brother a little lenovo and was shocked at the amount and general crapiness of the lenovo apps it came with. One of them was crashing at bootup. Its amazing how bad the situation is with OEM crapware nowadays.
I spent 30 minutes doing uninstalls. Err no thanks Lenovo, I dont need your unstable wireless manager when the MS one is just fine.
Once I cleared it all it ran like a top. I wish MS would step in and stop them from ruining otherwise decent laptops.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Informative)
I finally figured out what app was causing it and disabled it in msconfig. I can't remember what it was right now, but when I get home I will reply to this with the name of the app to disable.
According to the article its called Message Center Plus. Here's uninstall instructions from the linked thread:
Just go to control panel and uninstall [Message Center] in add/remove programs.
Next time you use System Update when it tries to reinstall Message Center Plus, click on the plus sign and instead of selecting it in the enlarged menu choose hide the update. Then you won't see it next time you run System Update. Of course if Lenovo brings out new releases of Message Center Plus you will have to hide them too.
And here, also from the thread, instructions to disable it without uninstalling:
start-->runs-->type msconfig--->go to menue tab --> startup ---> in the list of startup items--->
unhook
[ ] MCPLaunch
&
[ ] Scheduler_proxy
-->apply--> ok then a restart is required--> system
after restart
-->set in the upcoming message a hook , so that it next time didnt comes up..
For those that don't get it: (Score:1, Informative)
Re:this is dumb (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like it is not where the serious barebone laptop builder does their shopping.
Not a single one of the three "barebones" notebooks Newegg offers is something I would base a system on. All have either Intel integrated graphics or ATI graphics, no NVidia-based options. Every time I've dealt with ATI's drivers (last was on my ex's Dell Inspiron 600M) it's been a nightmare.
Search for "Clevo" laptop shells. They have graphics from integrated to a 280M, meaning they span the entire range. Sager sells a lot of systems based on Clevo, for instance. Some places will prebuild for you at oddly good prices with a lot of customizability, like choosing which heatsink and thermal paste to use. The same places will give you the prebuilt system with no OS, if you'd like a clean start. Or you can just buy Clevo barebones laptops and put them together yourself.
I have a great idea (Score:3, Informative)
Re:this is dumb (Score:3, Informative)
How new is it? If it's very new and nothing is on it yet, then reinstall the OS without the installed software. This doesn't work on all systems, but most lenovo systems have this option.
It's different depending on Type. If it's Thinkpad, it's the blue Thinkvantage button at startup. On Ideapads it's usually F11 or enter. anyway, You want to boot into Thinkvantage rescue and recovery.
Once your in there, switch to advanced mode, select "Restore your system", from there, select if you want to back up files and such, but you want to do the factory install.
after that, click through the popup window and click through the eulas, after that you should see a menu or radio button that says custom install or advanced install (I don't remember offhand) from there, select that and a list should show up. select what you want (such as AV scanner, diagnostic, or remove everything) and proceed. It should then install the OS without all of the Thinkvantage stuff installed.
Again I want to stress that not all lenovo's have this feature. All the desktops I ran into have it. the S10e, R60 and R61 laptops have it, but I also know the newer T500 series does not have this custom install as an option. And there's no real way to tell if it's an option for you without doing a factory reinstall of the OS. If you're going to format the OS anyway, it's not going to hurt to give this a shot first.
Also consider looking into getting a factory restore disk set. You can get just about any windows version as well as a factory supported set of Suse available for just about every thinkpad out there. The Suse build is a very good distro oriented towards business installs and is fully supported by Lenovo's support staff. You'll have to zero out your entire drive to install the recovery partition, but if you want to Upgrade your OS or completely remove windows from the equasion it's a great way to go.
Good Luck.
Re:Wait... (Score:2, Informative)
Personally Deploying Lenovo Hardware (Score:3, Informative)
I personally deploy Lenovo hardware for clients and I do so from a custom made Windows image that I created by first formatting a computer and installing Windows from scratch, then adding necessary drivers. There is NO NEED for any of the Lenovo software.
The Lenovo brand hardware is actually pretty nice. We roll out T400 ThinkPad systems and so far they seem to be very rugged and perform quite well. You just have to get the Think(disad)Vantage shit off the system first.
Re:Its over (Score:2, Informative)
On the topic of thrones! You'll want to use one of Lenovo's new laptops as a cat box liner.
Stay away from Lenovo G530, they emit the loudest beep you will ever have the misfortune of hearing EVERY SINGLE TIME you plug in or unplug the AC adapter. The beep comes out the "PC Speaker" output of the onboard sound. You can turn all sound channel volumes down to 0% and mute everything, and the volume of the power beep will only be reduced to ridiculously loud.
Lenovo forums and phone calls state that this is not a bug, and will not be addressed in any software or firmware updates.
Re:No kidding! (Score:2, Informative)
And my entire (large) company uses Thinkpads, I bet the helpdesk is going nuts today.
Re:Lenovo has officially jumped the shark (Score:3, Informative)
I got a Thinkpad last Summer and I've been really happy with it. However, it was a rough start --had to remove crapware that crashed Vista frequently. But Lenovo made it easy enough to get a fresh install with no extras. (see this comment: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1282033&cid=28470885 [slashdot.org] ) Since that re-install it's worked flawlessly. Customer service seemed good too. I thought I had a bad DVD burner and they happily sent a replacement (in retrospect I think it was just some bad disks, not the drive).