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Asus bombards Windows 11 with christmas.exe malware-like Christmas wreath banner
(www.windowslatest.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The feature that allows manufacturers to push software onto clean installs has existed since Windows 8. If you're advertising for Windows 10, you might want to try again.
According to the article, this particular issue is only on Windows 11. Sure, they COULD push to other OS, but they're currently pushing it only on Windows 11. One temporary workaround for this particular problem is to not use Windows 11.
As of last year, they were doing it with Windows 10. Either they stopped pushing it for Windows 10, or the article just doesn't bother listing the older Windows version. If you're willing to believe a fellow Lemmy user who said it hit them on Windows 10 this year, it's probably the latter.
They also auto-install their ~~malware~~ software update delivery software automatically on both Windows 10 and 11.
There's plenty of reasons to hate Windows 11, but this Christmas banner debacle isn't one of them unless you're also willing to concede that Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 are also all garbage for including the same mechanism which allows vendors to provide run-on-boot executables that bypass clean reinstalls.
For what it's worth mentioning, I'm in the camp where any operating system that allows system integrators to automatically inject their own shitty software into a fresh install of the operating system without my consent is bad.
I got it this year on Windows 10, I only realized it was ASUS because it also changed the RGB theme of my ROG Keyboard. Was annoying and confusing but I didn't assume malware, just stupidity.