Samsung Will Issue Patch to Re-Enable Windows Update on Its Computers

Samsung has announced it will issue a patch for its computers that will revert back to the regular Windows Update settings after reports from last week highlighted the company was disabling the Microsoft service on some of its computers.

The company has released a statement saying the patch will be made available through its Samsung Software Update notification process to enable Windows update.

A Samsung spokesperson in a statement told VentureBeat on Friday, "Samsung has a commitment to security and we continue to value our partnership with Microsoft. We will be issuing a patch through the Samsung Software Update notification process to revert back to the recommended automatic Windows Update settings within a few days. Samsung remains committed to providing a trustworthy user experience and we encourage customers with product questions or concerns to contact us directly at 1-800-Samsung."

Last week, when Samsung was reported to be disabling Windows Update via its own SW Update software, one of its support representatives had responded claiming that enabling the Windows Updates installed the Default Drivers for all the hardware on laptop which may or may not work. The representative added the company aimed to prevent potential problems by disabling Windows Updates via its SW Update tool. Soon after the issue was extensively reported by various news publications, Samsung had confirmed that it was investigating the issue.

The issue was first reported by Patrick Barker, Microsoft MVP, who discovered that a program named Disable_Windowsupdate.exe which was a part of Samsung's preloaded SW Update software on some of its computers disabled the Windows Update.

Further detailing how the Disable_Windowsupdate.exe functioned, Barker explained, "What's actually causing Windows Update to persistently become disabled/reset is the fact that Disable_Windowsupdate.exe creates a scheduled task that runs at every logon to ensure that Windows Update is indeed disabled."