ASUS Armoury Crate automatically installs software without user knowing...

[MagicBoy]

Naughty naughty ASUS are using a Windows feature intended for anti-theft solutions to install drivers and bloatware without user intervention...

https://www.techpowerup.com/248827/...-push-software-into-your-windows-installation

 

[Distracted]

I noticed this as well.

Immediately after installing windows (fresh install) using an Asus z390 board I got the prompt asking if I would like to install.

 

[tnx]

Glad I read this. Got an Asus Z390 build to do so will give this a very good looking at.

Cheers.

 

[LambChop]

Quite worrying that this is enabled by default and with it being built into the bios. Having something install into your system32 folder without your knowledge or concent is worrying.

 

[Rroff]

It is the way things are increasingly going and most consumers unfortunately are super passive about it - even defend such behaviour. The potential for misuse of this never mind the issues if it causes problems and the end user has no control over it are huge.

EDIT: Regarding some of the "pros" if Asus was so worried about people's access to drivers, etc. then the proper thing to do would be to embed like 8GB NAND or something that is accessible as a normal drive giving people full control or at the very least have this kind of thing disabled in the BIOS unless the user specifically sets it up.

 

[MagicBoy]

The technology has been around for 10+ years. Anti-theft solutions like CompuTrace (available on ThinkPads and similar corporate laptops) use it.

What ASUS are doing is misuse.