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HP Printer IT

HP Printer Software Turns Up Uninvited on Windows Systems 51

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
Windows users are reporting that Hewlett Packard's HP Smart application is appearing on their systems, despite them not having any of the company's hardware attached. From a report: While Microsoft has remained tight-lipped on what is happening, folks on various social media platforms noted the app's appearance, which seems to afflict both Windows 10 and Windows 11. The Windows Update mechanism is used to deploy third-party applications and drivers as well as Microsoft's updates, and we'd bet someone somewhere has accidentally checked the wrong box.

Up to now, the response from affected users has been one of confusion. One noted on Reddit: "I thought that was just me. I didn't install it, it just appeared on new apps in start menu out of nowhere." Another said: "I just checked and I had it installed too. Checking the event log for the Microsoft Store shows that it installed earlier today, but I definitely did [not] request or initiate it because I do not have any devices from HP." And, of course, there was the inevitable: "Would it be that hard for Microsoft to just provide an operating system without needless bloat?" To be clear, not all users are affected.
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HP Printer Software Turns Up Uninvited on Windows Systems More

HP Printer Software Turns Up Uninvited on Windows Systems

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  • Well, Windows _is_ a malware distribution system (Score:5, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @04:26PM (#64044803)

    Or rather that is one of the few things it does well...

  • It is probably logged, even if it's on your neighbor's or a guest login wifi. Finally plug and play that works! This is how it is supposed to work amirite?

    • It is probably logged, even if it's on your neighbor's or a guest login wifi. Finally plug and play that works! This is how it is supposed to work amirite?

      That's a reasonable hypothesis. However I think the utility is being treated like a common driver since various low end HP printers require it. Beware of HP printers whose model numbers end in 'e'. Ex m209dw vs m209dwe. The 'e' suffix models require an HP account, only work with HP toner or ink, etc. I' betting this utility is involved in such nonsense.

      • For people wondering about the coding used, the 'e' was supposed to be an 's' but their PR people objected so it was watered down to just an 'e' for 'excrement'.
  • If these people have had an HP Printer installed in the past and it wasn't completely removed from the system.
    M$ trips up, thinks its installed, install the printer from the Store.

    • This was my assumption when it appeared on my laptop.

      I thought it was an update to the hp printer driver/app that I haven't used in a couple years. I do still have an hp all-in-one laser printer, and have used it with the laptop in the past.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)

      by Aczlan ( 636310 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @05:29PM (#64045011)

      Nope, I had it show up last night on a brand new Win 10 VM which resides on a network with no HP printers.
      It used to be that I installed a "vanilla" copy of Windows to get rid of the crud that hardware manufacturers shoveled onto their machines, now Microsoft is installing it automatically via Windows Update...

      Aaron Z

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's probably an issue with some bit of hardware having an VID/PID that HP accidentally claimed as their own. Or maybe legitimately claimed as their own, and someone else made a mistake in using it.

        There isn't really any control over VID/PID pairs. There are some orgs that oversee handing them out, but because they cost quite a lot of money to join a lot of hardware just picks some and uses them. There's zero enforcement. I know this because I do it a lot.

      • I had a new install windows 10 just wake up by itself a few minutes ago. Powercfg -lastwake showed this: Windows will execute 'NT Task\HP\HP Print Scan Doctor\Printer Health Monitor". Surprising since I added no printers. B

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      You can keep getting updates for printers that you've "uninstalled" because the uninstall process rarely clears everything.

      Control panel, devices and printers, click any of the installed printers (even the virtual printers, such as "Microsoft print to PDF), than at the top will appear "Print server properties". Click that, then in the "Drivers" tab, find and click your not-installed printer model and then click the "remove" button.

  • yet another use case for windows update blocker (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @04:45PM (#64044855)

    Wonderful needing to resort to a third party application for disabling pesky nuisance updates.
    >buh you can use a GPO or regedit to get around MS's fuckery
    yeah, missing the point, entirely.
    my computer, my choice. nor should one be expected to buy a more expensive SKU to prevent MS from taking ownership of your computer.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • well I'm on 10 (not to nitpick).. The nasty thing about disabling windows update is that it has the habit of re-enabling itself. WUB keeps that from happening without having to go back in and re-neuter it, lest some update like this sneaks by. And there's been a few of these types of updates; even a staunch MS ally such as yourself must at least be able to admit that?
        But again, (i think we've had this exact same sparring match recently..) I do not think you should have to resort to any of this to keep MS

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Not installing updates leaves you vulnerable to known security flaws.

      And what offers a better alternative? Linux users blindly apt-upgrade, hoping that the distro and repo maintainers know what they are doing. MacOS users accept every update Apple sends, just as blindly.

      • Linux users blindly apt-upgrade, hoping that the distro and repo maintainers know what they are doing.

        If I care, I can look at the changes. If I really care a lot, I can run LFS.

  • Linux as well (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @04:46PM (#64044861)
    Many distros bundle "hplip" by default, which is HP's printer software for Linux. Slackware is one of the offenders.
    • I keep a custom slackware mirror on the back of the harddrive with only the packages i like plus the updates. so if i ever have to install or reinstall it is an easy click the install everything option and it comes out perfect for me every time, easy as pie

    • Slackware also did something weird where KDE had two volume controls that somehow did two different things.

      • That's an issue on multiple distros when upgrading KDE. You can end up with both the old kmix and the new Plasma PulseAudio tray icon running at the same time.

        Multimedia in general is a big mess on Linux, with OSS vs ALSA wars of a decade+ ago, then made worse with PulseAudio being a CPU-sucking layer on top of ALSA that injects lots of bugs for an incremental quality-of-life improvement. OSX/Darwin and BeOS solved how audio should be handled on a desktop OS. And Linux was never willing to simply copy what

        • Pipewire with wireplumber largely solves the problems. It replaces both pulseaudio and JACK and also supports ALSA clients, giving them network audio and per application volume. I've been running it with very good results for a while now. You do need to keep pulseaudio installed for the client library, but you can disable the daemon.

          • I'm still using JACK2. So many "standards" to choose from. But agreed that Pipewire is pretty exciting. Even if it lacks some fundamental architecture for real-time processing that has been solved on other OSes for 20 years.

            If I were to design this, I'd lean on an eBPF-based design to handle the kernel-side processing with fewer user space context switches that kills real-time stuff on Linux.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

              Pipewire came to my attention because on my Fedora box, it suddenly failed to update, and whined about it. (Didn't know it was there until then.)

              This is probably not the ideal introduction to the baffled user, who wonders WTF it's doing now....

          • Pipewire with wireplumber largely solves the problems.

            Just as pulse audio finally grinds forth into a vaguely stable state[*] it gets replaced! Somehow this is very Linux.

            [*] As in it hardly ever needs killing and restarting. Barely monthly does it just go south and all the audio comes out weird an fuzzy.

            • A stable state of still being shit, yeah.

              Like another piece of software we all know and love from the same guy

        • To be fair, Windows audio can be a mess as well. I just reluctantly went back to using Windows strictly for audio processing and I was experiencing latency when attempting to record. I was surprised to see that I had more audio subsystem options in Windows than I did in Linux - and all of those subsystems had latency. Apparently, everyone advises installing yet another audio subsystem to get reduced latency in Windows. Of course that doesn't excuse the fragmentation of audio subsystems in Linux, but it'

          • I usually use a wrapper like PortAudio when programming because Linux hasn't really settled on any standard for decently performing audio. Plus PortAudio is quite a bit easier to use than Window's WASAPI. The compromise is that the higher level abstraction is less powerful and performs worse. So if I were writing something like a professional DAW for OSX and Windows I'd have to really benchmark wrapper libraries in my use case before I'd consider using it over the OS-specific low-level APIs.

    • Indeed, I ran into this. Then if you want to deinstall hplip, the system tells you it will also deinstall X, y, and z, and you have no idea whether you'll end up with a broken system.

      Also, hplip has a tray icon that will sit in your tray.

      • You can uninstall just hplip without uninstalling anything else. You'll still have unwanted libraries, but at least your apps menu will be cleaner.

        • Yeah, I'll give it a go. I mostly want to get rid of the tray icon and memory consumption of that in the background. But then, I keep forgetting and the system is up for weeks (yay suspend) if not months, so I typically just have to quit it after rebooting...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      OTOH, hplip is Free software, so subject to 3rd party audits and isn't the 1000 pound hog that is HP's windows software.

      None of my machines (Debian and Ubuntu) got it installed by default.

  • I remember one of the first color printers replaced the Windows spooler with their own, just to enable it to check "paper out", at that time a novelty.

    Unfortunately for worldwide companies, it checked thousands of their printers on their net all over the world, until the net failed under the traffic.

  • One possible reason for including it is that not all printers are connected to that computer.
    Using a lan or cloud hp printer, would make use of it.

    I agree it shouldn't be forced.

  • "Would it be that hard for Microsoft to just provide an operating system without needless bloat?"

    Yes, given that some HP printers require it, its probably best for MS to treat it like a common driver for plug-and-play purposes.

  • You computer is their chessboard, dumb user.

  • I can see it on my Lenovo

  • This was even weirder because I have parental controls on my sonâ(TM)s computer, and I got an email out of nowhere that he had bought HP Smart for $0.

  • bought a new laptop this weekend. I intended to wipe it and install Linux, but I was curious about win11 so I booted in. I skirted around the ms online account and set up a local admin account and rebooted. When I try to reboot again from the login screen, without first logging in, it warns me that other users may lose data if I continue. No one is logged in. Maybe M$FT is logged in? or HP? I'm sure there are other annoying things that suggest I'm being spied upon. So done with Windows and Mac telling me ho

  • Wonderful (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @07:01PM (#64045189)

    What a wonderful piece of garbage Windows has evolved into. How the hell this turd continues to command such an audience is beyond me.

    • In a world where Fox News has like 49% of the viewers - you fail to understand how Windows has so many users? Have you been paying attention son?

  • it just appeared on new apps in start menu out of nowhere

    That's pretty expensive real estate on my system.

  • Oh Lordy... (Score:3)

    by JoeDuncan ( 874519 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @08:51PM (#64045361)
    ... y'all want a *LIST* of software that turns up "unwanted" on Windows? This is a game with no end or win condition
  • I just checked it has permissions to view my camera (I don't have one, but still...). I have a Canon printer and still prefer lpd when possible.
  • Trying to hide in plain site as a HP application.

  • https://www.arendserohland.com... [arendserohland.com]

    Yep, going well there, I see. Forcing people to take your software even if they have no need of it - yep, "less hated" for sure. /s

  • I recently installed an HP printer for an elderly woman. The HP printer software asked me at least half a dozen times to sign up for their ink service that charges you by the page for ink, where you don't actually own the ink cartridges. It kept popping up several times in a row, with the 'decline' option being in small print and without a button around it. Very scammy. They charge something like $8 a month to print 50 pages, then they automatically send more ink when it gets low, a way to charge even more

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