Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

Technology@lemmy.world – 1132 points – 1 weeks ago

TLDR:
Windows 11 v24H2 and beyond will have Recall installed on every system. Attempting to remove Recall will now break some file explorer features such as tabs.

YT Video (5min)

Invidious Link

Original Github Issue

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Okay, this might be a non-issue: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2697#issuecomment-2403792309

To those that arrive here from any Youtube or Twitter posts, please know that disabling Recall via DISM works fine, and preserves the modern File Explorer (though some might consider this an anti-feature). CBS correctly disables it, and the disablement is preserved through reboots, just like with any other feature.

Edit: of course, the big problem here is that it's still present (even disabled) and hence malware could turn it back on without you realising. Ugh.

A lot of unpopular "features" and behaviors used to have DISM, policy, or registry workarounds. And MS seems to love to kill those workarounds during later updates.

If MS isn't letting people uninstall it, there's a reason for it, and I'd be willing to bet that users will one day find that it has been magically re-enabled by an update.

There will 100% be a policy to disable it. Microsoft may shit on their retail users, but there's no way they'd force it on their enterprise clients. It's a security and compliance nightmare and they know it.

Problem is disabling it will likely be locked behind the Enterprise edition.

Kind of like the "Recommended" section in the Start menu. There is actually a way to disable that entirely...if you have an Enterprise license. There is no way to do it on any other version.

I said it was back when they took Group Policy out of the Home edition: the long term goal is to make truly controlling Windows a premium feature that only corporations can afford, and you see that with the slow elimination of many of those settings.

So how can users band together to buy enterprise licenses from each other?

If MS isn’t letting people uninstall it, there’s a reason for it,

🤑 and control

Malware could also reinstall it to be fair, or just create screenshots on its own.

Still smells fishy that Explorer has it as a dependency, "disabled" or not.

Recall is malware, at least according to Malwarebytes!

Malware, or “malicious software,” is an umbrella term that refers to any malicious program or code that is harmful to systems.

(though some might consider this an anti-feature)

To be fair, not everyone would say that, and the only reason you would call it an "anti-feature" is if you had an accurate understanding of the issues.

Its odd to call Windows Update "Malware".

Yeah, you are already running Windows.

If you still consider Windows Update malware then you completely missed the other 90% of your hostile environment.

Windows Update is 100% malware by definition. Remember when Windows 7 had a free upgrade to Windows 10? It would force itself into the update queue with regular updates regardless of the user's permission, and even after x days after the user explicitly said they didn't want Windows 10. I worked in a computer repair shop in that time. The Windows 10 upgrade that people didn't want or agree to often failed, breaking the machine. Sometimes we could recover the installation. Sometimes the OS had to be reinstalled. It was intentionally pushing software in deceiving ways to unconsenting users that broke their machine.

All of Windows is malware. By default you have adverts in your start menu, you have pop ups (which is not the same thing as Windows Update, pop ups are a service provided by Explorer) which maliciously install unwanted web browsers.

You can't support Trump and then claim that only a small part of his following is due to racist bigots.

You can't support AI and claim that only a small part of it damages the atmosphere.

You can't support Windows and claim that only part of it is malware.

Windows 100% enables and supports this nefarious behaviour. It's the abusive spouse trapping you before beating the shit out of you for your own good.