GOG Version coming when Steam locks out all Windows 7 users?

[cpy]

@gurgel Not even close! You can't even change default browser for forced msedge links. Yeah system have FORCED msedge http links. In windows 10 you could install msedge redirect that would open ALL links in your defined browser but W11 kills that and will open msedge when it feels like it, no matter what is your preferred browser.

It also starts with system and I have no idea how to stop it from being a background hog. Once you open msedge it will add all startup entries you tried to delete.

Same level as asus backdoor asusupdate that will install into system32 folder. I was debugging long shutdown time of my windows so I enabled verbose messages on login and logoff and found out that there is asusupdate hogging shutdown. Tried to delete it but it would be rootkited by motherboard directly from UEFI. The only way to stop that was to mark that file in file system as openable deletable and writable by nobody, so windows wouldn't be able to do anything with it and that stopped it.

There is so much crap going on in system it's sick! Half of which I have no clue that even exists.

[JRup]

@cpy At least the ASUS rootkit (I refuse to honor it with its official name) can be disabled from BIOS settings. But it should not be an opt-out "feature" (or be there at all for that matter). Extra web points when anybody recognizes which video this shot comes from:

Before someone comes up with the usual "*nix is hard" I provide some support for family friends that can only have linux on their potato pcs. If their 11 y/o kid can go into some quick fixes over chat (yes, CLI even, gaming is a great motivator) then not all hope is lost for humanity. That we need there to be guides for installing the spyware-OS v11 without a M-shaft account and others to actually trim it to where we're comfy using it shouldn't be astounding nowadays, external links in spoiler:

Spoiler

Yes, a guide.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-microsoft-account

ntLite is now a paid program, but hails from the era of slipstreaming updates into an ISO (windows 7 was particularly one to operate on, long live HFSLIP btw)

https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-11-ntlite-guide/

For the record, I preferred the old steam launcher and am too lazy to start testing CLI options to launch games without triggering the web interface - yes steam has made it abundantly convenient for the laziness to take root into gaming. But maybe that's what's needed for the ones left behind, a sort of homegrown launcher that's compliant with steam's/EGS's login requirements and be able to game from there.

I miss the era where you could buy a game and get a neat box with all kinds of goodies inside. Last game I "physically" bought was 2016's Doom and all I got was a plastic box with an activation code inside; to make things worse, I got taxed into hell because that's how it works for gaming where I live.

I still have my C&C:The last decade and will be holding onto that CD set like a dragon. We don't count past 3 in that saga.

[cpy]

@JRup mwhahahaha armory crate? What I'm talking about can NOT be disabled in UEFI. There is NO option for that. Welcome to ASUS rootkit hell.

[SharraShimada]

1 minute ago, cpy said:

@JRup mwhahahaha armory crate? What I'm talking about can NOT be disabled in UEFI. There is NO option for that. Welcome to ASUS rootkit hell.

Lesson learned? Never buy from Asus. 

[JRup]

4 minutes ago, cpy said:

@JRup mwhahahaha armory crate? What I'm talking about can NOT be disabled in UEFI. There is NO option for that. Welcome to ASUS rootkit hell.

If it's a windoze, then yeah. Please enlighten me, tell me more about this one. I'll otherwise chock it up to the cooties. I'm mostly beyond the reach of exe files atm.

[cpy]

@JRup I don't know what it does except it slows down shutdown a lot. You can find rootkit here: c:\Windows\System32\AsusUpdateCheck.exe

You can find more info about it here:

https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/asus-software/asusupdatecheck-exe-reappears-after-reboot/td-p/855265

[JRup]

@cpy Thanks!

It's a vendor supplied rootkit indeed. Still, some google-fu left us right where we took off, ASUS Armoury Crate is the culprit for the executable you mentioned, here I leave them without a spoiler tag as they can be a rather fruitful read:

https://www.techpowerup.com/248827/asus-z390-motherboards-automatically-push-software-into-your-windows-installation

https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/asus-software/asusupdatecheck-exe-reappears-after-reboot/m-p/855265

Best practice would be to disable Armoury Crate before installing windows to be 'mostly' sure it will not affect/infect your system. Funny enough, I had it enabled on mine but the fat-bottomed penguin scoffed at it.

[cpy]

Nothing new to me I had 9900K and that was the first time i found about it. So yeah scumbag ASUS.

My old motherboard does not have armory crate or armory crate settings in UEFI but still installed that bloatware crap asusupdatecheck.exe so yeah in EU it should be illegal to do that thanks to GDPR.

[JRup]

@cpy Although we're already going on a tangent with this, there's some stuff I'd love to know like the model and bios version of your MOBO... It scratches an itch called 'support'. It all reminds me of the "bluebirds.exe" that LG tried to stuff in their optical drives years ago.

Also, found a nice thread that can provide some hope if there's no option in UEFI-BIOS. Although registry editing is required in windoze (8 or above, which ties in with why I guess OP would prefer to stick to 7):
 

Spoiler

From: https://persistence-info.github.io/Data/wpbbin.html

Still, anything that can release performance from the system into playing ONI is a win in my book.

[cpy]

I already disabled WPBT in my old PC and in my new i just forbid windows to access asusupdatecheck.exe file so it can't do anything with it.

My old pc is stored away so I'd have to connect it somewhere to find out bios version, heck I even forgot which MB model I have!

My MB was ASUS TUF Z390-PLUS GAMING I don't remember which UEFI version though.

[blakemw]

I'm another voice in favor of Linux, if you are forced to move on from an end of life OS, seriously consider leaving the Windozeverse. All the games I play often or occasionally: ONI, Factorio, Tropico 6, Kerbal Space Program, Cities Skylines, Surviving Mars, Stellaris, Transport Fever 2, The Long Dark and some more have native linux support. A bunch more like Dwarf Fortress (linux native build coming to steam soonTM) and some older games have nearly seamless support via Steam Proton, some older games even work better in Linux than Windows because Wine (the basis for Proton) has stronger compatibility with old games than modern versions of Windows, it's mainly a few AAA titles like GTA 5 I might boot up windows for once or twice a year, not to say they don't work at all under Proton/Wine but they may have glitches or poor performance.

I'd say that Linux gaming is in a really good place now unless you really want to play the latest hotness AAA games which may come from publishers who aren't linux friendly, this is especially the case with Microsoft Store / XBox exclusives (Blizzard is bad too, but Wine support is often decent to flawless because they aren't as hardcore about DRM, funnily enough it's often their POS battle.net launcher/updater that makes problems). But for those games that are distributed via Steam, there is significant pressure to support Linux because of SteamOS, Steam basically wants Linux to have first class support, not be an afterthought.

As an extra bonus, while graphic drivers are usually inferior in Linux compared with Windows (though how much this matters vary vastly by game), Linux tends to have stronger memory management capabilities, which can make memory bound games like Factorio actually perform better under Linux than Windows (and Factorio under Linux has non-blocking autosaves, something Windows can't do), and like Cities Skylines has a faster simulation (but not graphical framerate) under Linux than Windows. So it shouldn't be thought that Linux gaming is a strictly inferior experience to windows gaming.

I still dual boot, but I use windows for like 3 days of the year because I vastly prefer Ubuntu.

[Dragony]

@blakemw I didn't know that Gaming on Unix is already working that well? Hmmm I have a strong FreeBSD workstation here as well.... might give it a try. And I can jail Steam on it so it doesn't mess around with files which are none of their business.

 

I would have preferred a GOG Version, but has Klei ever responded to a question asked in the forum? Factorio seems to do everything better. Even that.

 

[JRup]

@Dragony I'm not completely sure about gaming on FreeBSD (Unix) as there are some things that aren't yet 1:1 when it comes to UNIX-Linux...

Still, gaming on a BSD doesn't seem to be completely abandoned atm... Link to a deleted reddit post in spoiler, it still has some usable info in its comments:

Spoiler

 

Regarding the crew from Klei, I wouldn't lose faith, they sometimes provide insights beyond simple moderation.

[blakemw]

7 hours ago, Dragony said:

@blakemw I didn't know that Gaming on Unix is already working that well? Hmmm I have a strong FreeBSD workstation here as well.... might give it a try. And I can jail Steam on it so it doesn't mess around with files which are none of their business.

Steam is tested on Ubuntu Linux and SteamOS which is based on Debian. Steam comes with the "steam runtime" set of libraries which steam games are meant to link against, and it makes it not particularly dependent on the libraries from the OS and so Steam does tend to work quite well on pretty much any OS using the Linux kernel, but I think BSDs would be sufficiently different that the Steam experience would involve a lot more mucking around rather than the "it just works" experience on Ubuntu.

[Gurgel]

On 5/17/2023 at 11:15 PM, SharraShimada said:

Lesson learned? Never buy from Asus. 

I learned that a long time ago. Their thermal designs are intentionally broken. The only mainboards I ever lost due to thermal degradation are Asus and it did not come as a surprise. These things were designed to break after 4...5 years unless you add your own cooling. Never again. Of course, now Microsoft is trying to break a majority of all PCs on the planet. Such a great contribution to fighting climate change! 

[ChainedDjinn]

The thing some people don't get is if you don't learn from history, it is doomed to be repeated.

I believe someone said something about no one spending a penny on something outdated? I'm guessing your either young or ignorant as to how or why we have museums or reservations. There are places that maintain old VCR cassettes and players as well as the TVs that can use them, you think that repair is cheap? Yet it is still done, as it must. Because without those mediums, we lose something important.

Same for skills of the old world like; churning milk into butter, making your own mayonnaise, blacksmithing, braintanning, suture or sewing and many more are all important skills to learn even if there are faster or more 'professional' ways of doing it, what's your point? Are you saying only the ones with a fancy degree should be the only ones to do any of these things? Long while back you had people mucking about in the DOS playing with code just to make something funny happen, nowadays hardly anyone pays attention to that black screen on boot up, soon enough their may not even be one... good luck when that happens.

There have already been instances of big companies using their platforms to dictate what customers are allowed, retroactively deleting apps from not only their store but from peoples personal devices. The more who echo this 'deal with it' mentality the closer we get to an edge humanity does not want to fall off, because at the end of that drop is a land worse then North Korea in terms of surveillance. Autonomy would be loaned and would be retracted for anything that doesn't fall in line with 'the new paradigm' dictated by said overloaders companies.

We should have the right to individual privacy, repair or tweak the tools we buy and own. whether those tools be for production or recreation is irrelevant. Your happy with windows 10 now, maybe another edition if things go right. But what happens when your forced to move on and don't have a choice, do you still own your data at that point? Or are giving up all possibility at recovery due to someone else holding the keys.

If people lose the will to stand in the face of oppression, we allow our future to henceforth be subjugated and trained to someone else's tune.

Forever beware the dangers of indifference.

 

 

 

[spkthed]

On 5/15/2023 at 2:54 PM, Dragony said:

I think some people here just don't understand the reasons why some people want to keep Windows 7.

  I think most of the people replying to you do their response is just 'well, go use Linux because these concerns aren't mitigated by staying on Windows 7' - they still apply. Actually, I remember some of the same arguments with XP from 98. And XP to 7. And 7 to 10. I will say that it's not just your personal machine that is a consideration, once a machine is compromised unless it's firewalled (and even then, with stuff like upnp), it then turns around and attacks others.

 

On 5/17/2023 at 5:21 AM, cpy said:

@gurgel latest windows 11 install does not work offline and you will not create account without microsoft account, unless you use modded installations of W11 which currently I'm using W11 superlite edition. Very very risky thing to install and trust, thank you MS for forcing us to use shady installations images because you're complete and utter !@#$!@$!

This isn't accurate. You can still use the base image to do a local user upon install.
 

On 5/16/2023 at 10:11 AM, Dragony said:

You assume I am using W7 to browse the net. I am not. I am using FreeBSD for doing it. But besides, bugs in a web browser have nothing to do with bugs in the operating system you are using. I could use W95 protected by an external firewall with an updated Firefox and I would not hesitate using it for browsing the web.

The issue is that that W95 Firefox instance is so far behind the security curve literally any website you connect to can compromise it. Firewall or no, it only takes a second of connectivity. Back in the day it was fun to see how long it would take for an XP install to get hijacked on a clean install. Back in the SP3 days it wasn't long.

[MiniDeathStar]

On 5/17/2023 at 4:25 PM, cpy said:

Not even close! You can't even change default browser for forced msedge links. Yeah system have FORCED msedge http links. In windows 10 you could install msedge redirect that would open ALL links in your defined browser but W11 kills that and will open msedge when it feels like it, no matter what is your preferred browser.

https://github.com/rcmaehl/MSEdgeRedirect this one still works in W11. Also it's possible to avoid the forced M$ account on W11 if you install W10 first and then upgrade. And there's O&O ShutUp10 that removes a lot of the spyware.

[spkthed]

Or you can just do the no internet trick which I have done twice recently - it still works.

[Gurgel]

On 5/17/2023 at 4:21 PM, JRup said:

@cpy At least the ASUS rootkit (I refuse to honor it with its official name) can be disabled from BIOS settings. But it should not be an opt-out "feature" (or be there at all for that matter).

Urgh. Or the Gigabyte version of this rootkit that is implemented so badly that it is a direct security threat, see recent security alerts. Fortunately, my Gigabyte Mainboard does not have that feature. For the MSI mainboard that I also use, I smelled a fish and left this off.

I have been doing IT security for about 35 years now and not a lot of insecure design surprises me, but this feature did. How people can do such an abysmally stupid insecure design is really beyond me. And it is MS and the mainboard makers both that collaborate to make this even work. Talk about shooting their users in the back with no warning.

[JRup]

7 hours ago, Gurgel said:

How people can do such an abysmally stupid insecure design is really beyond me.

I guess marketing, management and HR got into engineering.

7 hours ago, Gurgel said:

And it is MS and the mainboard makers both that collaborate to make this even work. Talk about shooting their users in the back with no warning.

Runoff from MS trying to implement stillborn "security" features that may have threatened access to other OSs different from their own thus creating a solution in search of a problem. They are now doing their best to embrace *nix based 'stuff', only the spaghetti monster knows when they'll try to enact the other two 'E's  of their usual M.O..

[Gurgel]

6 hours ago, JRup said:

 They are now doing their best to embrace *nix based 'stuff', only the spaghetti monster knows when they'll try to enact the other two 'E's  of their usual M.O..

To be fair, they already put a backdoor into their Azure Linux images so the end "E" is already in progress: https://djangocas.dev/blog/azure-walinuxagent-backdoor/

Apparently you are not really allowed to de-install this thing or the image does not work correctly with Azure. Well, at least they are consistent...

[spkthed]

That's pretty typical for cloud providers. It's used for cloud-init it looks like which is needed. I'm sure that AWS and GCP have something similar.

https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/20.4.1/topics/datasources/azure.html