Samsung has promised to stop disabling Windows Update on hardware using its SW Update software.

The behavior came to light earlier this week after debugger and reverse engineer Patrick Barker documented an investigation by members of the Sysnative forum into why Windows Update kept getting disabled—checking for updates but never downloading or installing them—on a misbehaving machine. The forum troubleshooters discovered that Samsung's SW Update was downloading a program called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe which, true to its name, was disabling Windows Update each time the system started.

Samsung's statement today says that the company will soon stop doing it. The company said that "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."

The reason that Samsung's software was doing this in the first place was never entirely clear. A customer service rep told Barker that laptops' USB 3 ports "may not work" due to Windows Updates, hence the apparent need to disable them. It's not, however, clear that the rep was suitably authorized or informed to make this statement, and even if true, it's not clear why Samsung didn't elect to fix the problem (by issuing the relevant drivers itself) rather than papering over the cracks.