WARNING: JUNK AHEAD
Junk offender: Windowtop and Microsoft Visual C++
Free Desktop-customisation tool Windowtop ( http://windowtop.info) gets a C++ grade from me. It’s a case of nice program, shame about the coupon codes, extra software and Microsoft rubbish it brings along uninvited.
I can forgive Windowtop its gaudy coupons and its offer to install Process Lasso. They’re irritating, but you’re opted out of both by default. What really got my eyes rolling was Windowtop’s insistence on chucking yet another version of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable into my poor old PC.
You know C++. It’s the plug-in that makes your list of installed programs look like a school report (see screenshot). My PC is only one year old, but it already contains more versions of C++ than all my other installed programs put together. And I never once installed this thing voluntarily.
Visual C++ is a ‘programming environment’, much like Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or .NET – software that other software needs in order to run properly. On the upside, C++ is small. My dozens of versions add up to less than 200MB. It doesn’t appear to hog resources, and it’s more secure than JRE. But it’s uninvited and messy, and there are concerns that C++ is part of Microsoft’s privacy-invading telemetry strategy ( www.snipca.com/25914).
What’s most infuriating, though, is that you can’t uninstall it. Well you can, but there’s no way of knowing which programs and Windows services use which versions (some versions are used by a lot of tools). You could mess up your operating system by removing just one, like a poorly thought-through Jenga move.
Programs tend not to tell you when they’re chucking another Visual C++ into your PC, and I have to commend Windowtop for at least letting me know it was bringing along a 23MB friend. And it gave me an excuse to lay into Microsoft for my very last Named & Shamed column. So long, and thanks for all the PUPS.
Google has accused Microsoft of fixing flaws in Windows 10, but not 7 or 8.1 Over half of all Windows users are still using 7 or 8.1 Microsoft has committed to provide security updates for 7 and 8.1 until 2020 and 2023 respectively