Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, December 4 (Xinhua) Microsoft recently installed the "HP Smart" app on some systems without the user's knowledge or consent. According to WindowsLatest, this problem does exist and is pushed through the Microsoft Store of Windows 11 or 10.

According to the report, recent Windows updates also accidentally mismarked various printers as "HP LaserJet M101-M106" on Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems. It is speculated that this abnormal problem stems from metadata confusion, which affects the identification and display of printers in the operating system.

According to CTOnews.com, metadata is information provided to Microsoft by companies like Hewlett-Packard that can help Windows identify the hardware details of connected peripherals, such as printers. In the last week of November, HP sent updated metadata to Windows Update, which was originally designed for its products but contained misinformation.

Because the metadata is extracted directly from the Windows update and is not a software package, users will not notice it in the update history, but can find it in an .XML file in the "DeviceMetadataCache" folder:

C:\ ProgramData\ Microsoft\ Windows\ DeviceMetadataCache\ dmrccache\ tr\ d3a162c7-a388-4099-b63d-265639514cc0

If your device is affected, when you open the devices and printers in the control panel, you will notice that the icons and names of all printers or related services have been incorrectly changed to "HP LaserJet M101-M106", regardless of the actual brand of the printer.

This is a labeling and recognition issue, although the printer's icon and name are wrong, but the printer's function is not affected. All PC that get update metadata distributed by Hewlett-Packard from Windows updates are affected by this error, regardless of PC configuration.

More importantly, the misrecognition of the printer as an HP product triggered Microsoft Store to automatically install the "HP Smart" application because the system thought the user was using the Hewlett-Packard printer. That's why some users have recently added "HP Smart" apps in their start menus, even if they don't use printers or Hewlett-Packard products.

It seems like a common problem for Windows updates to mark printer errors as HP M101-M106, but Microsoft has withdrawn the wrong metadata and is working with HP to find a solution. Microsoft says it is investigating the problem, but there is no simple solution.

Microsoft may release updates in the next few days to resolve this metadata confusion, and as mentioned earlier, this error does not affect the actual functionality of the printer.

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