Yesterday morning an Internet Investigator representing Microsoft called me at home requesting that Neowin cease all activity with AutoPatcher, a program headed by Antonis Kaladis and endorsed by Neowin for little under 4 years. Antonis received a standard take down request email through his AutoPatcher.com email address. We complied by pulling the forums on Neowin and the download page at AutoPatcher.com.
The news was quickly picked up by the likes of CNET, Slashdot and others but as of this posting we are yet to receive any sort of clear explanation as to why this decision was made 3 years after the program had been widely adopted by Neowin members, computer magazines and the industries system admins who use the program to speed up the installing of corporate machines.
A Microsoft Featured Communities representative as well as the Internet Investigator handling the case has pledged to look into the situation to find out exactly what prompted this sudden move. The only short explanation offered was the possibility of delivering malicious files with the package, something the AutoPatcher team has never done.
Updates which require WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) validation are included, and can be installed (since the WGA validation only takes place on the machine that downloads them, not the one that is installing them) which theoretically bypasses the validation check users would normally have to go through if updating through Windows Update. Antonis had asked when WGA became common if this would affect the AutoPatcher project and the concept of administrative updates and a Microsoft representative said "No", arguing that the purpose behind WGA was mostly educational. The WGA tool itself (the one offered by Windows Update as a critical update) is included in AutoPacher, though not marked for installation by default.
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