Thanks Lenovo, for truly crappy software.
26 May 2015Over the long weekend, I spent some time with a Lenovo laptop. I came away from the experience with a bad taste in my mouth. The hardware was and is good stuff. Lenovo makes great hardware. But, their software sucks a giant lemon. The following rant will explain.
Recently, my brother-in-law asked me to clean-up an older Lenovo laptop and prep it for their 10 year old son. As a general rule, I don’t do Windows support on the weekend, but I am willing to make exceptions. Although I prefer to keep my non-work IT time dedicated to Linux; I saw this as an opportunity to do something nice for my nephew AND I saw it as an opportunity to give him some FOSS titles like Krita, Celestia, etc.
Fun! My first job was as a computer-tech in high-school. My primary job was fixing software problems and virus infections in Windows 3.x and Windows 95. This should have been another fun trip down memory lane. Just clean up some malware and remember the good old days. I expected the clean up to take a couple of hours and installation of new software to take an hour or two.
I was wrong. Very wrong. It took me HOURS to complete this idiotically simple task. In the end, it was more like Gilligans Island than a long movie. My three to four hour project turned into a really bad comedy with too many repeat jokes. I was the butt end of all the jokes and the comdeian is an ass-hole names Lenovo.
The laptop in question is a G560, running Win7. An older but respectable rig. In a nutshell, this is what I did:
- I cleaned up the accumulated malware.
- Replaced the anti-virus and
- Generally tidied things up.
- Removed any / all unnecessary software.
Matt (brother-in-law / client) asked me to strip the system down to stock windows. The new owner, his son, is 10 years old. This kid doesn’t need duplicate software. He does not need additional chat software, encryption software, etc. In other words, he has no use for the Lenovo software stack. I decided my job included removing all of the Lenovo-branded software that had come with the laptop. None of this software is truly necessary and it just added extra features my client would see as liabilities in the hands of a 10 year old. does not want on the system. I assumed the Lenovo-branded software was properly written. It isn’t.
Note: I only removed end-user apps. I did not remove any Lenovo drivers. Obviously, the system needs those.
The app VeriFace was my nemesis. Everything else removed itself from the computer without causing problems. But Veriface would not go away without a fight. After removing it via the Windows Control Center, it still started up, sorta, when the computer booted. I was not able to prevent this behavior via msconfig, even though I deactivated all VeriFace systems in the boot menu. Worse, VeriFace continued to provide users with two apparently separate methods to log into the computer.
In truth, my first reaction to a fully functional VeriFace was bad. It is a dumb idea. Logging into a computer via a software hack that “recognizes” the user may or may not be a good idea. I won’t comment on that. But hacking the Windows log-in screen with some half-baked crap that has NEVER seen an update is a decidedly BAD idea. It is bad op-sec and it is bad customer service.
Adding insult to injury, after “removal” the Veriface software would present an alternative log-in method which no longer worked. As purchased, VeriFace is merely confusing and an example of middle-school grade op-sec. After “removing” VeriFace, I was left with a computer with a broken log-in screen.
Awesome. Truly fucking awesome.
Let me be painfully clear here. I used the Windows Control Center to remove VeriFace. I had full admin rights to the system. VeriFace is fundamentally broken because it is impossible to cleanly remove the software via the Windows Control Panel which is the platform-defined method for software removal. This software was not properly QA’d or it was released before it was ready by a mid-level manager with an itchy shipper finger.
Considering the other recent Lenovo software flaps, I will no longer use a Lenovo computer unless I know for a fact the computer has been wiped and rebuilt AFTER purchase. If you want to use a ThinkPad (many do), be prepared to reinstall the OS yourself or hire someone you trust to do it for you. DO NOT TRUST LENOVO. They are going to put some shit in there. I recommend you replace Windows with Linux, but that is another screed. A clean Windows installation is superior to ANYTHING shipped by Lenovo.
Note: The G-series laptop is not a ThinkPad, but I have loved ThinkPads for a long time. One of the best computers I ever owned was a ThinkPad and my wife uses a Lenovo U310 as her daily driver. But it is running Kubuntu. Not the broken version of Windows distributed by Lenovo. If you love somebody, replace their Lenovo OS with something clean.
I did ask Lenovo for customer service, but the server refused to accept my request. I received several SQL errors for my effort. All I wanted to know was where I needed to go to download an executable to re-install VeriFace. I never found it.
In fact, I wasted hours of my weekend looking for the software. I was unable to find a version of Veriface that would run on Win7. Microsoft continues to support Win7. Lenovo no longer supports VeriFace on Win7. Unsupported software tied to something as critical as the log-in screen is unacceptable. If Lenovo is unwilling to provide ongoing support and updates to such critical software, it should NEVER distribute it in the first place. I continue to suspect someone has an itchy shipper finger.
In the end, I found a regedit hack on the Lenovo Forums. Fortunately, it worked. To the fine people in the Lenovo Forums, I say THANK YOU! To everyone else, I’m going to start saying Dell. Dell doesn’t build anything as awesome as a ThinkPad but it doesn’t force any software down my throat as bad as VeriFace. Thank you Michael. Thank you. I promise to replace the U310 with a Laptop, especially if you expand the selection of Dells that ship with Linux pre-installed.