Last month, Windows bloggers and news sites began reporting that they'd noticed Windows Update, the utility that downloads and installs fixes from Microsoft, was surreptitiously updating Windows machines.

A few weeks later, users alleged that there had been an unannounced change: Windows Update patched itself without informing the user, and according to critics, broke Windows Update in the process.

Now there's new anger over a new product update being pushed out, even if people don't run Windows Update. The product revision in question is Windows Desktop Search 3.01 (WDS), which Microsoft had been pushing out with Windows Live automatically. Some users charge that it seems as if the new version is being pushed out with any Windows update.

What's worse, users claim that once WDS is installed, it begins indexing the computer. If a user tries to uninstall the feature, it forces the computer to reboot (no reboot had been required when WDS was initially installed) and then tries to reinstall itself again, when they go to Windows Update.

WDS is installed not only on desktop computers but servers as well. This is keeping the WDS support board very busy.

Microsoft declined to comment when contacted by InternetNews.com. However, the Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) group confirmed in a blog posting that some users were seeing unexpected updates.

According to the post, WSUS automatically auto-approves updates to existing products by default, and WSUS assumed in this case that WDS was a revision to software already installed on the user's computer.

"So what happened with this revision and why did it seemingly deploy itself to all systems in [your] environment?" WSUS Project Manager Bobbie Harder wrote in the post. "WSUS by default is set to auto-approve update revisions to minimize administrative overhead and make sure distribution 'just works' ... it may have appeared as if this update was deployed without approval. The initial version of the update would have had to have been approved, and the 'auto-approve revisions' option on (by default) in order for this revision to have also been approved and deployed."

Despite the Windows Update team's response, Microsoft is still getting an earful, particularly from admins who have to remove WDS from all their office computers.

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Windows, Security Update, WSUS, Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Automatic Update, WDS, Desktop Search, Microsoft