LG SN22NS50 ODD... problem!

[2Tired2Tango]

LG GH22NS50 ODD... problem!

Every once in a while computer stupidities come up around here and we usually have a pretty good chuckle over them... But this one isn't so funny.

On the disk that is bundled with the LG GH22NS50 DVD burner ("Multi Drive Installer Disk for Windows". VER3.0) you get the usual crippled Nero package and a bunch of other crap I'll never use... This is expected.

What is NOT expected is that this bundle also includes a Firmware "Update" that is more of a Firmware virus... If you install the software bundle your disk drive with no disk in the drive will show you 4 files... Bluebirds.exe, Autorun.inf, Drag&Burn.exe and Setup.exe... The software bundle installs these directly into the burner's firmware... and the only way to remove them is to flash the drive with a special patcher from LG itself.

Now I'm pretty tolerant of bad ideas, I've had a few myself... but really, this is way too stupid, even for me. You just plain don't install end user programs into the Firmware of a diskdrive... especially when they don't work without installing the rest of the bundled applications. Hell, they even show up on network shares and will install on other machines if you run the setup.exe file! ... The very definition of a virus.

My best advice... Don't buy these disk drives. And if you choose to ignore my advice... Please have enough sense to not run the bundled software...

I just spent 5 hours trying to get that crap out of there... 3 of which were spent trying to get LG's fix to work... But I'll save you the trouble... It only works if the disk tray is open... run the fix program, open the tray, click the go button... no other sequence will work.

The fix file is GH22NS50_TN01(EW).zip available on the LG Canada website... if you need it.

 

[Kougar]

Wow, that is appalling to say the least! Sounds like either some dubious practices are going on or some one at LG is simply extremely lazy and sloppy programming. Or perhaps just all the above.

Thanks for the warning, sounds like one company I can make a note of to avoid.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Wow, that is appalling to say the least! Sounds like either some dubious practices are going on or some one at LG is simply extremely lazy and sloppy programming. Or perhaps just all the above.

Thanks for the warning, sounds like one company I can make a note of to avoid.

In fairness it's only that one model that seems to have the problem... but the "bluebirds" thing does come from the software disk. It's in a folder called "fw_update" which is very enticing. I don't know if this affects other models or not...

The story, unconfirmed but from multiple sources, is that it's a prank played by a fired employee... apparently his last job on his last day was to upload this into the folders for the disk distribution and LG didn't notice it before burning thousands of disks. (Note Please... *unconfirmed*)