Intel has been pinging me a few times a day for months about a driver update for my Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. As both work fine, I’ve ignored it. But then you hit that final nag, and you say:
I know how shitty this was going to be; this is why I chose to delay; I can’t take this anymore.
I could have fucking installed KDE Neon on a new partition table in the time this took. And, of course, a goddamned fucking driver update needs a EULA for each, and would I like to install it in the same directory as before (which clues you in than you’re not, in fact, installing a driver update if the EULA didn’t), and would I like to use the same settings as before, and now I need to confirm that “yes, just leave everything else the fuck alone and update my driver.”
And then close out with another button. Interestingly, the Wi-Fi updater UI is XP/Vista era, while BT is Win95. You seriously can’t do better than this in 2026?
And, of course, in both cases, I was interrupted by Windows itself to confirm I wanted to let Intel access Intel drivers.
I like having control over my machines, but there’s got to be a better way.
And if they tucked rights to a firstborn into the EULA update, joke’s on them: I’m fixed.
One of the very, very first things I do when receiving a new PC for work is to turn off every single fucking “utility” that wants to auto start and lurk in the system tray.
No, I don’t need “Intel Wireless Utility”.
No, I don’t need “Intel integrated graphics utility”.
No, I don’t need “Synaptic touchpad utility”.
No, I don’t need “Dell system monitor”.
No, I don’t need “Adobe EasyStart™”.
No, I don’t need Edge to preload itself.
No, I don’t need “HP Printer Utility”.
No, I don’t need Microsoft Teams.
No, I don’t need OneDrive.
No, I don’t want the Chrome update utility.
I will keep an eye on things myself, thanks.
I also disable automatic updates (Windows).
If you have a work PC and can adjust this stuff, your company’s IT is really dropping the ball. Updates in a company need to be managed to prevent random downtime.
Edit: Checkout Startup Delayer. I’ve used it for years, it’s a little more intuitive than MSConfig and gives you some good controls.
My company manages all driver and system updates via Intune (or whatever in-house Windows Update is called these days).
These apps all still lurk in the system tray and - because updates are centrally managed - only offer some options to tinker with some minor device settings directly that I don’t really need to tinker with. So I’d really like that RAM back that they’re parked on