Windows users quietly receiving Microsoft Bing Service 2.0 update that won't uni...

Windows users quietly receiving Microsoft Bing Service 2.0 update that won't uninstall

On various forums online (1, 2, 3), Windows users are reporting of a new and mysterious update that is being pushed via Windows Update. Classified as a Quality Update, the new update is dubbed "Microsoft Bing Service 2.0". Users on both Windows 11 and Windows 10 are receiving it so it isn't exclusively meant for Windows 11 22H2 Insiders or something.

Here's how Microsoft defines what Bing Service does:

The Bing Service allows you to retrieve Bing results. Bing can return web and news results in your language, images, and videos for many countries/regions around the world.

Basically it looks like the service is what powers Microsoft's Bing search engine and it's possible that that the new 2.0 version improves upon that. Interestingly, when one clicks on the "Learn more" option beside the update (image above), the Bing page on the default browser opens up instead of release notes webpage that generally opens.

Upon downloading the update, a new "BingSvc" folder is created inside the Microsoft folder in Program Files(x86). This folder contains two files, BGAStartMSI.msi file and BGAStartMSILauncher.exe file.

German outlet Deskmodder did some further digging around through registry tweaks and found more files inside a certain bgaupdate folder:

• BDAStartMSI.exe
• BGAStartMSILauncher.exe
• BDAUpdatePack.exe
• BSvcInstaller.msi
• BSvcStartMSI.exe
• BWCStartMSI.exe

When the BWCStartMSI executive file was run to enable the feature, it was noticed that the desktop wallpaper was replaced with a Bing Wallpaper. You can see two example images below:

The new Bing Service 2.0 update doesn't show up on the "Uninstall updates" list which means it cannot be uninstalled, indicating that Microsoft perhaps does not want its users to uninstall this update. Hence it looks like Microsoft might be trying to push Bing Wallpapers to Windows users soon.

Source: BrenTech (YouTube) via: Deskmodder