Windows 11 Technical Question

[NWI_Irish96]

I have an HP laptop and recently upgraded to Windows 11. One day I was poking around Task Manager and noticed a program called HP Touchpoint Analytics Client. I learned that this is essentially a program that provides HP (free of charge) all sorts of data about my laptop usage. I ended the program and it just popped back up. I tried to uninstall/delete it and got a message that this is a system program and I don't have permission to delete it.

Is there a way to get rid of this thing, or am I actually stuck with a tracking program against my will?

[kalvado]

I have an HP laptop and recently upgraded to Windows 11. One day I was poking around Task Manager and noticed a program called HP Touchpoint Analytics Client. I learned that this is essentially a program that provides HP (free of charge) all sorts of data about my laptop usage. I ended the program and it just popped back up. I tried to uninstall/delete it and got a message that this is a system program and I don't have permission to delete it.

Is there a way to get rid of this thing, or am I actually stuck with a tracking program against my will?

I did a crude thing for such situations - find the executable and set permissions to "none".
There are all sorts of tricks for manufacturer to evade every attempt to restrict those little programs - but setting permissions was something that worked for me. 
Or.... just realize that Windows are past their prime.

[NWI_Irish96]

I have an HP laptop and recently upgraded to Windows 11. One day I was poking around Task Manager and noticed a program called HP Touchpoint Analytics Client. I learned that this is essentially a program that provides HP (free of charge) all sorts of data about my laptop usage. I ended the program and it just popped back up. I tried to uninstall/delete it and got a message that this is a system program and I don't have permission to delete it.

Is there a way to get rid of this thing, or am I actually stuck with a tracking program against my will?

I did a crude thing for such situations - find the executable and set permissions to "none".
There are all sorts of tricks for manufacturer to evade every attempt to restrict those little programs - but setting permissions was something that worked for me. 
Or.... just realize that Windows are past their prime.

So I tried this, and it was blocking me from even changing permissions, or am I going to the wrong place to try to do this?

[SSOWorld]

Are you running as administrator?

[NWI_Irish96]

Are you running as administrator?

When I turn on the computer, my login choices are my account, my wife's account, or a guest account. There's no option to log in as administrator. However, when I go to my account page, it has 'Administrator' by my name.

[kalvado]

Are you running as administrator?

It is possible that folder is owned by a system or trustedinstaller, or whatever else is new in W11 - then administrator rights are not enough.
Running third party file manager with elevated permissions is the trick.

[NWI_Irish96]

Running third party file manager with elevated permissions is the trick.

I wouldn't even know how to begin to do that.

[kalvado]

Running third party file manager with elevated permissions is the trick.

I wouldn't even know how to begin to do that.

I can give some links, but I don't have any W11 to try things myslef. I hope there are people with more user-interaction experience over here.

[Scott5114]

Note that I try not to get within six feet of a computer running Windows anymore without PPE, so this is just what I would try, using my fuzzy memories of Windows 10. If any of these potential solutions sound like they would be of interest to you, Google the step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish it. A guide to do any computer thing, complete with screenshots, will be available on the internet somewhere.

- You might try looking in the Services list and if it's there, stopping and disabling it. (Stopping it stops it right now, disabling it causes it to not start itself up in the future.)
- You can look at the start-on-bootup list, remove it from that, and reboot.
- You could find the address of the server that the program is sending data to and block it in with your HOSTS file. This is a suboptimal solution because it would keep draining resources, but it would be unable to transmit the data back to HP, at least.
- If you really want to nuke it from orbit, you could access the hard drive from outside of the installed copy Windows (i.e. by removing the drive and hooking it up to another computer, or booting to a Linux boot disc) and just delete the file by force. This could cause other errors if there are other things that depend upon this thing's existence.

[NWI_Irish96]

Note that I try not to get within six feet of a computer running Windows anymore without PPE, so this is just what I would try, using my fuzzy memories of Windows 10. If any of these potential solutions sound like they would be of interest to you, Google the step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish it. A guide to do any computer thing, complete with screenshots, will be available on the internet somewhere.

- You might try looking in the Services list and if it's there, stopping and disabling it. (Stopping it stops it right now, disabling it causes it to not start itself up in the future.)
- You can look at the start-on-bootup list, remove it from that, and reboot.
- You could find the address of the server that the program is sending data to and block it in with your HOSTS file. This is a suboptimal solution because it would keep draining resources, but it would be unable to transmit the data back to HP, at least.
- If you really want to nuke it from orbit, you could access the hard drive from outside of the installed copy Windows (i.e. by removing the drive and hooking it up to another computer, or booting to a Linux boot disc) and just delete the file by force. This could cause other errors if there are other things that depend upon this thing's existence.

-I can stop it, but then it automatically restarts within 1 minute. There's no option to disable it.

-The program doesn't appear on the start-on-bootup list. HP is trying very hard to keep you from getting rid of this

-Don't really want to drain resources

-That's farther than I'm willing to go to get rid of this.

[CtrlAltDel]

I have an HP laptop and recently upgraded to Windows 11. One day I was poking around Task Manager and noticed a program called HP Touchpoint Analytics Client. I learned that this is essentially a program that provides HP (free of charge) all sorts of data about my laptop usage. I ended the program and it just popped back up. I tried to uninstall/delete it and got a message that this is a system program and I don't have permission to delete it.

Is there a way to get rid of this thing, or am I actually stuck with a tracking program against my will?

I did a crude thing for such situations - find the executable and set permissions to "none".
There are all sorts of tricks for manufacturer to evade every attempt to restrict those little programs - but setting permissions was something that worked for me. 
Or.... just realize that Windows are past their prime.

So I tried this, and it was blocking me from even changing permissions, or am I going to the wrong place to try to do this?

This Reddit thread suggests also changing the owner. Maybe that will work.

[kalvado]

Note that I try not to get within six feet of a computer running Windows anymore without PPE, so this is just what I would try, using my fuzzy memories of Windows 10. If any of these potential solutions sound like they would be of interest to you, Google the step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish it. A guide to do any computer thing, complete with screenshots, will be available on the internet somewhere.

- You might try looking in the Services list and if it's there, stopping and disabling it. (Stopping it stops it right now, disabling it causes it to not start itself up in the future.)
- You can look at the start-on-bootup list, remove it from that, and reboot.
- You could find the address of the server that the program is sending data to and block it in with your HOSTS file. This is a suboptimal solution because it would keep draining resources, but it would be unable to transmit the data back to HP, at least.
- If you really want to nuke it from orbit, you could access the hard drive from outside of the installed copy Windows (i.e. by removing the drive and hooking it up to another computer, or booting to a Linux boot disc) and just delete the file by force. This could cause other errors if there are other things that depend upon this thing's existence.

I had a program on Samsung laptop which was checking it's status on bootup using UEFI code. You could delete .exe from hdd, but on bootup file would be restored and added to startup regardless. Not sure if full restart was needed, or hybernation could trip it as well. I assume things did escalate since then.

[NWI_Irish96]

I have an HP laptop and recently upgraded to Windows 11. One day I was poking around Task Manager and noticed a program called HP Touchpoint Analytics Client. I learned that this is essentially a program that provides HP (free of charge) all sorts of data about my laptop usage. I ended the program and it just popped back up. I tried to uninstall/delete it and got a message that this is a system program and I don't have permission to delete it.

Is there a way to get rid of this thing, or am I actually stuck with a tracking program against my will?

I did a crude thing for such situations - find the executable and set permissions to "none".
There are all sorts of tricks for manufacturer to evade every attempt to restrict those little programs - but setting permissions was something that worked for me. 
Or.... just realize that Windows are past their prime.

So I tried this, and it was blocking me from even changing permissions, or am I going to the wrong place to try to do this?

This Reddit thread suggests also changing the owner. Maybe that will work.

I had tried that before without success, but I went back and changed the owner of the file to 'Everybody' and that worked and I was able to change permissions and then delete the file. I even restarted the laptop to confirm that it didn't come back.

I'm assuming that every time Windows updates, the file will come back and I'll have to do it again.

[skluth]

HP has a help page to uninstall it here. I have no idea if it really works. For something that should be as simple as uninstalling, it seems to have a couple more steps. Good luck. I've got two new Win 10 machines that I have so far avoided "upgrading" to Win 11 even though both could easily handle it. Everything I've heard about Win 11 is it follows the same pattern of sucks/ doesn't-suck we've seen with 95/ 98/ Me/ XP/ Vista/ 7/ 8/ 10/ 11. If they only released the bolded versions, my life would have been much simpler.

[JREwing78]

I'm assuming that every time Windows updates, the file will come back and I'll have to do it again.

Probably not. It's a HP-supplied component, not a Microsoft-supplied one, so Windows Update won't touch it. If you run the HP updater tool, however, it may try to sneak it back on.

[zachary_amaryllis]

As long as we're asking windows questions, here's one that stumps me.

I maintain a windows 11 installation on my laptop for school. I'd like to have it download and install its updates at, say, 3 am. I'm on a capped data plan with hughesnet, and would like to have it do its updating during the 'bonus zone' hours. But I can't find anything relating to downloading updates, only when they get installed.

Anyone?

On the linux machines its easy via cron/crontab.

[skluth]

As long as we're asking windows questions, here's one that stumps me.

I maintain a windows 11 installation on my laptop for school. I'd like to have it download and install its updates at, say, 3 am. I'm on a capped data plan with hughesnet, and would like to have it do its updating during the 'bonus zone' hours. But I can't find anything relating to downloading updates, only when they get installed.

Anyone?

On the linux machines its easy via cron/crontab.

Found this Win 10 procedure. You can check if it works for 11. Warning: this procedure is getting into the weeds of being an admin but it doesn't look too difficult.

I am not a computer person; I'm a retired cartographer. But I had to do a lot of sys admin crap (Windows, Unix, and VAX/VMS) during my career and learned a fair amount for survival.

[zachary_amaryllis]

As long as we're asking windows questions, here's one that stumps me.

I maintain a windows 11 installation on my laptop for school. I'd like to have it download and install its updates at, say, 3 am. I'm on a capped data plan with hughesnet, and would like to have it do its updating during the 'bonus zone' hours. But I can't find anything relating to downloading updates, only when they get installed.

Anyone?

On the linux machines its easy via cron/crontab.

Found this Win 10 procedure. You can check if it works for 11. Warning: this procedure is getting into the weeds of being an admin but it doesn't look too difficult.

I am not a computer person; I'm a retired cartographer. But I had to do a lot of sys admin crap (Windows, Unix, and VAX/VMS) during my career and learned a fair amount for survival.

your heart's in the right place (hopefully somewhere in your chest) but this doesn't work for win 11. from what i've read, what i want isn't possible. i'll just set it to manual, and if i wake up to pee in the middle of the night, turn it on.