ASUS UEFI force-installs and reinstalls shovelware on Windows and it’s spamming users with Christmas wishes

I didn’t have the time to post this one before Christmas, but it’s so funny and sad at the same time I don’t want to keep this from you. It turns out that in the days leading up to Christmas this year, users of ASUS computers – or with ASUS motherboards, I guess – were greeted with a black bar covering about a third of their screen, decorated with a Christmas wreath.

I am making this post for the sake of people like me who will have a black box show up at the bottom of their screen with a Christmas wreath labeled “christmas.exe” in task manager and think it’s Windows 10/11 malware. It is not. It is from the ASUS Armoury Crate program and can be safely closed and ignored. It looks super sketchy and will hopefully save you some time diagnosing the problem.
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So yes, if you’re using an ASUS computer and have their shovelware installed, you may have been greeted by a giant black banner caused by an executable called “christmas.exe”, which sounds exactly like something shitty malware would do. The banner would disappear after a while, and the executable would vanish from the list of running processes as well. It turns out there’s a similar seasonal greeting called “HappyNewYear.exe”, so if you haven’t done anything to address the first black bar, you might be getting a second one soon.

The fact that shitty OEM shovelware does this kind of garbage on Windows is nothing new – class is not something you can accuse Windows of having – but I was surprised to find out just how deeply embedded this ASUS shovelware program called Armoury Crate really is. It doesn’t just come preinstalled on ASUS computers – no, this garbage program actually has roots in your motherboard’s firmware. If you merely uninstall Amoury Crate from Windows, it will automatically reinstall itself because your motherboard’s firmware tells it to.

I’m not joking. To prevent Armory Crate from reinstalling itself, you have to reboot your PC into its UEFI, go to the Advanced Mode, go to Tool > ASUS Armoury Crate, and disable the option Download & Install ARMOURY CRATE app. I had no idea Windows hardware makers had sunk to this kind of low, but I’m also not surprised. If Microsoft shoves endless amounts of ads and shovelware on people’s computers, why can’t OEMs?