Plug an LG monitor into a Windows 11 PC and Windows Update may quietly install a companion app you never asked for — one that then greets you at almost every boot with an ad for a McAfee antivirus trial. Within days of the story going viral, Microsoft’s Windows chief stepped in and LG agreed to switch the ad off. The silent install itself is still running, and that is the part you can actually do something about.

LG UltraGear gaming monitor on a desk, the kind of display whose companion app installs itself through Windows Update
Image: LG Electronics

What happens when you plug in an LG monitor

Windows has a long-standing feature that lets a hardware maker attach an app to a device. When Windows detects the hardware, it looks up the app registered against that hardware ID and installs it — with no prompt and no notification. Microsoft’s own driver documentation is unusually blunt about the consequences, telling developers that “the automatic installation feature does not provide a notification to the user when the app is installed,” and warning that “some users may find this experience confusing and frustrating, and give your app a bad rating.”

In LG’s case the app is called LG Monitor App Installer. Gamers Nexus, which tested the behaviour, connected an LG UltraGear 34GX900A-B and found Windows Update pulled the app down roughly a minute after the monitor was plugged in. Across 32 consecutive boots afterwards, a McAfee promotion appeared 31 times; the one remaining boot advertised an LG utility instead. The same popup turned up on an LG UltraFine 32UN880-B bought three years earlier, so this is not limited to new displays.

The app’s own Microsoft Store listing says it can use “all system resources” and access your internet connection, and it sets itself to launch with Windows. Its Store rating had fallen to 1.3 stars by the time The Register looked. The whole thing surfaced on 17 July when X user @wexosu posted a warning about a new LG monitor installing software and serving pop-ups unprompted.

Microsoft stepped in after Tim Sweeney flagged it

On 18 July, Epic Games chief Tim Sweeney tagged Microsoft’s Windows and Devices head Pavan Davuluri in the thread, noting “Many reports of this occurring with arbitrary hardware.” Davuluri replied the next day that the team was looking into it. On 22 July he posted the outcome:

Thanks again for bringing this to our attention. We’ve connected with the team at LG and as an immediate next step, they have agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up from their app. We appreciate LG working with us toward a shared goal of a better experience for our mutual customers. We will keep improving here with our ecosystem partners.

LG’s own position is narrower. The company told The Register that McAfee is not installed automatically and is never installed without the user’s explicit consent, that the LG Monitor App Installer is distributed through Microsoft’s official Windows distribution process which included McAfee as an option, and that McAfee is installed only if a user actively chooses to proceed. That may well be accurate about McAfee itself — but the complaint was never that McAfee installed silently. It was that LG’s app did, and then used that foothold to advertise.

The ad is gone, the pipeline is not

A monitor is a display. Plugging one in should not earn a vendor a permanent startup process with system-wide access and a standing channel to sell you a subscription. Microsoft deserves some credit for leaning on a partner within days of the story blowing up, but the mechanism that made it possible is still enabled by default on every Windows 11 PC, and Microsoft has not said it plans to change how it works. It also sits awkwardly alongside Microsoft’s own record here — the company is only now stripping ads and sponsored cards out of Windows Search.

How to stop the LG monitor app installing itself

Do these in order. If you uninstall first, the app can simply come back the next time the monitor is detected.

  1. Turn off automatic manufacturer app downloads. Press the Windows key, type Change device installation settings and open it. (The same dialog lives at Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Change device installation settings, and at Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings > Hardware tab > Device installation settings.) Windows asks whether you want it to automatically download manufacturers’ apps and custom icons for your devices — pick the “No” option and save. Microsoft’s documentation notes this setting does not stop driver updates arriving through Windows Update.
  2. Uninstall the app. Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps, search for LG, then use the three-dot menu next to LG Monitor App Installer and choose Uninstall.
  3. On Windows 11 Pro, block device metadata outright. Run gpedit.msc, go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Installation, open Prevent device metadata retrieval from the Internet and set it to Enabled.
  4. On Windows 11 Home, use the registry instead. Home editions do not ship with the Group Policy Editor, which covers most consumer laptops sold in India. Open regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Device Metadata, creating the Device Metadata key if it is not there, then create a DWORD (32-bit) value named PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork and set it to 1. Restart the PC. Export the key as a backup before you edit anything.

One honest caveat: Microsoft has not said that step 1 specifically blocks LG’s installer — it switches off the general manufacturer-app mechanism that installer travels on. And turning metadata retrieval off does cost you something. You lose vendor-supplied device icons and friendly names, and any companion software you genuinely want — LG’s OnScreen Control or its calibration tools, say — will have to be downloaded from LG’s support site by hand. For most people that is a fair trade for a PC that stops installing things on its own.

Sources: @wexosu, Pavan Davuluri, The Register, Windows Latest, Microsoft Learn