The mysterious file download that can come with Windows Update of GDI+ Detection Tool

Some people have had the experience with Windows Update that they get a popup urging them to install something called the GDI+ Detection Tool. Shortly after, another dialog box pops up and asks if they want to download a file called "updatejpegprocessing.docx".

What's going on here? I can't be sure I have uncovered the whole story, but at least some important pieces that make it look rather innocent.

Initially, I was a bit suspicious, so I did a search, first on Google, then on Microsoft, where I was presented with a list of links, shown here.

When I clicked on the third link, I got the same popup as before. I thought that was weird. Microsoft has many download pages, but typically they let you land on the page and decide for yourself if you want to proceed with any downloading.

Then I noticed that the file has a "docx" extension, meaning it is in a format that requires Office 2007. If you have Office 2007 installed, then the link will probably open the document in a browser window, unless you've set up your browser to handle it differently.

If you don't have Office 2007 installed, then your computer doesn't know what to do with it, and your browser will handle that situation by asking if you want to download the file.

This, of course, does not prove that this is all that is going on with this mysterious file download.
But it certainly makes it seem a lot less suspicious.

A tip to anyone working in Tech Support

The pictures on this page were very easy to put together. As soon as I see something unexpected happening on my computer, I open up a blank Word document and start hitting the "PrtScn" button regularly. Then I Alt-Tab over to the blank document and do Ctrl-Insert to paste in the screen print.

If you need to see a client's screen in order to help them, and logging in remotely to them is not an option, then you can just ask them to hit the screen print button and paste it into a Word document and email it to you.

The client doesn't even need to have Office installed. Every version of Windows, comes, as far as I know, with a stripped-down version of Word called WordPad. It too, can be used to paste in screen prints, that they can email to you.

Think of this as a form of asynchronous remote assistance!

I have more tech support tips here.