LoneMudokon

Well not really. Starting Windows 11 22H2 you can get daily Bing wallpapers directly from the Windows settings with the Spotlight feature. That means Windows will fetch those JPEG files from their Bing service and nothing more, and this can be used without any risk. But it does not mean that the Bing Wallpaper app is installed with Windows. The Bing Wallpaper app and its potentially unwanted behavior is not installed with Windows. It has to be downloaded and installed separately. I just wanted to clarify so that there would not be any confusion on the matter.

You're welcome 😉. Bing Wallpaper is not installed with Windows 10/11 (any version) by default. It's an additional software that must be installed separately. As for the official source, if you Google "Bing Wallpaper" it's literally the first result, directly from Microsoft's website. However it could have been bundled during another software installation (I don't know if Microsoft bundle it or not). Also, Microsoft is very pushy with their Bing and Edge products. I wouldn't be surprised if your user made a search, ended up on Bing and was proposed the software then.

@JamesR Thanks for the detailed instructions. Thankfully, I didn't had any Bing service or web extensions installed (I unchecked those when I initially installed the software). So all I had to do was to uninstall Bing Wallpaper. However it's worth mentioning that ESET was blocking the uninstallation process as well. I know it's not recommended, but I had to disable ESET to be able to uninstall Bing Wallpaper. However, it is now fully uninstalled and a full scan with ESET showed no other issues. Thanks to the ESET team for your support, that's why we love you guys, you're the best 👍. Just out of curiosity, are you taking measures now because Bing Wallpaper was a PUP since the beginning, or was there something new or a change to the software that made it worse?

It is during the installation, and it is checked on by default. Here's a screenshot of the installer. Once installed it doesn't offer that option anymore.

I'm having this issue since a few hours as well. I'm surprised to see it's confirmed as not being a false positive. Marcos confirmed that it's "potentially unwanted (optional detection)". It's also labelled upon detection as a PUP. And it's a Microsoft product. So I don't think it's actually dangerous, but more of a potential annoyance. The program does by default try to change both your start page and your search engine to Bing on all your browsers. This can be toggled off, but it means the program has the ability make such modifications. That could be the reason why ESET decided to classify it as unwanted. That would also explain its name classification (MSIL/Microsoft.Bing.A). In any case I'm just guessing here, so we'll have to wait for @Marcos, the ESET team or Microsoft to give us a definitive answer. In any case thanks a lot for your answers, I'm glad to know more about that 👍.

As of one hour ago, every time I start my computer there are 2 potentially unwanted program alerts warning, leaving me the choice to either block or ignore. This happens after every restart and stops afterwards. The same issue is happening on my wife's computer, except there's a "file could not be cleaned" warning on hers. Nothing new has been installed on either computer, and multiple scans from different on-demand scanners came back negative. That's definitely a false positive in opinion. I do have "Bing Wallpaper" installed, but there were no issues up until now. Please see the screenshots included (my computer is in French, so sorry if the warning message isn't in English). Also, seeing the ESET logs there are 2 files HASH that seem to be the culprit: F62DCE6673081B3E2C8776AE1C03712155A39934 and 47117AD02FE0991C4B52465BFD910C03B521C1CF. I'm running the latest version of Windows 11 22H2 and ESET Smart Security Premium 16.0.22.0 (I just checked both for updates right now). I figured this would not get resolved if nobody is reporting it, so here goes. I hope that helps as there are 0 results anywhere for "MSIL/Microsoft.Bing.A". Let me know if you need any other informations.