Nothing stops Desktop Analytics from poping up!

[Anonymous]

I am having a frustrating issue from two perspectives.

1 - everything i have tried to keep the analytics turned off has failed to keep it off.  I have tried in maya lt, in the MC3 text file, and in the registry to keep the analytics turned off.  I am frustrated and tired of turning it off every time i turn on my computer.

2 - i find this issue has been showing up in the forums and online for 4+ years, its obviously either a major bug or a major violation of customer trust.  Its bordering on a violation of peoples personal info given it wont stay off and that the UI layout i use wont load until i close the data use window which turns the data collection back on. 

So if i want to use my layout, i have to accept data use every time i turn on my computer?

Has anyone found any success in getting that thing to stay closed with data collection turned off?

Thanks

Win 10, Maya Lt 2019

[syracoj]

Is this occurring on a facility managed PC? Or is it your home computer? Is it on a system that is part of an education institute lab?

I have encountered this issue in classrooms before but that was because the facilities managing the classroom computers re-image/reset them weekly.

[Anonymous]

personal home desktop, not part of any company or institution.

[syracoj]

k, thanks for the info. Digging into it further.

[syracoj]

Internally we have a ticket that will catalog this problem (MAYA-100875)

also, you wrote:

"i find this issue has been showing up in the forums and online for 4+ years"

could you provide links of where others are encountering these issues please? I did a quick search on AREA forum and general google search and I didn't see much. Perhaps my search is bad.

[Anonymous]

(thanks for replying)

Its been showing up across autodesk products for years:

I have experienced it in trial products of maya and maya lt for the past year, before that time i was using enterprise setups and didnt pay attention to it.

(read later in the posts where they say it wont stay off)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/autodesk-usage-data-collection-how-to-disable/td-p/492...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-map-3d-forum/how-to-disable-customer-improvement-program-scre...

(from 2014, even says they went to a support case with it and the case was closed.  they mention they may have fixed it by changing their default user profile... i have no idea how to test that, not sure what they edited.)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/installation-licensing/preventing-the-desktop-analytics-popup-on-firs...

All of the knowledge base solutions i have seen on autodesk say the same solution, open the window, turn it off, good to go.  this isnt working and hasnt across multiple versions of maya for me.  😞   I didnt post sooner because i had been using trials or corporate versions.  I am on a personal subscription now, so I made a post.

[Anonymous]

Any updates?

[syracoj]

we have a ticket logged here internally on the Maya side.

Did you try any of the implied workarounds/solutions in those other Autodesk forums to see if they would help? I am assuming you did.

Running a search I wasn't able to find too much in regards to Maya/MayaLT related issues. It is still unclear as to how common this is. I still need to find out if this is something specific to Maya LT.

[Anonymous]

As mentioned before, none of the work-arounds help in anyway.

Considering the commonality of the issue across products and the commonality of suggested solutions from people, I am willing to bet there is a common code architecture or architecture directive (if not common code) on how autodesk wants to collect information.  This isnt just a maya lt issue.  Given the dates involved it also spans across major versions of windows (windows 8 and windows 10) as windows 10 wasnt available when the first repro was reported.  Since it also seems the info is stored in both registery and txt file, which are common simplified sources of data, this isnt a data storage issue.  All of this strongly points towards a maya/autodesk bug.

Working myself in software creation, i understand that isnt a smoking gun, but you follow the strongest evidence.  I also know that where there is one reported sample, there are hundreds or thousands more unreported.
Considering the possible implications for customer information collection, I hope this issue doesnt fall by the wayside as low pri due to a perceived sample size.  Given autodesk is collecting information (the issue this bug is about) I am sure they have the data to show how many people data collection is happening on and how many people have turned it off, only to "turn it back on again"... which seems very unlikely they would have intended to do, especially only one day later.

This would be a good way for autodesk to gauge the severity of this issue.

[syracoj]

If I recall correctly the workarounds did work for others on those external forum posts. So not quite sure what's going on with your particular case regarding workarounds not working.

Your points are valid but the truth of the matter is that as of right now this cannot be reproduced internally (we can get the chosen setting to persist). Furthermore, other than your specific case, we are not seeing this issue happening to anyone else. That's not to say that it isn't happening to anyone else, but they just aren't reporting it if it is. I personally have seen this issue in a classroom environment but that is because every week those machines in the class lab are flushed and re-imaged so it's basically a clean machine with a Maya that has never been launched before.

The fact that Maya can be functionally arrested by the Data Collection window is known and logged internally. This can be reproduced by simply opening up the window and trying to use Maya (all sorts of strange, unpredictable behavior can occur). To alleviate this, for the time being, we close the window.

If anything else comes to mind as to why it's happening and not correctable on your side please do not hesitate to let us know. 

I will continue to press the team about looking into it further.

[syracoj]

Do you have any other Autodesk software installed where the data is being collected? I was just informed that if one product has it on, others will keep it on as well.

[syracoj]

could you do a screen capture of what is occurring on your side please? Internally we use OBS (Open Broadcast) to do screen video recordings. It's open source. I would like to add your experience to the ticket.

[syracoj]

Someone from the team that handles this tech got back to me and had this to say:

"

you can have them go into regedit and edit HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\MC3\ADAOptIn to be 0 instead of 1

This might also hint at what could be the problem. If they can't edit it, maybe they don't have permission to edit the registry? Should hopefully be clear once they try to manually change it?

"

Also, see my last posts above. Just realized I replied to myself and not you regarding those additional questions and comments.

[Anonymous]

thanks for the replies.  for some reason i am not getting email notifications of replies and i just saw these.

I tried the regedit method already and it doesnt fix the issue.  it keeps getting reset by maya.

Ill try to find time to do an obs capture.  it would need to be two sessions since i turn it off and maya turns it back on the next day (after a machine restart?  or time based?  not sure)

[syracoj]

cool.

"machine restart?" "time based?" <- these are interesting. I'll forward these to the team to see if there is anyway restart or shutdown could trigger a relaunch.

[syracoj]

do you use/run Piriform CCleaner by any chance?

Do you use anti-virus/malware software? If so, which one?

[gaboreturi]

Your team then fantastic! Thank you for your help.