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Next to my daily driver I also have an Xiaomi Redmi 7 running MIUI 11. The preloaded Xiaomi Applications such as the File Manager contain built-in Ads. It is known that Xiaomi has low-margins to hit certain price points while keeping the components relatively high.

Fortunately, there is a fairly easy work-around to disable the ads by revoking the system permissions that allows the MIUI System Ads daemon (msa) to collect data and push ads to you.

The ads first started appearing with MIUI 9 and with version 10 and now 11 available for the newest handsets the place in the settings menu has shifted multiple times. The following steps apply for MIUI 11 as of December 2019.

Go to Settings –> Password and Security

Select Authorization & revocation and toggle the switch of mda to revoke the authorization. A count-down will appear warning you that this operation might break the application which in this case is actually what we want in order to disable the ads.

The toggle should be disabled after the revocation. Enjoy the ad-free experience.

For reasons unknown to me, Adobe leaves their Adobe Update Service installed and running after you have uninstalled Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. The issue is that the Adobe Update Service seems to hog resources when the program the updater is supposed to update has been uninstalled. As a result it can start to slow down your system and system start-up time. The following guide will show you how to completely remove the Acrobat Update Service.

The Adobe Acrobat Update service has no practically measurable impact on system performance when it’s working as it should. However, if you uninstall Adobe Acrobat Reader, the service will report high I/O usage when you login to Windows.

I assume you have uninstalled Acrobat Reader DC to remove this piece of **** from your system with its security vulnerabilities. Therefore you have no use for the update services.

If you haven’t done so already: remove Acrobat Reader DC from Apps and Programs in Windows’ Control Panel: Uninstall a program etc.

Removing Adobe Update Service

Open Administrative Power Shell (Search for PowerShell in the StartMenu) and right-click: “Run as Administrator” / Alternatively, you can also use and administrative command prompt

Disable and delete the Adobe Update Service

sc.exe stop AdobeARMservice 
sc.exe delete AdobeARMservice

Delete the remaining files from the Adobe Update Service

del "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\"

I am curious to why Adobe left the service installed after the removal of Acrobat Reader. I assume it’s possible that Adobe decided to leave it installed in case you would change your mind and reinstall the Acrobat Reader later. However, this doesn’t really make any sense since the service would be reinstalled and overwritten on the reinstallation of Acrobat Reader.

Apart from that, other Adobe software all use their own updater services so this appears to be a bug in the install / uninstall routine. I’ve reported this issue to Adobe but haven’t heard back from tham. This howto should help you to get rid of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC completely.