Windows Automatic Update Workaround?

[Striek]

Thanks to a recent post, I have learned that M$ uses an MD5 hash to check if files on your computer are up to date.

Originally posted here by Proactive
What happens is a lot of cheksums for the latest microsoft files are sent to your computer. Your machine checks if the cheksums are valid for your files. If they aren't, a message is sent back to microsoft about which files is out of date. Then the files are dowloaded and installed.

Where does Windows keep these checksums? Are they computed anew every time M$ checks for updates, or is a hard copy kept on the HD? Assuming they are kept on the HD, would it then be possible to keep checksums from the latest updates instead of the proper ones for your files to work around M$ automatically installing these updates?

[phishphreek]

You can disable the automatic update much easier than that...

If you are using Win2k or XP, go to control panel, admin tools, services...

disable and stop the Automatic Update service.

There are many more that are running by default that you don't need running too, so now would be a good time to do those too.

I hope this is what you were asking about. If not, please clear up what you are trying to do.

As for the location of Windows update files... they are in several places.

Start by looking in:
c:\wutemp
c:\program files\windowsupdate

I know there were a couple others, but I have already deleted them. If this hasn't been answered for you by tomorrow, I'll look on one of the PCs at work for you.