Turning off "Ready to Install Updates" in XP Pro..

I have never had an issue allowing end users to click "Install updates and Shutdown" at the end of the day until recently. Call me stupid, yeah, come on, you know you want to. It has never posed too much of an issue until there was a driver update to the Microsoft Wave Kernel Device that pretty much disabled onboard sound for the majority of my PC's.
I usually push patches out about twice a month with Shavlik, so, there is really no need for Windows updates. However, I don't really want to disable windows updates all together on my client machines. What I would like to do is determine if there is a registry hack that will turn off the system tray icon and the update notifications in XP. If I could find the regsitry key, I could put it in the login scripts and stop the helpdesks request that say
EMAIL SUBJECT: Good Morning.
BODY: Every day when I come in to work I have click her to install updates on my a computere and nobody ever told us if supposed to do when we see the screen that says this. I usually push the x because I don't know. Is this waht I supposed to do or am I messing it up and it's the reason my comp is slow?
Thanks
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Control Panel>Automatic Updates>Turn off automatic updates.

This doesn't turn of the service though and users can still update manually from the Windows update page.

Is this what you were after?

This is the scenario that I would like. But, I am lazy and it would be a disaster to visit every end user on a Friday. Think about all the conversations I would have to have...
"What you doin' this weekend"
"Hey man, my computer at home...."
"Did you watch american Idol...?"
"Hey, check this out......"
"Ever been to this site?"
The list could go on and on.....
You understand, right?
But, yeah, that is what I'm looking for, but would like to do it via the registry.
I am also searching for the solution....
Thanks

I'd recommend that you run SUS servers and just have them point to your local server instead, then you aren't eating up bandwidth with a bunch of client installs that could have been downloaded locally.

Disabling windows update:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/441/

Disable windows update for drivers:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1217/

And here is how I figured out the key to use for disabling auto updates:

start -> run -> services.msc
Go to automatic updates line, double click, see how it says 'wuauserv' ? Guess what, thats the name of the service

start -> run -> regedt32
HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services (for all services in windows)
Now find on 'wuauserv' (its there)

There is a key: start

Now, go back to the services control panel and disable the service...go back to regedt32 and see what the value updated to...

Doing this:
Disabled == 0x4
Manual == 0x3
Automatic == 0x2

Using this you could then set the key in the hive:
HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services\wuauserv\start to 0x04



EDIT: As a side note, if you do this and go back to Windows Update it will bitch about that service being off and give you an error message. You will have to set the value to 0x02 and start the service for it to work again (you can also do this using the services control panel).

A quick google search for 'disable windows update notification' turned up:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/notifica...lloon_tips.htm

Which while getting rid of the popup bubble for windows update, will also get rid of the other ones as well...guess depends on what you want to do.

Thanks for the research. If balloon tips never existed that would be fine with me. Is there a registry hack to go back in time and make sure that balloon tips never exist? LOL J/K..
But, once again thanks for the info. I will deploy these reg hacks on my test environment and see what happens. Or, pick the most annoying user and rolll it out to them instead.

After doing some more research on the issue, I have decided the best route is to use the group policy and set the automatic updates service to Disabled under system services. If Windows update is ever needed, at least only the Domain Admin would be able to start the service again.
In searching for a soloution, I came across this article.

Turn off auto-update
If you can't stand the idea of Windows morphing on you, here's the information you need
http://reviews.infoworld.com/article...pwinman_1.html
By Brian Livingston
October 11, 2002

In a linked article, the document explains this claim.,..

"In an interview, BV -- who asked that his true name not be revealed -- explained that XP ships with 89 services, 36 of which run automatically. But only eight of them are needed, he says. The others cost you up to 70MB of RAM. "

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm