Question by : How can I get rid of KB976902 (the Windows 7 “black hole update”)?
Today I installed some Windows updates without really looking through what they were. Then later I found out that one of them, KB976902, is very very shady, and can’t be uninstalled by normal means. It has no documentation or Microsoft Knowledge Base article, and only gives a very vague description for the update itself. Most other updates are very thoroughly detailed.

I want to get rid of this until I can find out just what exactly it is. I don’t like how suspicious Microsoft is acting about it. There are rumors that it invades your privacy in lots of ways and collects information about you. I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but I still don’t want to have this update installed until I can know more about it. If it wasn’t a bad update, how come Microsoft isn’t giving any information about it, and the option to uninstall it via normal means has been disabled?

Would a system restore get rid of it?

Also, it says it’s installed, but I haven’t restarted yet since I downloaded today’s updates. Usually, Windows updates are installed when a PC shuts down or is rebooted. If I just power off my PC rather than doing a typical shutdown via Windows, would that prevent it from being installed, or no? Or is it too late anyway?
Mark, you don’t understand- I know how to uninstall a normal update, but Microsoft has disabled the ability to uninstall this one.
Alright, after trying some things and reading the replies, here are the results (for anyone else who wants to remove KB976902):

You can’t remove it from the “uninstall updates” window.

You can’t remove it via the command prompt.

You can remove it with a System Restore, as long as it was before you installed the update. But the update automatically sets a restore point, so you should be able to do it even if you have never manually set up a restore point before.

Thanks for all your responses.
“You can remove it with a System Restore, as long as it was before you installed the update.”

I phrased that rather poorly, sorry.

You can remove KB976902 with System Restore, as long as the restore point you choose to restore is from before the time you installed the update.

The Windows updater should have automatically created a restore point right before installing KB976902, with the description “Windows Update” and the type as “Critical Update”. Choose that one, or even an earlier one if you feel like it.

Then when you reboot your PC after the restoration process is complete, you should go to the update center and hide the KB976902 update, and if you have automatic updates turned on, I’d recommend setting it to “check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”.

Until Microsoft (hopefully) explains this update, I’d recommend being a little more cautious about updating, since there may or may not be other questionable ones like this in the future.

Best answer:

Answer by Say Bye
too late, you will need to clean the hard drive and start over loading the system, and watch for it next time.

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