Recently everyone’s favorite Redmond software company used their notorious Automatic Update service to push out a new security fix. This particular was also know as KB937061 - a fix for Visual Studio 2005 SP1.

No big deal, happens all the time... right?

Apparently not

This particular update targets some security holes in the Crystal Reports component of the VS suite. It is also one of the more invasive updates as it requires you to restart your system before the fix takes effect.

But that’s not the really fun part. The part is that even after allowing Automatic Updates to do its thing, and subsequently bouncing your box, you’ll get yet another message from Automatic Updates saying it needs to install the update again.

But I just installed that!

Yes, you did. And you can verify that the update was successfully installed by taking a peak in the Update History panel. As you can see I actually went through the install-and-reboot routine four times before I wised up.

According to a thread I found on the MSDN Forums, this only happens if you don’t have the Crystal Reports component installed. And to be honest, who the hell does anymore - that stuff is crap!

Oh, and that same thread also says that the Automatic Updates team is aware of the issue and they are working on a fix... so stay tuned.

In the meantime... a workaround!

If you’re the kind of person that actually likes to user your computer rather than just let it go through an infinite install-and-reboot cycle, I’ve got good news.

You can install the Crystal Reports component and then run the installation one more time. But who wants that extra junk installed - not me!

A better workaround

The other option is to open the list of available updates and uncheck the box next to the update. Next, right-click on the update and select the Hide update option. Finally, close the window.

Doing this tells Automatic Updates that you don’t want to install it and it will ignore it from there on out - so be sure that you’ve successfully installed the update at least once before hiding it.

Just to be clear, hiding the update will not uninstall the update. It only makes Automatic Updates ignore it.

Where did it go?

As I said, the update is now hidden... so as you might expect you can view all of your hidden updates by going to the Restore hidden updates panel.

From here you can actually un-hide any previously hidden updates, once again making them available to Automatic Updates.

There Scott, now you have an answer to your question.

Notes

I used this workaround on my dev box which has the following setup:

• Windows Vista Ultimate - 32bit
• Visual Studio 2005 SP1
  • No Crystal Reports installed
  • No C++ installed
  • No J# installed

I have not verified it myself, but I’ve heard reports of the same issue on boxes running XP Pro and Windows Server 2003. Luckily the same workaround seems to work for them.