Hacking Update Reporting

Here's the deal:

On XP Home, a wise user, tired of being reminded to install
this-and-that update, hacked the registry. In the updates, the wise
user created folders with the update number, but with nothing inside.
Sure 'nuff, WindowsUpdate was fooled! It quit telling the user to
download those updates.

Now the wise user seeks to apply all updates, but cannot remember
which updates he made fake registry keys for. The wise user notices
that half of the update keys in the registry consist of a folder with
the update number, and some subfolders. The other half of consist of
folders that are empty. <*((((><{


May the wise user presume that the empty folders are the fake folders?
Then delete them from the registry and proceed with the Update
process?

So far I have not seen a "real" folder empty on my computer.
( unless maybe it was uninstalled.) A real folder would containt the files
that would be replaced and the sub folder would have a spunist.exe file in
it. But, if a update is not removable it may not have a folder.I do not know
if the fake upadate numbers would show up in control panel add/remove section
so look there.
An other thing to look for are the real update log files. ex KB841873.log if
they exist on the computer it would be real.
There are two utilities that may help to sort out this
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../mbsahome.mspx
and
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;282784







"<*((((><{" wrote:

> Here's the deal:
>
> On XP Home, a wise user, tired of being reminded to install
> this-and-that update, hacked the registry. In the updates, the wise
> user created folders with the update number, but with nothing inside.
> Sure 'nuff, WindowsUpdate was fooled! It quit telling the user to
> download those updates.
>
> Now the wise user seeks to apply all updates, but cannot remember
> which updates he made fake registry keys for. The wise user notices
> that half of the update keys in the registry consist of a folder with
> the update number, and some subfolders. The other half of consist of
> folders that are empty. <*((((><{
>
>
> May the wise user presume that the empty folders are the fake folders?
> Then delete them from the registry and proceed with the Update
> process?
>
>
>