Bobbie Harder's explanation makes no sense - other posters above have clearly pointed out that what was approval only for an update to a PC with WDS on it has morphed into approval for installation of the whole product. This is completely unacceptable. I spent some time yesterday removing WDS from all the PCs in our small business, which I could have spent a lot more productively doing other tasks. The "Automatically approve new revisions of updates that are already approved" setting is now turned off in WSUS, and I would advise everyone to do the same.

MS need to apologise for what has happened, rather than try to justify it, and should be issuing an update ASAP that will allow WSUS Admins to remove the WDS malware. I would not like to be the sysadmin who reportedly wound up with 3000 PCs having this installed...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894199 For the folks in AU that have Vista machines.. if suddenly last

We don't install patches that are designated as "updates" here though we do send over critical and security updates.  I don't believe Desktop Search was 2 was ever installed via WSUS here?  Was it part of an update rollup or bundled in something else?

We sure got 3.01 regardless, and it was a big suprise.  Cost us a lot of time and effort at the Helpdesk level.  Very disappointing.  My question is the same as everyone else's.  How do you propose to fix this problem?

We have taken numerous Outlook 2003 calls at our Helpdesk that resolve themselves as soon as Desktop Search is removed through the Control Panels.

Thank you,

Brad Terhune

Query: why, when the Update was declined, did it still install, continues to install after an uninstall until I turned of WSUS.

Uninstall WSUS is the answer. What crap. What a waste of time.

%windir%\$ntuninstallkb917013\spuninst\spuninst /quiet /norestart

MsiExec.exe /X{E72019B8-1287-4093-BE9B-1CFA7BA1A8D2} /quiet /norestart

Both of those should uninstall it without restarting the system.

As mentioned a GPO to disable the service will work as well but will require the system to restart for that to take effect.

The update itself also has an .adm file that you can import into your GPO's to control the behaviour of the WDS client as well.

The settings are at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917013 you can get the .adm by running the update with a /extract.

The following settings might be useful:

Prevent indexing Microsoft Office Outlook

Prevent indexing uncached Exchange Folders

Prevent Indexing Certain Paths

Prevent Indexing of Certain File Types

We will look at turning off that "auto-update" feature. It's a pain.

You missed somthing here, this is not an 'approval' problem. This patch should not have been installed on systems that doesn't have WDS. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN UPDATE !

In the future how can I tell if a new 'update' will be install on all computers or only those who need it ?

Before october 24th I was a big defender of WSUS, but now I feel a little ashamed of using it.

It will take us many days of work to undo the « mistake » you made.

As mentioned above, this update has caused havoc in our environment not to mention over 100 calls into the Help Desk for assistance, direction, and disapproval.  My management is asking how did this happen?  And of course, my head is on the block for this snafu.  Currently there are over 8,000 machines with this product installed.  I plan on removing this, and yes, I've turrned off the automatic approval in WSUS!  

What is done with the index after the product is removed?  Is all indexing removed as well?  If not, is there a way I can ensure all indexing is set back to normal?

I may have an explanation why we may think that kb917013 got installed on system even if the update is not approve or even declined.

Let me do a little explanation :

o  October 23th, 1h AM, my WSUS server synchronize with

   Microsoft and recevied the update definition (metadata)

   for kb917013 revision 105

o  My server is configure to auto-approved revisions for an

   already approved update (as many of you I'm sure).

   So the revision for update kb917013 got approved

o October 24th, 9h AM, I plug my laptop in the network and

  boot. The Windows Update Client reported to my

  WSUS server and identified the kb917013 (revision 105)

  update as needing to be download

o October 24th, 11h AM the download of update kb917013

  was completed on my laptop

o October 24th, 13h PM I read about the problem with

  kb917013 on the Internet and declined

  the update on my server.

o October 24th, 16h PM, as define by GPO the update

  kb917013 got installed on my system

My understanding is that once a computer identifies that a patch is needed it will be installed. It doesn't matter if you declined the approval afterwards, the computer never check again with WSUS to see if the status of the update changed before installing it.

It is interesting how this does not happen to lets say MS Office 2007 updates, I would love it if all my users using Office 2003 received a free Office 2007 installation overnight!

I can dream right?

Whoever approved this bulls--t needs to be fired.

You've made a very, VERY serious mistake in judgement here.  You do NOT mess with the trust of your customers.  This is non-negotiable.  This can not be overstated.  I find myself having to manually remove this software from all the servers and desktops in our organisation because there doesn't appear to be a way to do it automatically.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894199 For the folks in AU that have Vista machines.. if suddenly last

I understand the snafu with this product being installed within all your enterprises, and the headache and costs associated.  I see MS's error in logic in their classification and it shouldn't have happened.

But seriously people, if you cared at all about your users productivity, you would have rolled WDS some time ago, particularily for the Outlook search.  I cannot live without this functionality, and cringe when I work on a machine without this.

For my current project, we are migrating from GroupWise to Exchange/Outlook and it is the highest requirement that we provide an advanced search functionality in Outlook that mirrors that which GroupWise provides.  GW's search is and has been awesome, one of the few positives towards GW.  It is unacceptable to move forward with Outlook and not provide this same level of functionality for the users.

The WDS search in Outlook is so powerful and shouldn't be functionality your users are without.  Hopefully you have either deployed Google or some other search technology, but if you haven't you really need to key into this technology.  This is not one for IT to take advantage of, this is functionality your users need, and for their sake you shouldn't ignore them.

"Can you please post some information about how to easily remove the software?"

step one: format harddrive

step two: throw out PC

step three: get a real computer (a Mac) and never worry about garbage like this again....

My users have aproximatly a dozen network drives that they use regularly, in order for them to search now they need to index the network, meaning an index thats 10% of the size of whats being indexed, which is hdd room the users dont have, there would be no real productivity increase, as they where able to search before, desktop searching is only usefull for people who hit save without looking at where theyre saving, the lost productivity however is very obvious, all our computers slowed to a crawl, including our servers, our network was jammed, and people where confused and calling tech support, the productivity lost by this "update" was huge, compared to 1% of user being able to find lost files 3% faster than before... I dont see how you can defend this. Making the software available for those who want it is one thing, forcing it on all users was... well... wrong.