Monday 14 April 2014

Windows 8.1 "Browser Choice" KB976002 & how to suppress an install of it

Recently I was updating some windows 8.1 systems and despite having un-selected and hidden the "Browser Choice" KB976002 update it applied anyway ?!?!?!?! 
(Edit : I found out why it installed any way. In windows 8 you have to make sure that you deselect unwanted updates in both the 'Control Panel'->'Windows Update' (classic desktop) & 'Settings' ->'Change PC settings'->'Update and Recovery' (Tile UI) before allowing the updates to apply)

ok, I thought, I'll just apply the registry disable key 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\BrowserChoice\Enable=0
('Enable' is a DWORD )

and as it should that got rid of the desktop icon etc.  ..... however it did not get rid of the "browser choice" tile on the start screen. 

after much searching and googleling around I finally found the solution. you just have to remove the shortcut to it in 

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs