Vista - How to disable updates

Everything was relatively hunky dory until a recent update which prevented my machine from booting. I went to system restore, and it worked. Tried the update again with the same result, and again I did a system restore. Clearly this update is a problem for me. Can anyone tell me how to disable updates?

Hello Wordsworm, and welcome to Vista Forums.

You can't actually disable it, but you can hide the Windows Update to prevent it from showing back up as available in Windows Update.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

How would hiding the update save me from having said update from making my computer inoperable save in safe-mode? Does this mean I'm doomed to forever have to update/crash/system restore every time I want to shut down my computer?

Sorry Wordsworm. I was under the assumption that you had already uninstalled the Windows Update. Afterwards, you would hide the Windows Update to prevent it from showing back up as available in Windows Update.

If you have Windows Update set for automatic updating, then you may need to temporarily disable this until you have the bad update hidden.

I have determined that KB953155 is the thing that's rendering my machine incapable of booting to anything other than safe-mode. I've uninstalled it, (though haven't disabled the annoying thing yet - will look over your tutorial on that issue) and the system is working again. However, it has left me with a couple of questions that I was hoping you might be able to answer.

1) When I went to MS's website which outlines that update ( Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-062 - Important: Vulnerability in Windows Internet Printing Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (953155) ) it claimed that the vulnerability had no effect on my OS (Vista 64). So, why make this update if there's no risk to my machine?

2) How do I find out the reason why this update is affecting my computer in this way?

I'm happy to hear that you located and sorted the source of the problem for now, but I'm not sure why it would be affecting your computer this way either. You might send Microsoft a report on this to see if you may get any response back from them. Include as much details as possible in the report.