How do you uninstall a particular unwanted windows update when using the" wusa /uninstall /kb:ZZZZZZZ " gives an error message "Windows Update Standalone Installer, Update for Microsoft Windows (KBZZZZZZZ) is required by your computer and cannot be uninstalled.".
And the same update cannot be removed via the list of installed updates within windows update under control panel, as there is no uninstall option (for it and a few others, most other updates have the uninstall option working fine) when clicked on or at the top.
This happens to users who upgrade from windows 8 to 8.1 because the upgrade causes all recent windows updates to be installed onto the machine, including buggy ones and unwanted ones.
How is the user to remove these updates when wusa and control panel both fail to get rid of them?
Please assume the user has no system images which do not have the unwelcome update present (because they only made images after upgrading from 8 to 8.1) and that they cannot use system restore to get rid of the unwanted update, because the oldest restore point is (like the oldest working system image, images from before the upgrade cannot work once the user has upgraded to 8.1) also after that upgrade to 8.1 . Please also explain the method in full, assume the user is not an expert who can use command prompt but only with clear explanations of the commands.
Thank You for your help.
Best Answer
Sometime you can't (officially) uninstall some update, because they are marked as permanent in its manifest file (metadata)
Microsoft does this for all servicing stack updates. You could remove this permanence entry, but I had issues in the past after removing older servicing stack updates. So don't try this.
It can also happen when you ran
Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase. This removes all older files and make the file from the current update as base for all newer updates. Here you can also not uninstall it.