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Ask HN: Has anyone found a way to avoid Windows Update KB5012170

2 points by nanis ↗ HN
I have an old T400 which has Windows 10 Pro 21H1 19043.2311 installed on it. It is set to boot from BIOS. Nothing related to secure boot or UEFI in sight. It is not an essential machine, but I would like to keep it in good working order for as long as possible.

A couple of weeks ago, it attempted to install the KB5012170 security update[1]. Each time, the update fails, complaining about "...[I] have less than 500 MB in system reserved partition." (error code: 0x800f0922). That is true enough, there is no system reserved partition on this computer.

Each install failure results in a crash in reboot, requires restoring system to the state previous to the install, and then the cycle repeats. I have not found a good way to block this update and/or move past it somehow and install 22H2 just for the sake of it.

The intarwebs is full of fix attempts that do not apply to a BIOS booting laptop with no secure boot setup.

I am wondering if anyone else here ran into this issue (not a common setup by any means) or if they know a way where a I can cleanly ignore this upgrade. The computer is not joined to a domain and it is set up with a local account only.

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5012170-security-update-for-secure-boot-dbx-august-9-2022-72ff5eed-25b4-47c7-be28-c42bd211bb15

5 comments

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sacrosanct
There is a nice tool called InControl[0] that lets you install updates on your own terms. Not sure if you can exclude certain updates though.

[0] https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/16/take-control-of-windows-up...

nanis
Thank you. I will look into it.
nanis
It turns out this is a tool for preventing Windows from upgrading from one release to another. My goal is to prevent Windows from attempting to install very specific security update[1] as it fails because it is not relevant to this particular system.

As Microsoft says:

> When attempting to install this update, it might fail to install, and you might receive Error 0x800f0922. ... We are presently investigating and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

If I can figure out how to block the update from being applied, I would be happy. I do not want to try to figure out partition moves to create a system reserved partition etc.

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5012170-security...

cshokie
There is usually (always?) a hidden disk partition that is reserved for the OS. It is well hidden and tools like diskpart are needed to see that it even exists. Presumably that is your problem.

The default size for the reserved partition has seemingly increased over the years so if this device is older and has not clean installed Windows in a long time it might be almost full.

All that said I have no idea if there is a way to prune this partition to make space.

nanis
I do have a 809 MB recovery partition (side effect of going from 80 GB HD to 2 TB), but I believe this wants a UEFI partition (which does not exist because this is a BIOS boot only machine).

On the other hand, since the recovery partition seems to be unnecessarily large, maybe I can tinker with that. That's an idea.