I needed Windows operating system for a speciell program to run. I have an old laptop computer with Vista I hadn’t used since a couple of years. I connected it to net and the first operation was to download and install about 60 critical system updates.
This was not a problem, but in the next phase Windows Update wanted to install Service Pack2 and then the problems started. Installation of Vista Service Pack2 failed several times. Also, Windows Update wanted to install a Security Update for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (KB970895), but it failed as well.
After some google searching I found that the GRUB boot manager was the main reason for the fails. Microsoft Vista Update was unsure what was the active boot partition and refused to install that update.
Because I need my Vista system only to run a specific application and I have no need for internet surfing, I decided not to try installation of Service Pack2s again. But it was not so easy.
You can unselect installation of Service Pack2 in Windows Update:
But anyway, when you want to do shutdown, you will always see the following screen:
So you have always to select manually the correct shutdown option:
By this way Windows Update does not try to install an unwanted software update. I would like to unselect permanently that Service Pack2 update, but up till now I have not found any way to do it.
