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Ouch.. I’m on a few security updaes packs for MS Office Suite for the past 7 days. All these KB hotfixes contains MS Patch (.MSP) files for fixing some security holes in MS Office. For silently deploying these packages we can use a /Q switch on each of these update exe files.

But things are a bit different when we come to the silent removal of the updates. The Windows update packs used to have a /uninstall switch for removel. This together with /qb could do a smooth and silent uninstallation process. But this feature was missing from MS Office Hotfixes!

A Bit of googleing leads me to a Microsoft KB article which explains the uninstallation process.

Until the release of the security update for Microsoft Word 2002 that is described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 895589, you could not remove Microsoft Office updates by using the Add or Remove Programs tool in Control Panel. The only method to remove Office updates was to remove the Office product, and then reinstall the product. With the release of the security update for Microsoft Word 2002 that is described in article 895589, Microsoft introduced the ability to remove certain Office updates by using the Add or Remove Programs tool.

Here are a few requirements for a removable Office update:

If we install the updates after meeting all the prerequisites the updates(most of them!) should have a Remove buttonn in the add or remove programs. These update packages can also be removed by using the folllowing commandline:

msiexec /package {product_code} /uninstall "full_path_to_.msp_file" /qb

where {product_code} => Product code of the base MS Office suite installed in the work station,

full_path_to_.msp_file =>Path to the MSP file extraced from the update exe file. We can extract the msp file using /C switch or by using any thirdparty tools like Winzip/WinRAR.

But this method needs you to know the product code of the Office suite installed in a particular workstation, which not I wanted. I need a generic package to be deployed ina number of client sites which leaves me no option for a silent, unattended removal of the MS Office security update packs.

For now I decided to create a dummy exe ( Auto terminating with no visible screens) as uninstallation exe and use it to make it appear that the packages are removed!!!