What exactly does KB2952664 do?

Anonymous
2014-04-27T00:12:24+00:00

KB2952664 was published on April 22, 2014 and appears in my Windows Update List (I am running Windows 7 Pro - 64 bit).

The description of this update is vague:  "This update helps Microsoft make improvements to the current operating system in order to ease the upgrade experience to the latest version of Windows."

Anyone have more information on what this update actually does? If its sole purpose is to ease the "upgrade" from Windows 7 to Windows 8 (or 8.1 or 8.1 update), then I'll just permanently hide KB2952664 (I have no desire or intention to "upgrade" my Windows 7 system to any flavor of Windows 8).

If its purpose is to ease what would be a true Windows 7 upgrade to a yet-to-be-announced Windows 7 SP2, then I'll keep it (but still would like to have more information about what KB2952664 actually does before installing).

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-07-28T20:27:31+00:00

    I have lost track of the number of times that I have hidden KB2952664 ... only to later find it unhidden and back in my list of active updates.

    I have automatic updates disabled, and to date I have never installed KB2952664.

    With Windows 10 Home, and Windows 10 pro (not attached to update servers), customers no longer have the option to disable automatic updates ... all updates are forced. The new "patch blocker" (KB3073930) does not actually block patches, unless the patch (to be blocked) has ALREADY been installed (yes, you read that right).

    Just in the past few days, Microsoft has forced two buggy updates to Windows 10 (a new Nvidia driver, and KB3074681).

    I have no plans to ever install Windows 10 on my computer, and I do not want/need the various Windows 10 nag updates (such as KB2952664, KB3035583, etc).

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-07-28T16:56:12+00:00

    Reading into the file names, it looks like this is an inventory applet to determine potential compatibility issues.  The question is, "To what?"  Coming out a couple of days before the Windows 10 roll out, I can assume that is the relation.  It keeps auto-approving in our "Workstation" WSUS, instead of letting me choose when/if to let it through.  So far, the servers (luckily set to not automatically approve) are not getting this.  A free upgrade from Server 2008 R2 would eventually be cool, but most of us will be ready for a full server refresh by then.  I am getting user complaints of the IE compatibility list getting deleted several times in the last couple of months, right after an MS update is pushed.  I also have three Win7x64 PCs that suddenly started Blue Screen crashes asking for a System Repair, in the newest one, twice.  A lot of time wasted checking them out and running a restore point & SFC /ScanNow to find various SYS files corrupt and replaced.  There isn't much between them that is common, besides running Win7x64.  I am not sure if there is a correlation with these updates that seem to be preparing us for July 29, but it sure is coincidental.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-07-28T01:23:35+00:00

    I just installed KB2952664 for the 17th time; it appeared in Windows Update.

    --Barry Finkel

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-07-17T03:39:26+00:00

    After looking at the updates that arrived on Tuesday July 14, my old "friend" KB2952664 was back in my queue (I have Windows Update set for "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them").

    I hid it yet again.

    I feel that it's unethical for Microsoft to re-categorize an update previously marked as "hidden" and place it back into the customer's queue ... without asking permission and without informing the customer.

    It appears that we cannot trust Microsoft to understand that "no" means NO.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-07-16T20:03:57+00:00

    The same happened to me on many of our computers  (i.e. those configured with Windows Update on automatic)

    I finally managed to get rid of KB2952664 across our network by listing and then removing packages for all the different versions of KB2952664, using PowerShell (as administrator)

    > Get-HotFix -id KB2952664

    This will show you if KB2952664 is installed or not on this machine.

    > dism /online /get-packages | findstr KB2952664

    This will list all the package versions on the machine involved (I lost count of how many versions there are).

    > dism /online /remove-package /PackageName:Package_for_KB2952664~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.0.12

    This will remove only version 6.1.0.12.   For other versions change the version number and repeat the command.

    Good luck!

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