How to clear Windows Update's pending list?

[IBBoard]

Hi,

I've got Windows XP Pro installed on a machine that no longer has access to the Internet, with Windows Update set to "tell me but don't download". Unfortunately, at some point before I disconnected it then it picked up the some available updates and so the WU app keeps appearing in my tray telling me that there are updates I need to do (even though it can't see the network to find out).

I have two options I can see:

1) Disable WU completely.

2) Wipe WU's list of available updates.

The first one would be the best way, since the machine will never have Net access again, but then Microsoft decide they know better and repeatedly nag me with the popup notification that WU is disabled. That would be because I did it on purpose The second one is the preferable option, but I don't have a clue where it stores its update list.

Anyone know?

Thanks.

[edit] If it makes a difference, I'm running SP2 (installed from the offline download)

Edited April 10, 2008 by IBBoard

[Tarun]

Welcome to the forums.

You could disable Windows Automatic Updates and then disable the notification. If you need to update you can take a CD-RW and use the c't Offline Updater.

I'm not entirely sure, but if you apply the updates then the notifications may go away.

[IBBoard]

Thanks - I think I found a way to do it

Following a link in the "Similar Topics" at the bottom (which hadn't turned up in my search for "clear windows updates") I found I can just disable the "Automatic Updates" process.

Thanks for the suggestion about the offline updates, but I'm running Windows within VirtualBox on a Fedora Linux desktop. The only reason it's there is as a 'wrapper' for Visual Studio C# Express 2005, as I can develop in C# in Linux but there isn't a System.Windows.Forms editor and VS won't run under Wine.

The only app that will be running will be VS. The only access it has to the 'outside world' is a Samba folder that contains my source code (so I don't have to keep copying stuff) but no network access beyond that (not even to my router). It's safe, it's controlled, it's contained, and it means I don't have to dual-boot just to do a bit of SWF development

As an aside, I think someone should add "other" as an option for "your OS" in the profile