update never go away after installing??

no matter how many times I install update, they never go away?

I attached my update history, as you can see I repeatedly installed three updates, but it always shows up in Windows update even after restarting the computer.

I'm going to type the two KB numbers into this thread: KB2656351 and KB2600217
Now this thread can be found via search like all of the others in this forums that mention those same two problematic updates.

I would suggest uninstalling every update related to .NET 4 framework and every update related to .NET 4 extended (if you have those). Then install .NET 4.5. Then install the updates that have come out for .NET 4.5

All of this may take you a few hours, but you will have a system with 10 to 30 fewer patches and a more stable version of .NET. I've done this for several computers and have not had any issues.

how do I uninstall the update? What about just uninstall the whole .NET 4 program from the control panel.

I could be wrong, but I think that it is best to uninstall these updates/patches before uninstalling the app itself. I have a test computer (a virtual machine) that I can test some things on before giving out advice here. I uninstalled .NET 4.5 from that test computer and it did no take very long to complete the uninstall (~2 minutes). The updates to .NET 4.5 were no longer listed as being installed. Maybe they were uninstalled automatically or maybe just hidden. I would have to do more digging to be sure.

I then installed .NET 4 onto the test computer (which took ~10 minutes) and checked for updates (which took ~30 minutes). There were 9 updates (200MB+). Older computers can have more than 20 updates to .NET 4, but those updates have been consolidated in to the 9 that you would get if you were just now installing .NET 4.

I uninstalled .NET 4 - it took less than 1 minute - the 9 updates were no longer listed.

Maybe nothing can be concluded from those times. Maybe there is very little work to be done when deleting tons of files. Maybe the install times are so long because files have to be decompressed, verified
and then installed (registry entries made and checked).

Until I can verify that each update is indeed backed out when the .NET 4 app is uninstalled via the Programs and Features applet via the control panel, my advice will be to back them out manually.

That said, even if the updates are not uninstalled and you only removed .NET 4 via the Programs and Features applet via the control panel, it is not going to cause you problems - you just might have extra junk installed that you don't need.

If you want to manually remove these updates:
Go to Start
Type View Installed Updates into the field named Search programs and files
Double click on the update of interest

If you want to see this being done for an Internet Explorer update, watch the video in this post:
Internet Explorer 9 - Uninstall
I clicked on Uninstall button since it is hard to "see" a double click in a video

Again, this is going to take you a while since .NET 4 has been heavily patched. And you might have to restart several times (hopefully not); but the end result is worth it.

After you get rid of all of the updates/patches for .NET 4 (and .NET 4 extended - if you have those) --- then you can uninstall .NET 4 and .NET 4 extended using the Programs and Features applet via the control panel. You might not have .NET 4 extended.

do you need to install 4.0 before you install 4.5? Because on the 4.5 download page, it says "in-place update to the 4.0"?

Also windows update is now wanting to install 4.0 on my pc after I manually un-installed it, if 4.5 is the latest version, why is it not shown on the update but 4.0 instead?

sonshi said:

do you need to install 4.0 before you install 4.5?

No, you can install 4.5 directly and then check for and install the updates to 4.5.

sonshi said:

...if 4.5 is the latest version, why is it not shown on the update but 4.0 instead?

Because MS is not pushing 4.5 out via Windows Update yet.

Thanks very much. I used NoelDP's recommendation to use cleanup tool, then installed 4.5 and it appears to be working. It didn't take very long either. Hope others that have this problem try this. thanks again.

For 3 months I've had 5 "updates" that kept appearing, yet they were apparently installed. I followed the instructions with the .Net clean-up tool and it worked like a charm.

Thank you so much to "Usernameissues" for solving this very irritating problem.