Prevent Silverlight from showing up under Windows Updates FOR GOOD!

Prevent Silverlight from showing up under Windows Updates

One thing that’s annoying is that Windows 7 with SP1 and Windows 8 and 8.1 all have Silverlight baked into the OS for minimum functionality. The truth is though that most people never use it unless they are running Netflix which is also in the process of transitioning to HTML5. This article will show you how to Prevent Silverlight from showing up under Windows Updates.

Going with the old cliche, “If it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it” most users don’t know that it’s broke from the factory to force you into Microsoft’s Silverlight DRM ecosystem.

Since having Silverlight installed when it’s not needed it creates the following issues:

1. Larger exploit surface on a system.
2. Additional time to download, manage (when there’s problems and corruptions) and installation.
3. One more piece of software to have to support that is not used.
4. LOTS of pesky Windows updates. (Hey I just installed a silverlight update, why does it keep coming up to update?)

Because there are so many, especially when loading a new system, even after you install it the system will have a handful in order of every released patch.

Besides of having less of a headache to remove it from a system that will never use it, the system will have one less application to load and therefore will aid in tuning the system for speed.

Microsoft has a nice article on how to do this yourself below:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2608523#letmefixitmyself

If you want to download the cleaning script just download the zip file below, uncompress it then right click and run as Administrator.
Download CleanSilverlight Script

The only difference between the script posted here is that I added a pause statement so that you can see it running otherwise the DOS box will open and close so quickly you won’t be able to read it.