I work for an IT help desk at Kansas State University where we are responsible for supporting several thousand students on our network. Recently, it has come to my attention that there is a Windows Update that is pushing out an update that installs a virtual wireless adapter known as the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Adapter. We use the Bradford client security solution to ensure that students' computers are up to date before being allowed into the production portion of our network. Since this virtual adapter can be used to bridge the network that we have and allow other users to access the network without installation of our client security program, this is a breach of our IT policy. I would like to know if anyone knows what wireless cards this update is supported on, and also if it is possible to prevent the installation of the update completely via the Windows Registry or other means. Thanks, Zack

Two ways. If the computers are members of a domain, The administrators can use group policy to disallow the wireless Hosted Network. By using netsh wlan commands, the administrator can enable or disable the wireless Hosted Network locally on the computers

Neither of these methods are really practical for our situation; the update needs to be blocked on them, prior to the installation actually happening. If it happens, it looks like we will have to touch each computer individually, and we would like to avoid that.

I don't know if this would be practical in your situation but you could set up a WSUS server and make sure all of the students get their updates there. This would allow you to control which updates are allowed. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx I don't think this is a practical solution for you though. If students want to share network access there are many other ways with most OS's that this can be done. They could also use a router to accomplish this. I think in your situation you have to assume there will be rogue computers on your network and plan the network security appropriately. This can be done with IPSEC or other methods. Kerry Brown MS-MVP - Windows Desktop Experience

Routers are automatically blocked on our network, and that is really the issue. Since this virtual adapter behaves as a router, any student running a computer with this update has the potential to get blocked. The security solution we run is produced by Bradford Networks and requires the installation of a client program on student computers. As a part of this installation, we push certain registry keys to the student machine (for instance, we turn on automatic updates). I need to know if it is possible to prevent or kill this update through a registry key.

It is not possible to prevent an update from downloading on a computer except we manually configure to hide the update, or setup a WSUS server. You can consider choosing either Bubbapcguy’s or Kerry’s suggestion. Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.