When you have more than one Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 product installed on the computer, and you install an update that updates shared files, the update is applied to all the installed Visual Studio 2005 products. If you later use the "Add or Remove Programs" item in Control Panel to uninstall the update for only one of the products, only the update for that product is uninstalled. However, the shared files are rolled back to their earlier versions. Because the shared files are used by all the installed Visual Studio 2005 products, the computer may be vulnerable.

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This issue occurs because of a combination of problems with Microsoft Windows Installer and with the update uninstall wrapper. Windows Installer is the underlying technology for the update process.

Updates for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 have an intelligent update install wrapper. When you install an update that may apply to more than one Visual Studio 2005 product, the update install wrapper checks to determine whether you have multiple Visual Studio 2005 products installed on the computer. For example, you may have both Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Architect installed.

If you have more than one product installed, the update install wrapper installs the update only one time. However, the update install wrapper installs metadata to indicate that the update has been separately installed for each applicable Visual Studio 2005 product. To verify the installation, you can look in the "Add or Remove Programs" item in Control Panel. You will see that the update has been separately installed for each applicable product.

Later, when you try to uninstall the update for only one product, the update uninstall wrapper removes the update metadata for only that product. However, the update uninstall wrapper also rolls back the shared files to their earlier versions. This issue occurs because of a bug in Windows Installer. Windows Installer does not maintain a reference count of the updates that have been applied to each shared file for each product that shares the file. Therefore, the update uninstall wrapper rolls back the shared files. If the update that you are uninstalling is a security update, this issue may leave the computer in a vulnerable state.

This issue occurs for all updates that apply to more than one Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 product.

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To make sure that you do not leave the computer in a vulnerable state, use the "Add or Remove Programs" item to verify that the update is installed on all applicable Visual Studio 2005 products. Also, when you uninstall an update, use the "Add or Remove Programs" item to verify that you have uninstalled the update from all applicable Visual Studio 2005 products.

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To visit the Microsoft Update Web site, click the following link:

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