Remove NVIDIA Update and UpdatusUser

It looks like there is a nVidia knowledge base article that deals with the Updatus user account. The short story is that this behavior is by design, and they won't fix it. If you have an Optimus-enabled notebook, even if you don't want nVidia update, it will be installed. They seem to think that creating a user account is a perfectly good approach to auto-updating. I don't know anybody else who is using it, but nVidia seems to think it's perfectly OK.

Also, I have found a way to disable the creation of the user account when installing the driver, even though it implies editing a file before installing the driver. If you use this method, when you install the driver, you won't get the UpdatusUser account, or service installed. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Start the installation, and press OK. The installation files will be extracted to a location on your hard drive (C:\NVIDIA is the default)
2. After the files are extracted, the installer will open. Now you need to cancel the installer.
3. Open this file using a text editor (Notepad, Notepad++): C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\295.73\WinVista_Win7_64\International\Display.Optimus\Optimus.nvi (the path may vary if you have another driver version, or you extracted the files to a different location)

4. Delete the following lines

   <dependencies>
    <package type="requires" package="NVIDIA.Update"/>
   </dependencies>
   <phases>
    <custom phase="enableUpdatus" action="EnableUpdatus" when="install"/>
    <custom phase="disableUpdatus" action="DisableUpdatus" when="uninstall"/>
   </phases>
   

5. Save, close the file
6. Restart the installer by running C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\295.73\WinVista_Win7_64\ International\setup.exe (again, the path may vary if you have another driver version, or you extracted the files to a different location)
7. Now you can install the driver, and the UpdatusUser account won't be installed automatically on your Optimus-enabled laptop.

I'd rather not install the feature at all, but once its on the machine, it is easy to remove with the following commands:

net user /delete updatususer
sc delete nvupdatusservice

Which removes both the user and the service

Simple. I booted up into safe mode and deleted it for good!