How to upgrade and downgrade the integration services Win2012/R2/2016

Another nice article on how to upgrade and downgrade the integration services for 2012 non-R2, 2012 R2 and Server 2016. In a previously defined article there was shown a way to upgrade/downgrade them on 2008/R2.

Assuming you have a 2012 R2 Guest VM running and it is already upgraded to include the level of KB3063109 .

Here in this blog post I will show how this is done.

Basic situation: I will update the {test} DC_2

PowerShell: Get-VM | ft Name, IntegrationServicesVersion

From this link we can grab an offline integration services KB for the 2012 R2 - Guest. There you can find for the other OSes those packages as well.

In order to install the selected package we should use DISM command let as in the below picture found as well: 

Dism /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\temp\windows6.2-hypervintegrationservices-x64.cab

As shown on  the last number 3 picture the machine needs to be restarted. After running the same PowerShell command let: Get-VM | ft Name, IntegrationServicesVersion you can see that the package is installed as well: >> see {test} DC_2

Now I want to uninstall / remove the integration services. In order to accomplish this I just go to Programs > Programs and Features> Installed Updates and click on the corresponding KB3063109 by confirming this with "yes" and restart the machine.

After that when checking the integration services with the same PowerShell cmdlet for the {test} DC_2 again we see the old build: 6.3.9600.16384.

If you are more comfortable like me with the DISM etc. commands go for it using:

DISM command line /Remove-Package

For example: Dism /Online /Remove-Package /PackagePath:C:\temp\windows6.2-hypervintegrationservices-x64.cab

/Remove-Package

Removes a specified .cab file package from the image. Only .cab files can be specified. You cannot use this command to remove .msu files.

Note: Using this command to remove a package from an offline image will not reduce the image size.

You can use the /PackagePath option to point to the original source of the package, specify the path to the CAB file, or you can specify the package by name as it is listed in the image. 

In order to find the exact name you can use the /Get-Packages option.