I have looked around and tried to find an answer for this but I can't seem to dig anything up.

I have clients that have contracts for network maintenance. At a set interval we go around and update/tuneup/clean there computer systems. One issue we have run into is with automatic updates. We keep the auto updates off because a lot of our clients have software that isn't compatible with all the updates. So when we go around we have to manually pick out what to download and install.

What I'm trying to do is enable the option to automatically download but let me choose when to install. HOWEVER, I do not want to clients to be prompted that installs a ready for their computer. This is because we don't want clients installing updates that are not compatible and hence messing up the computers. The current method we have is to keep updates off completely and download and install them when we go out. But downloading updates for 30 computers can take a pretty big toll on network speed. Any help for this matter would be greatly appreciated.

And have you tried to disable the MS pop-up balloons??

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000

Thanks for the response, that fix stops part of the issue. But I would rather hide the task bar icon all together.

You can hide the icon in windows XP by right-clicking on the taskbar, click properties. In the Taskbar tab, click 'Hide inactive icons' at the bottom, then the customize button. Select the icon, click on the behavior (hide when inactive) and a down arrow will appear. Select the desired action there.