After restoring to before the updates in the 13th/14th, the windows updates reappeared on the Windows Update list of available updates. The Office updates have not reappeared.
So I read the KnowledgeBase article about each one, together with reports on other sites which revealed
KB2976897 is widely reported for causing BSODs
KB2982791 and
KB2970228 have been withdrawn by Microsoft, although they still appear on the list!
KB2952664 is an enormous update only to prepare for your upgrade to Window 8 (as if you would!)
These four were hidden and the rest were applied. I am pleased to report that all is now well.
It is a sad state of affairs that we now should have to check every update and not rely on automatic updates.
The other thing that is worrying me is that all the Office updates that I backed out are not being re-offered to me.
