Thursday, January 21, 2016

Keeping your Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Installation images fully patched

If you have recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 (or later), you may now require some tooling to ensure you can keep your Windows images fully patched as you build out new OS systems and images.

You may have read my earlier post regarding Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 here: http://samirvaidya.blogspot.com/2012/05/keeping-your-windows-7-and-windows.html

Unfortunately, many of the tools listed in that article are no longer viable solutions for Windows 8.1 and later OSes.

Thankfully, though, there are a few suitable replacements to these earlier outdated tools!

While Windows Updates Downloader has not kept up with the Windows 10 updates, it still has a relatively recent list of updates for Windows 8.1: http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com/UpdateLists.aspx

A newer alternative to Windows Updates Downloader is now called WHDownloader and can be downloaded from here which also uses Update Lists: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_hotfix_downloader.html

Another recent and well-maintained tool is WSUS Offline Update: http://download.wsusoffline.net/

The updates on the WSUS Offline Update site seem to be much more regularly and frequently updated than the Update Lists provided on Windows Updates Downloader (which has not had its last update since March 2015).

When you are ready to finally integrate these Windows Updates into your Windows media, you can grab a tool such as NTLite to easily help you integrate these patches/updates directly into your Windows media!  https://www.ntlite.com/download/


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