4 tools to download Windows updates to a local archive

[40hz]

A handy write-up of four different tools to create your own archive of Windows updates can be found over at the 4Sysops blog. Link to article here.

In this article, I examine four Windows Update download tools that allow you to download all updates for the various Windows versions. This enables you to perform offline updates or slipstream the updates into a Windows image.

If you do a lot of setups, or site work where you need to get a PC up to date with Microsoft's latest and greatest with the minimum amount of fuss, these apps are well worth looking at.

I most often select WSUS Offline Update as the tool of choice. I've recommended and used it for many years with good results. I currently keep the whole thing on a regularly updated 64Gb USB key (along with some other tech tools) so I'm independent of a network connection whenever I need to do updates on a machine - or a group of them. But the other apps listed are also worth a look and may be better suited to your own use cases.

Note: Microsoft's update archives are huge so you'll definitely want a very good broadband connection to perform the initial download(s). Once you have gotten your initial archives established however, any reasonably robust DSL connection should be sufficient to keep things current.

[ewemoa]

A bit of a late response, but...

What the article does not appear to mention is that the source code for WSUS Offline is available.  IMO, a significant point in this day and age for these types of tools (seeing as it's provided by a third party).


Thanks, 40Hz for the recommendation


On a side note, WSUS Offline also appears to come with some bash shell scripts to provide some comparable functionality for *NIX machines.  So apparently, updates can be downloaded and some kind of .iso can be created in a *NIX environment (appears to require at least cabextract, xmlstarlet, md5deep/hashdeep, mkisofs, and genisomage).

[Asudem]

Thanks for sharing this info. I've used all these tools and I also find WSUS Offline Update to be the best of the bunch, but it's install process takes much, much longer it seems. I've never benchmarked it, but I've always wanted a tool which downloads windows updates so Windows update SEES THE UPDATES DOWNLOADED.

The native Windows Update utility seems to install the updates the fastest in my opinion, and since we mention slipstreaming, is there a nice tutorial on that too with something such as nLite? I also apologize in advance for anyone who wishes to slipstream Vista.

There is another tool, actually, for XP, which will download only the cumulative updates since SP3 to it's end of life without any duplicates and every file slipstreams correctly but I don't remember it off hand. I used it to update our Dell XP Install discs when someone at work creates a really big computer problem for me.

[ewemoa]

I've always wanted a tool which downloads windows updates so Windows update SEES THE UPDATES DOWNLOADED.

I don't know off-hand, but may be it's not hard to write something using:

  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa386101%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

May be the following sorts of things will be of some use along those lines:

  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8210468/wua-iupdate2-copytocache-throws-wu-e-invalid-update-type
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19249005/how-can-i-do-this-type-of-cast-from-c-sharp-in-powershell

If there isn't already a nice tool, perhaps it could be a NANY

...since we mention slipstreaming, is there a nice tutorial on that too with something such as nLite?

Since you mention nLite, does that mean you're interested in one or more of the following:

  Windows 2000, XP x86/x64 and 2003 x86/x64

?

I've only been working with Windows 7-ish things recently -- for that, assuming you've got the updates in .cab or .msu form, using DISM seems to be pretty straight-forward.  It may have been 4sysops where I encountered DISM GUI (source code available):

  https://4sysops.com/archives/free-dism-gui-a-graphical-front-end-for-dism/

For Windows 7, I got version 3.5 as that seemed to require less extra bits to be installed:

  https://dismgui.codeplex.com/releases/view/101865