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songei2f
Asked: 2011-09-14 06:00:26 +0800 CST

Quick Way to Find Info on a List of Updates

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Let's say I want to debug an issue where a few client computers were impacted by a long list of updates that occurred in the last few months. I run a systeminfo | find /i "kb" > updatelist.log. Now how can I find a way to quickly get a summary of the purpose for the updates. There was a program that kind of did stuff like this for the pre-NT6.x operating systems, but this does not really work anymore. Any useful websites that do this?

UPDATE: So maybe something like Windows Update Downloader or the MrJinje Update XML Tool is kind of what I am looking for, but neither is really scriptable or queryable.

windows windows-update

2 Answers

  1. Sysinternals PSInfo gives more information (product and title) than systeminfo does. Try:

    psinfo.exe /s | find /i "kb" > updatelist.log

    Output:

    [snip]...
Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969559)
Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB976321)
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (KB2416473) 1
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile (KB2518870) 1
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile (KB2539636) 1
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended (KB2416472) 1
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended (KB2487367) 1
...[snip]

    Pasting the KB article number (eg KB969559) into the search window of "Help and Support" will give you a quick look-up of interesting patches. Make sure Help and Support is set to search all microsoft products.

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  2. The MBSA tool from Microsoft is scriptable. I'm not sure it will go back as far as you want however. Might be worth a look.

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