A friend recently told me of a tech who carries all the Windows XP updates on a USB key, and had a simple way to tell Windows Updates to look to the USB key instead of the Windows Update URL when running Windows Update. This made updating clients a breeze and alot faster.

Two questions on doing this:

- How do i tell Windows to look at the USB key instead of Win URL?
- Where can I batch download all the updates since WinXP release?

Thanks for any tips on this... :beer:

when you go to windowsupdate ... you will get a KBxxxxxx article ... now you just have to look at microsoft for this article and get thedownload link there ... now just download it ...
or you use the Knowledge Base
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo
now enter there e.g. KB831240 and find you manual update .... as soon as you have all the updates you need ... you can create a batch file ... and start the .exe files from there ....
and since you want automatic install you can add some switches ...
WindowsXP-KB835732-x86-ENU.EXE /? - to see what you can do
WindowsXP-KB835732-x86-ENU.EXE /quite /norestart - for all updates
WindowsXP-KB835732-x86-ENU.EXE /quite /forcerestart for the last ....
save the batch and execute it ... this is some work ... for sure but when its done its easy to update ... but you may just wait for SP2 and then start doing this

Thanks, I'll start grabbing the updates....however....

I have read before about creating batch files, but apparently there is a trick to so that you can simply run WINDOWS UPDATE on a PC and it will grab the updates from the USB key instead of the online Windows URL or using a batch file....is this possible or just phantazy? :roll: This would also save updating batch files.

I am guessing that a PC may still have to run the query to Windows Updates, but instead of downloading what it needs, it grabs them from a local source. This may be similar to a method used in-house by local admins? This is the trick I am after....

Thanks...