Why AutoPatcher Beats Windows Update and WSUS
Every single IT person will tell you to maintain your Windows security updates. It is critical, we are told, so that we can keep our computers safe. While I don’t completely agree with the statement (I’ve personally experienced an “update” that has completely killed a mission critical server), it is important to be able to update your system with the required patches.
Most people use Windows Update and many IT administrators use Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) to deploy these patches. While both works well, I personally prefer AutoPatcher. And here’s why:
- It uses way less bandwidth than Windows Update. You download the patches once and you are done. You can now easily deploy all of the update to several computers, even computers without Internet access.
- AutoPatcher does more than just update Microsoft applications. It is completely customizable and you can use it to install pretty much anything you want.
- You can deploy AutoPatcher updates over a network without a bunch of registry hacks. Unless you are running Active Directory, you need to perform a number of registry hacks to get WSUS to work.
- You do not need to install the Windows Genuine Advantage “critical” update in order to install other updates. You can keep your information to yourself.
- AutoPatcher can be run unattended over a network or from a log-on script.
If you have never used this amazing tool, I would really encourage you to give it a try. It’s freeware so all it will cost you is your time.
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2 Responses to “Why AutoPatcher Beats Windows Update and WSUS”
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chrono13 Says:
May 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am6. From SP2 to fully up to date, Autopatcher requires 1 update session and 1 reboot instead of Windows Updates’ five.
7. Autopatcher is done in about a half hour or so from SP2 to fully up to date. Windows update can take hours. (see 6 and 8).
8. Once Autopatcher is started, you can walk away, when you return it is done. Windows update stops several times during the update process with unnecessary dialogue boxes, requiring interaction to make it continue. WSUS thankfully does not suffer from this the way Windows Update does.
9. Autopatcher can bring any Windows computer up to fully patched with 1 CD, even if that computer has no Internet connection at the time, or is on a very slow connection. This was very important before SP3, and will be very important in the months and years after SP3.
10. Autopatcher is easier to use (selecting which packages you want to install/update) than Windows Update (see also 6, 7 and 8). If hobbyist can do it better than Microsoft, Microsoft has no excuse to let us suffer under their poor update system.
Microsoft should have bought the rights to Autopatcher, maybe even hired its current developer and then ran it through QA and offered it, updated once a month, on TechNet.
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buck09 Says:
May 16th, 2008 at 3:36 pmIf it’s your own personal computer, or a re-build, autopatcher works great. However, it doesn’t exactly scale well to hundreds of servers. If you’re looking for better patch management than WSUS, there are plenty of nice commercial products out there that do it much better, but no free ones yet.
