Re: Trying to understand what WU does...
- From: "MowGreen [MVP]" <mowgreen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:34:10 -0700
More answers to some of your queries can be viewed here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/deployment/winupdte.mspx
There is no *one place to find all the info you've requested. If there was, I'd understand the whole process a great deal more ;)
MowGreen [MVP 2003-2006]
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============
Jeremy C B Nicoll wrote:
My work background includes installing & customising mainframe OSes, so.
I definitely understand the sort of thing that WU might be trying to
manage. I do understand that making something like this work in a way
that technically naive users can do it is hard - but I think MS have
failed in that. All those daft eight-digit error numbers, for example.
Loads of users must see those once and never try to do an update ever
again.
Where might I find a detailed description of what WU and MU actually
do? I want to know things like:
- where fixes are put when they are downloaded automatically
- how to be sure that a downloaded fix is not corrupt
- if I choose to download fixes manually does it matter where I
choose to keep them; how do I then initiate install of such
fixes?
- which files (eg logs, original fix definitions) can I delete
after doing an install?
- is there an overall WU or MU processing log somewhere, separate
from those that describe what was done for each individual fix?
- should I have my file backup software ignore any of these downloaded files, or update logs? How do I prevent a restore
of some or all files (perhaps to resolve some other problem on
my machine) from restoring the previous levels of some targets
of fixes while not updating whatever control files or registry
entries there are describing the state of Windows?
- what inside an update's definition specifies what the
pre-requisite/co-requisite fixes that might be required are?
- what ensures that a set of fixes are applied in the right order...
- what all the stuff in a KBnnnn.log file actually means? For example
I've looked at some which are full of reports of various problems,
eg "update.ver" files being corrupt, various things not being found
etc. How does one tell if these are expected "not found"s, or ones
explaining an update that can't be applied?
- can one really believe the WU website when it shows icons saying
that fixes have been properly installed? What does the checking
code on the website actually look for?
- if, as some of my KBnnnn.log files suggest, my machine has made
multiple attempts to install a fix is actually the case, is there
a way to determine why/if it finally worked?
- if there's been multiple attempts to get an install to work, can
I be sure that removing a fix will work - that the prior version
of whatever programs were updated really will be restored ok?
- if I manually select a fix in add/remove programs, and elect to remove it, what process is there that will prevent that from being done if there's some inter-dependency between the fix I'm
asking to remove and other fixes?
I've asked some of my untechnical friends how they cope with WU and
they either say, rarely, "I turned it on and it just works", or they
rather more often ask "what is WU?" which is disturbing. Or they have
tried it and there some weird error message so they reinstalled windows
and left WU turned off for good ever since. People like that don't
know about newsgroups or web forums... and even if they did they maybe
can't make their machine work any longer. How do MS expect them to
cope? The whole thing seems far too complicated for "normal" people
and insufficiently well documented for anyone to understand.
- References:
- Trying to understand what WU does...
- From: Jeremy C B Nicoll
- Trying to understand what WU does...
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