wsusoffline fails stated purpose

[Scruffy]

Hi all,

I love the idea behind the wsusoffline updater, but I think the truth should be said - it fails in it's stated purpose. I am referring specifically to the line "...since security, time and bandwidth are money."

The updater does an admirable job of selecting and downloading files, and then allowing them to be installed offline, but I've noticed a few things that don't meet with expectations.

1. Most importantly (for me), I have a very slow internet connection, so downloading over 250MiB of unchosen updates when only Win7x64 global is selected REALLY hurts. More that 6 hours spent downloading unneeded German language packs (hard-coded in the updates no less). I don't object to the updates being available, but I shouldn't download them if I don't SELECT German, and German users shouldn't default to downloading English language packs either if they don't select them. There is also a fairly large selection of x86 updates downloaded - I'm unsure if they are required on x64 machines, or not.

2. After Installing Windows 7 x64 SP1 and then running the wsusoffline update and installing those updates, I still have 42 important updates of almost 300MiB available when I use Windows Update.

3. With wsusoffline v8.1 and v8.2 (not tested since v8.2), creating the USB or ISO fails to allow updating the target machine because, apparently, the update script thinks it is installing x86 updates (not selected in update generator) on an x64 machine.

In the end, I can do a clean install of Win7 x64 SP1, then use Windows Update, download and install those, and I've spent CLOSE to the same amount of time and bandwidth. I'm NOT counting the time it takes to INITIALLY download the library for wsusoffline, as that takes around 36 hours for JUST Windows 7 x64 global.

I hope that this project continues, and that the issues I've found are worked out, but for the time being, I will continue to do things the "old" way. Thank you for what you are trying to do, I believe it has great potential, and there is definitely a need for it.

[WSUSUpdateAdmin]

Hi!

1) This project is intended to update freshly installed computers or those with no or slow internet connention. For the download part, a broadband connected computer should be used, of course.

2) Pls. see viewtopic.php?f=7&t=172.

3) Sorry, I can't reproduce this.

RTW

[someone2]

As far as #1, if you're doing a single install this probably won't help you, but, if a major portion of your job is doing updates this is an immense time saver. Especially once the reboot/recall was changed to work with our share. Once that was working it meant I could walk away from an XP sp0 and not worry about it and come back to find 40 some updates remaining, not 3 service packs and hundreds of others. And I can do this on a dozen machines at once if need be (If anyone else wants to do use recall with password protected share and is familiar with how to use "net use" with credentials just search the client/cmd directory for "net use" in the batch files, just insert the /user and password where it normally goes).

#2 does bug me, but it's still a time saver (though why recent ones have started excluding service packs I've yet to find detailed anywhere but brief mention in the FAQ, but even that was an easy fix once I found out it was on purpose).

#3? I don't use that feature sorry can't help there