Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Postby SelfmadeDev » 21.06.2019, 14:28

Hello,
I'm currently writing me a little program which checks the Hotfixes that are installed on my PC and then should compare them with like an list which includes every Hotfix for a certain Windows Edition (like Win7 Home Edition, Win7 Pro, etc). But I'm struggeling to find such a list somewhere publicly so I can find the Hotfixes which are missing on the system. I thought that WSUSOffline must have such a list/ database in the background and I was wondering where it get's it from or if I could access these information somehow with my program too.

Thank you in advance for your help!
~SelfmadeDev
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Re: Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Postby Dalai » 21.06.2019, 14:55

WSUS Offline makes use of the Windows Update Agent to determine installed and missing updates. To do that, it runs two VBS scripts: wsusoffline\client\cmd\ListInstalledUpdateIds.vbs and ListMissingUpdateIds.vbs respectively.

Regards
Dalai
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Re: Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Postby SelfmadeDev » 21.06.2019, 15:21

Is the Windows Update Agent the normal Update Tool of Windows? Because if that's true, there is my problem. It says my CPU is too new for my OS (Win7) to force me to buy a newer Windows. I'm not quite sure how the "ListMissingUpdateIds.vbs" work, does it connect to the Windows Update Servers directly or does WSUS has it own Database with all the Updates listed?
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Re: Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Postby Dalai » 21.06.2019, 15:41

SelfmadeDev wrote:Is the Windows Update Agent the normal Update Tool of Windows?

Not quite. Windows Update Agent is the client-side of the Windows Update system, but it doesn't have a GUI at all. Windows Update is a combination of the Windows Update Agent plus GUI plus other parts.

It says my CPU is too new for my OS (Win7) to force me to buy a newer Windows.

There are two separate tools that deal with this issue: https://github.com/zeffy/wufuc and https://github.com/fre4kyC0de/WindowsUp ... yzen_Patch.

I'm not quite sure how the "ListMissingUpdateIds.vbs" work, does it connect to the Windows Update Servers directly or does WSUS has it own Database with all the Updates listed?

No online search is performed, hence the "Offline" part in the tool's name. Microsoft provides a catalog (wsusscn2.cab) that contains information about all security updates they released. This catalog is downloaded by WSUS Offline (UpdateGenerator). WSUS Offline's UpdateInstaller tells the Windows Update Agent to use that catalog to perform the searches. The result is then saved to a text file which WSUS Offline uses to install missing updates (via DISM or WUSA).

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Dalai
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Re: Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Postby SelfmadeDev » 21.06.2019, 16:15

I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the information I found. So I found the page https://wsusscn2.cab/ which apparently provides the Updates, but I never worked with an API so that's a little bit too much information to handle for me atm^^
Does anybody has some experience with this API? Is it simple to get only the names of the Hotfixes that are missing on my system?
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Re: Overview of Windows Hotfixes?

Postby Dalai » 21.06.2019, 17:18

SelfmadeDev wrote:I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the information I found. So I found the page https://wsusscn2.cab/ which apparently provides the Updates

Neither has this site anything to do with Microsoft nor did I mean it when I wrote about the catalog file! If you read my post again carefully, you'll see that misunderstanding.

Just to make it easier:
  1. WSUS Offline downloads the catalog file (UpdateGenerator).
  2. The installation part of WSUS Offline (UpdateInstaller) copies the catalog file to %TEMP% directory and tells the WUA via the Windows Update API to use it instead of searching online. This is where the two VBS scripts I mentioned come into play.

You can either use these scripts and/or adapt them to your needs (WSUS Offline is open source after all), or you can read about the Windows Update API on Microsoft's websites: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... p/api/_wua
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... -reference

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Dalai
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