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windows-xpwindows-update

Best way of detecting if Windows has Windows Updates ready to download/install?

I'm specifically interested in Windows 2000/XP, but Vista/7 would be interesting too (if different).

I was thinking along the lines of task scheduling a batch file or equivalent on a daily basis.

EDIT: Sorry, I should have provided more info. The question pertains to 10 machines which I manually apply updates. I don't want to install the updates programatically, but just find out if there are updates ready to download/install (i.e. the update shield icon in the system tray is indicating this) using a batch or script. Thanks.

Solution

  • In the end, Windows SUS wasn't an option, so I'm using the following in a batch file conjunction with ActiveState ActivePerl (recommended):

    perl -nle "print $_ if m/updates detected/i" < c:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log

    This might be crude or dirty, and might break in future, but it currently does what I need.

    Thanks for all the ideas.