Finding Updates For Image Engineering

So a couple of weeks ago, I was working on a image engineering engagement for a customer. During image engineering I use an automated MDT 2010 task sequence to build the reference machine, customise it and then sysprep and capture it automatically. I typically use the ZTIWindowsUpdate.wsf task in the MDT 2010 task sequence to go out to the Microsoft Update servers on the internet and pull down the required updates which are then added to the image during the image engineering process automatically. This means that I don’t have to manage the download and adding of updates to MDT 2010 as the task sequence task goes out and downloads/installs the relevant updates at the point in time that the image engineering task sequence runs.

Then I started to think about how this would work if I wanted to control the updates – and if I did in fact want to download them individually and stage them in MDT 2010. There seemed no easy way to identify the updates that have been released since a specific point in time (say since Windows 7 SP1) until I came across https://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/current.aspx 

This site allows you to set the product/technology that you want to search for and the service pack level and it will then pull back all of the updates that have been released from that point – once the list is built you can then visit each link and download the required updates to your local MDT server for integration with your image engineering process – all its really missing is a basket type download tool that would allow you to download all the updates identified – but as a way of finding those point in time updates – it’s pretty cool

This post was contributed by Richard Smith, a Principal Consultant with Microsoft Services UK

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