Software Update: WSUS Offline Update 6.5

The German computer magazine C’T has released a program called Offline Update tool for a long time. With that program it was possible to provide Windows computers that do not have an internet connection with the latest updates from Microsoft. The program was developed by Torsten Wittrock, who recently released it himself. It has been renamed WSUS Offline Update for this reason and is now offered under an open source license.

If you download WSUS Offline Update with another PC, you can then burn the program to a CD or DVD to put it on the offline PC. In a clear interface you can then choose from one or more languages ​​for Windows 2000 and higher, and Office XP and higher. The program then retrieves all updates from Microsoft’s ftp server and optionally creates an ISO file of the whole per language or per operating system. More information about this program can here are being found. Version 6.5 of WSUS Offline Update was released on Thursday and its changelog looks like this:

Modifications in version 6.5

• Office updates up to 03/2010 integrated by static definitions
• Optional installation of Windows PowerShell 2.0 on Windows XP, Server 2003 and Vista (x86/x64) systems
• Optional installation of most recent Windows Media Player on Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 (x86/x64) systems
• Optional installation of most recent Windows Terminal Services Client (Remote Desktop Connection) on Windows XP, Server 2003 and Vista (x86/x64) systems
• Optional client side hash verification of update installation packages
• Custom additional configuration capabilities added to download and installation parts’ static and exclude directories (Thanks to Eberhard Werle and “boco”)
• Custom initialization and finalization hook capabilities added to DownloadUpdates.cmd and DoUpdate.cmd scripts (Thanks to “petebob796”)
• UpdateGenerator script will now show log file on demand after downloading (Thanks to Andreas Bardelli)
• UpdateInstaller script will now allow automatic reboot option even if started from a network share on Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008 (R2) systems
• DoUpdate.cmd script will now exit with errorlevel 3011 if recall after reboot is required and still exit with errorlevel 3010 if reboot only is required (Thanks to “othiman”)
• AutoIt script compiler updated to version 3.3.6.0
• Static download definitions added for Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows XP (Thanks to “nicname”)
• Fix: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 File Converter Pack (KB974882) could have been missed (Thanks to “Denniss”)
• Fix: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 File Converter Pack (KB974882) was installed using invalid parameters (Thanks to “-Iwan-“)
• Fix: PowerPoint Updates KB973143 (oxp) and KB976881 (o2k3) replaced KB957781 (oxp) and KB957784 (o2k3), which will now be excluded (Thanks to “Denniss”)
• Fix: Download XSLT filters will now check for valid ‘http://’ prefixes in URLs (Thanks to “automatix”)
• Fix: DownloadUpdates.cmd script won’t any longer delete wuredist.cab in order to work around Microsoft’s versioning problems (Thanks to “automatix”, “boco” and “harry”)
• Fix: For x86 target platforms, .NET x64 patches were additionally downloaded and vice versa (Thanks to “wsususer”)
• Fix: Chinese traditional language option was erroneously labeled “Taiwanese” in UpdateGenerator script (Thanks to “wyattwong”)
• Fix: DownloadUpdates.sh script downloaded two copies of XP SP3 (Thanks to “nebyah”)
• Fix: DownloadUpdates.sh script contained obsolete removal of wsusscn2.cab (Thanks to “nebyah”)
• Fix: Missing variable initialization in DownloadUpdates.sh script could lead to syntax error (Thanks to Ulrich Windl)
• Fix: Replaced Microsoft’s unstable file hash computation tool fciv.exe by open source utility hashdeep.exe (Thanks to “insertrealname” and “boco”)
• Fix: SetTargetEnvVars.cmd script expects Windows Update Agent (WUA) version 7.4.7600.226 now (Thanks to Mark Gerber)
• Fix: Decreased “cross-product” ISO image sizes by removing legacy Windows 2000 platform