Thoughts on Windows Update MiniTool

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

On 2018-02-10 00:54, mike wrote:

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

I intended to use it at some point, so I went to MDL just now and read
the last page of the thread - things are more complicated than I
thought. There is a new UUP update mechanism in Windows 10, and it's not
clear from page 41 if WUMT handles this correctly. So I'm also
interested in hearing from you all regarding WUMT...

Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo It's lonely at the top, but you eat better.

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 00:54, mike wrote:

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

I intended to use it at some point, so I went to MDL just now and read
the last page of the thread - things are more complicated than I
thought. There is a new UUP update mechanism in Windows 10, and it's not
clear from page 41 if WUMT handles this correctly. So I'm also
interested in hearing from you all regarding WUMT...

Regards,


Near the end of the thread, the tool seems to have collected a
wrapper script written by someone else. That wrapper is to handle
the kind of stuff the usosvc Task Scheduler activity would cause,
such as switching the WU service back on when it's supposed to
stay off.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre....380535/page-7

For a developer, Windows 10 is their worst nightmare due to the dynamic
and random nature of changes. If someone is paying you to ride
a bucking bronco, that's one thing. If you're just doing projects
like this for fun, waking up each month to a redesign isn't
going to be adding to the fun.

Look at the effort that goes into WSUSOffline for some idea
what an enterprise this is. What a time-sink it is for the people
trying to keep it going.

Or for that matter, look at the additional pain sent to the
VirtualBox developers by Microsoft. You'll notice rapid
bursts of revision number changes, which is bronco riding
at its best. That's an example of people being paid to
ride the bronco.

Maybe for the other OSes it would be a little more stable.
Except for the fact that I'm not convinced that all the
WinXP updates are actually in the wsusscn2 file which
that tool uses (missing wannacrypt patches or similar).
Not even Windows Update would update WinXP properly any more,
in terms of completeness. As long as you're aware of the
limitations of updating old OSes you'll be just fine. Don't
be lulled into a false sense of security by a third-party
trying to write one of these. You'd have to be seriously
obsessive-compulsive to correct the Microsoft lapses.

Paul

I'm using it for over a year without any problem.
(Windows 10 pro)

"mike" wrote in the message
news
Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

On 2018-02-10 06:05, Paul wrote:

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 00:54, mike wrote:

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

I intended to use it at some point, so I went to MDL just now and read
the last page of the thread - things are more complicated than I
thought. There is a new UUP update mechanism in Windows 10, and it's
not clear from page 41 if WUMT handles this correctly. So I'm also
interested in hearing from you all regarding WUMT...

Regards,


Near the end of the thread, the tool seems to have collected a
wrapper script written by someone else. That wrapper is to handle
the kind of stuff the usosvc Task Scheduler activity would cause,
such as switching the WU service back on when it's supposed to
stay off.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre....380535/page-7

Yeah, I had that bookmarked too, it disables Windows Update (regularly I
guess since it apparently re-enables itself) and enables it while WUMT
is running. I just haven`t bothered to configure my Win10 partition yet,
so I haven't really investigated this. But the MDL thread is full of
references to UUP and "see this thread" and "see that thread" - TLDR ;-)

For a developer, Windows 10 is their worst nightmare due to the dynamic
and random nature of changes. If someone is paying you to ride
a bucking bronco, that's one thing. If you're just doing projects
like this for fun, waking up each month to a redesign isn't
going to be adding to the fun.

Yeah, Classic Shell dev gave up, and many more will too. Microsoft is
not making any effort at ensuring Win32 apps keep running. The only
thing they care about is that new Universal Apps model - THAT they will
support, everything else they will break happily.

Look at the effort that goes into WSUSOffline for some idea
what an enterprise this is. What a time-sink it is for the people
trying to keep it going.

I was keeping my local copy of WSUSOffline up to date at some point, but
I gave up; I don't install Win7 very often. WUMT is more what I need,
especially for Win10 where every 6 months all previous updates are null
and void - no need to carry around the whole history of updates.

Or for that matter, look at the additional pain sent to the
VirtualBox developers by Microsoft. You'll notice rapid
bursts of revision number changes, which is bronco riding
at its best. That's an example of people being paid to
ride the bronco.

The problem is that it brings so little gains for all the upheaval.
Ohhhh, Cortana, we'll trade compatibility to have her! NOT.

Maybe for the other OSes it would be a little more stable.
Except for the fact that I'm not convinced that all the
WinXP updates are actually in the wsusscn2 file which
that tool uses (missing wannacrypt patches or similar).
Not even Windows Update would update WinXP properly any more,
in terms of completeness. As long as you're aware of the
limitations of updating old OSes you'll be just fine. Don't
be lulled into a false sense of security by a third-party
trying to write one of these. You'd have to be seriously
obsessive-compulsive to correct the Microsoft lapses.

Paul

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo "Earth: Mostly Harmless."

On 2/12/2018 10:10 PM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 06:05, Paul wrote:

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 00:54, mike wrote:

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

I intended to use it at some point, so I went to MDL just now and read
the last page of the thread - things are more complicated than I
thought. There is a new UUP update mechanism in Windows 10, and it's
not clear from page 41 if WUMT handles this correctly. So I'm also
interested in hearing from you all regarding WUMT...

Regards,


Near the end of the thread, the tool seems to have collected a
wrapper script written by someone else. That wrapper is to handle
the kind of stuff the usosvc Task Scheduler activity would cause,
such as switching the WU service back on when it's supposed to
stay off.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre....380535/page-7


Yeah, I had that bookmarked too, it disables Windows Update (regularly I
guess since it apparently re-enables itself) and enables it while WUMT
is running. I just haven`t bothered to configure my Win10 partition yet,
so I haven't really investigated this. But the MDL thread is full of
references to UUP and "see this thread" and "see that thread" - TLDR ;-)

For a developer, Windows 10 is their worst nightmare due to the dynamic
and random nature of changes. If someone is paying you to ride
a bucking bronco, that's one thing. If you're just doing projects
like this for fun, waking up each month to a redesign isn't
going to be adding to the fun.

Yeah, Classic Shell dev gave up, and many more will too. Microsoft is
not making any effort at ensuring Win32 apps keep running. The only
thing they care about is that new Universal Apps model - THAT they will
support, everything else they will break happily.

Look at the effort that goes into WSUSOffline for some idea
what an enterprise this is. What a time-sink it is for the people
trying to keep it going.

I was keeping my local copy of WSUSOffline up to date at some point, but
I gave up; I don't install Win7 very often. WUMT is more what I need,
especially for Win10 where every 6 months all previous updates are null
and void - no need to carry around the whole history of updates.

Or for that matter, look at the additional pain sent to the
VirtualBox developers by Microsoft. You'll notice rapid
bursts of revision number changes, which is bronco riding
at its best. That's an example of people being paid to
ride the bronco.

The problem is that it brings so little gains for all the upheaval.
Ohhhh, Cortana, we'll trade compatibility to have her! NOT.

Maybe for the other OSes it would be a little more stable.
Except for the fact that I'm not convinced that all the
WinXP updates are actually in the wsusscn2 file which
that tool uses (missing wannacrypt patches or similar).
Not even Windows Update would update WinXP properly any more,
in terms of completeness. As long as you're aware of the
limitations of updating old OSes you'll be just fine. Don't
be lulled into a false sense of security by a third-party
trying to write one of these. You'd have to be seriously
obsessive-compulsive to correct the Microsoft lapses.

Paul

I installed it on win7 and win10 pro 1709.
I did edit the .com wrapper that runs it so that
it doesn't autoscan. It starts in auto-update mode.
I wanted time to set the mode
to notify only before I ran the scan.

So far, no problems.
It gives you a LOT of visibility and control on win10.
I think this will come in very handy when an update borks
your system and you want to restore the backup and install one update at
a time to
see what broke it. The user interface is on one page, so you don't
have to go looking for settings/options.

I can't say it adds any real capability to win7, but it is convenient
to use.

I'm still skeptical...on the surface it looks too good to be true.
Why isn't everybody raving about it...and MS causing it to break?

On 2/13/2018 1:29 AM, mike wrote:
On 2/12/2018 10:10 PM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 06:05, Paul wrote:

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 00:54, mike wrote:

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

I intended to use it at some point, so I went to MDL just now and read
the last page of the thread - things are more complicated than I
thought. There is a new UUP update mechanism in Windows 10, and it's
not clear from page 41 if WUMT handles this correctly. So I'm also
interested in hearing from you all regarding WUMT...

Regards,


Near the end of the thread, the tool seems to have collected a
wrapper script written by someone else. That wrapper is to handle
the kind of stuff the usosvc Task Scheduler activity would cause,
such as switching the WU service back on when it's supposed to
stay off.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre....380535/page-7



Yeah, I had that bookmarked too, it disables Windows Update (regularly I
guess since it apparently re-enables itself) and enables it while WUMT
is running. I just haven`t bothered to configure my Win10 partition yet,
so I haven't really investigated this. But the MDL thread is full of
references to UUP and "see this thread" and "see that thread" - TLDR ;-)

For a developer, Windows 10 is their worst nightmare due to the dynamic
and random nature of changes. If someone is paying you to ride
a bucking bronco, that's one thing. If you're just doing projects
like this for fun, waking up each month to a redesign isn't
going to be adding to the fun.

Yeah, Classic Shell dev gave up, and many more will too. Microsoft is
not making any effort at ensuring Win32 apps keep running. The only
thing they care about is that new Universal Apps model - THAT they will
support, everything else they will break happily.

Look at the effort that goes into WSUSOffline for some idea
what an enterprise this is. What a time-sink it is for the people
trying to keep it going.

I was keeping my local copy of WSUSOffline up to date at some point, but
I gave up; I don't install Win7 very often. WUMT is more what I need,
especially for Win10 where every 6 months all previous updates are null
and void - no need to carry around the whole history of updates.

Or for that matter, look at the additional pain sent to the
VirtualBox developers by Microsoft. You'll notice rapid
bursts of revision number changes, which is bronco riding
at its best. That's an example of people being paid to
ride the bronco.

The problem is that it brings so little gains for all the upheaval.
Ohhhh, Cortana, we'll trade compatibility to have her! NOT.

Maybe for the other OSes it would be a little more stable.
Except for the fact that I'm not convinced that all the
WinXP updates are actually in the wsusscn2 file which
that tool uses (missing wannacrypt patches or similar).
Not even Windows Update would update WinXP properly any more,
in terms of completeness. As long as you're aware of the
limitations of updating old OSes you'll be just fine. Don't
be lulled into a false sense of security by a third-party
trying to write one of these. You'd have to be seriously
obsessive-compulsive to correct the Microsoft lapses.

Paul

I installed it on win7 and win10 pro 1709.
I did edit the .com wrapper that runs it so that
it doesn't autoscan. It starts in auto-update mode.
I wanted time to set the mode
to notify only before I ran the scan.

So far, no problems.
It gives you a LOT of visibility and control on win10.
I think this will come in very handy when an update borks
your system and you want to restore the backup and install one update at
a time to
see what broke it. The user interface is on one page, so you don't
have to go looking for settings/options.

I can't say it adds any real capability to win7, but it is convenient
to use.

I'm still skeptical...on the surface it looks too good to be true.
Why isn't everybody raving about it...and MS causing it to break?

I put it on several more systems.

I did run into one issue.
On a fresh install of win7 to a 30GB partition, it
searched for a while, then aborted saying that there
was not enough 'space' to complete the operation.
I assume that means disk space.
Deleting other partitions and expanding C: made it work, but a big
hassle to put it all back.

Symptoms suggest that the program decides that there are too many
potential downloads to fit in the available space and gives up.

It SHOULD give you the full list of available updates and only complain
if you check too many boxes to install updates in one session.
Then you could
do multiple partial installs and everything would work fine.

If there's a way to make it do that, I haven't discovered it.

On 2018-02-16 16:05, mike wrote:

I put it on several more systems.

I did run into one issue.
On a fresh install of win7 to a 30GB partition, it
searched for a while, then aborted saying that there
was not enough 'space' to complete the operation.
I assume that means disk space.
Deleting other partitions and expanding C: made it work, but a big
hassle to put it all back.

Symptoms suggest that the program decides that there are too many
potential downloads to fit in the available space and gives up.

It SHOULD give you the full list of available updates and only complain
if you check too many boxes to install updates in one session.
Then you could
do multiple partial installs and everything would work fine.

If there's a way to make it do that, I haven't discovered it.

You could install or slipstream the "Convenience" update, this will
greatly limit the number of updates needed on fresh install. In fact if
Windows Updates / WUMT did things correctly, it would pull that one and
not the 1000 of preceding updates.

Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo I'm not Bajoran, Sisko punched me in the nose. -Kira

"mike" wrote:
On 2/13/2018 1:29 AM, mike wrote:
On 2/12/2018 10:10 PM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 06:05, Paul wrote:

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-02-10 00:54, mike wrote:

Found Windows Update MiniTool yesterday.
Looks like a painless way to manage windows 10 updates.
It's been around for over a year.
Seems like there'd be more chatter about it if it did
what it said.
Anybody tried it?

I intended to use it at some point, so I went to MDL just now and
read
the last page of the thread - things are more complicated than I
thought. There is a new UUP update mechanism in Windows 10, and it's
not clear from page 41 if WUMT handles this correctly. So I'm also
interested in hearing from you all regarding WUMT...

Regards,


Near the end of the thread, the tool seems to have collected a
wrapper script written by someone else. That wrapper is to handle
the kind of stuff the usosvc Task Scheduler activity would cause,
such as switching the WU service back on when it's supposed to
stay off.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre....380535/page-7



Yeah, I had that bookmarked too, it disables Windows Update (regularly
I
guess since it apparently re-enables itself) and enables it while WUMT
is running. I just haven`t bothered to configure my Win10 partition
yet,
so I haven't really investigated this. But the MDL thread is full of
references to UUP and "see this thread" and "see that thread" - TLDR
;-)

For a developer, Windows 10 is their worst nightmare due to the
dynamic
and random nature of changes. If someone is paying you to ride
a bucking bronco, that's one thing. If you're just doing projects
like this for fun, waking up each month to a redesign isn't
going to be adding to the fun.

Yeah, Classic Shell dev gave up, and many more will too. Microsoft is
not making any effort at ensuring Win32 apps keep running. The only
thing they care about is that new Universal Apps model - THAT they
will
support, everything else they will break happily.

Look at the effort that goes into WSUSOffline for some idea
what an enterprise this is. What a time-sink it is for the people
trying to keep it going.

I was keeping my local copy of WSUSOffline up to date at some point,
but
I gave up; I don't install Win7 very often. WUMT is more what I need,
especially for Win10 where every 6 months all previous updates are
null
and void - no need to carry around the whole history of updates.

Or for that matter, look at the additional pain sent to the
VirtualBox developers by Microsoft. You'll notice rapid
bursts of revision number changes, which is bronco riding
at its best. That's an example of people being paid to
ride the bronco.

The problem is that it brings so little gains for all the upheaval.
Ohhhh, Cortana, we'll trade compatibility to have her! NOT.

Maybe for the other OSes it would be a little more stable.
Except for the fact that I'm not convinced that all the
WinXP updates are actually in the wsusscn2 file which
that tool uses (missing wannacrypt patches or similar).
Not even Windows Update would update WinXP properly any more,
in terms of completeness. As long as you're aware of the
limitations of updating old OSes you'll be just fine. Don't
be lulled into a false sense of security by a third-party
trying to write one of these. You'd have to be seriously
obsessive-compulsive to correct the Microsoft lapses.

Paul

I installed it on win7 and win10 pro 1709.
I did edit the .com wrapper that runs it so that
it doesn't autoscan. It starts in auto-update mode.
I wanted time to set the mode
to notify only before I ran the scan.

So far, no problems.
It gives you a LOT of visibility and control on win10.
I think this will come in very handy when an update borks
your system and you want to restore the backup and install one update
at
a time to
see what broke it. The user interface is on one page, so you don't
have to go looking for settings/options.

I can't say it adds any real capability to win7, but it is convenient
to use.

I'm still skeptical...on the surface it looks too good to be true.
Why isn't everybody raving about it...and MS causing it to break?

I put it on several more systems.

I did run into one issue.
On a fresh install of win7 to a 30GB partition, it
searched for a while, then aborted saying that there
was not enough 'space' to complete the operation.
I assume that means disk space.
Deleting other partitions and expanding C: made it work, but a big
hassle to put it all back.

Symptoms suggest that the program decides that there are too many
potential downloads to fit in the available space and gives up.

It SHOULD give you the full list of available updates and only complain
if you check too many boxes to install updates in one session.
Then you could
do multiple partial installs and everything would work fine.

If there's a way to make it do that, I haven't discovered it.
Select Notification mode.