This is a nifty little utility that enables you to perform an offline update of all Microsoft XP (or vista) patches within the space of 25 minutes. You may have a high speed connection but hackers out there are relentlessly targeting boxes that have not been patched and the time you spend downloading could be the time you spend getting owned especially with a vanilla 2K, XP or Vista installed with no service packs/ hotfixes applied. For those who have a number of standalones systems with little or no network connectivity or everyday users still on dial-up, this facility can also enable you to regularly update your machines simply, safely and easily. Its almost akin to your own personalised service pack.
In Oct 07 for example a newly-built Windows XP host with SP2 installed still required you to download anything up to ~100 patches (200 Mb+) to get it fully patched to that date and things were only getting worse as new patches are relentlessly released every Patch Tuesday by Microsoft.
CTUpdate will provide the ability to update Windows XP, 2K3, Vista, 7 and 2K8 hosts in one swoop, not to mention updating Microsoft Office Products too!
Heisse offers an alternative to the update predicament, CTUpdate is a collection of script that requires only a few steps to reel in a current service pack at any time, combining all released Windows updates at the time of download. The download script acquires the complete update library for selected operating systems from Microsoft's servers and uses them to created ISO images for CDs or DVDs as desired.
More information can be found here.
It can be downloaded from here.
Installation:
Unpack the zip file on a PC with a fast internet Connection.
Execution:
Double-click the UpdateGenerator.exe file.
Select the variant of Windows you wish to download the Microsoft Update catalogue of patches for.
Select whether a DVD or CD ISO needs to be created.
Click Start.
Wget is used to download the patches from Microsoft and store them in a strict directory structure that should not be tampered with.
Once finished an ISO file is then created.
Burn the requisite ISO to a CD/DVD,
Visit the machine you want to update and double-click on UpdateInstaller.exe
Click Start. 25 Minutes later you have a fully patched system.
Note: - A temporary WSUSAdmin account is created in the install procedure to enable automatic reboots and installation of files without any user intervention required. This account is deleted after completion - best check though!
After the initial download of all service packs and hotfixes, every time you update, only an incremental update is performed, so essentially you could utilise a fast Internet connection to get all the files to start, transfer all of them to a slow or dial-up link and its then not really a pain to keep up to date. Every time you update a brand new ISO is created, overwriting the previous version.
