Repair shop Windows update hell!

[sy5tem]

hello

don't know if i am in the right section ...

just got a new job , in a "computer repair shop" im a single employee with the boss... he does commercial jobs remote help and control e.t.c

here is my problem

i am the one who build and repair computer in the shop, and every windows install or repair then require hours of Windows Update extravaganza ...

i checked WSUS but this seems aimed at a business with its own computer force ..

is there anything that exist out there to have a local server download all windows update locally for all windows flavor from xp to 2008 , 7 e.t.c ....?

thank you

 

[qubit]

You had it right the first time: WSUS is the way to go. WSUS is that big cache of updates and will speed up your patching enormously.

In business time is money, so if your boss needs to invest in a small server running Windows 2008 R2 then it's money well spent. It only needs to be a fairly low end PC with 4GB RAM, integrated graphics and two hard discs, one to hold the OS and the other something like a 2TB WD Green drive to hold the updates. These drives are incredibly cheap, so buying one is a no-brainer.

I use this setup myself at home.

Some WSUS resources:

The manual: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd939796(WS.10).aspx

WSUS home: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx

WSUS forum: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-CA/winserverwsus/threads

 

[sy5tem]

alright we already have 2008 licences and we have enough part around to build a pretty server.. i will start reading right away ... thank you

 

[Mussels]

i want to look into this myself, subscribed to thread.


you CAN make bootable flash drives/ISO's with all the win updates slipstreamed in, but doing so in the first place will take a lot of time and effort (you'll need a seperate disk/drive for x86/x64 for vista and 7, and an XP pro/home/64) and need to download the patches manually)

 

[qubit]

Mussels, I've installed WSUS several times over now.

It's not especially hard, just the configuration can be a little tricky to make sure that you get every update possible. There's also a couple of little gotchas in that certain items like drivers aren't always published to it by Microsoft. For some odd reason, it's not a straight clone of Microsoft Update in what's offered, but all the important security updates are there. I asked on the MS forums about this a while back, but didn't get a straight answer from the MVP's.

Feel free to ask me or start a thread, if you have any questions.

EDIT: I've now created The WSUS support thread

 

[sy5tem]

i want to look into this myself, subscribed to thread.


you CAN make bootable flash drives/ISO's with all the win updates slipstreamed in, but doing so in the first place will take a lot of time and effort (you'll need a seperate disk/drive for x86/x64 for vista and 7, and an XP pro/home/64) and need to download the patches manually)

yeah i tried that once , buts there are so many windows flavour . and so many new patch anyway its still hell ,that's why WSUS once setted up seemed like a good automatic fetcher and datakeeper..


Also
is there any reason on the os choice , you are telling me to use "Windows 2008 R2" why not 2003 ?
is it in relation with the database? like i see there is WMSDE, MSDE ,SQL Server 2000 e.t.c.

qubit youself are using windows 2008 RC2 with what DB ?

 

[qubit]

I'm not using a separate database with it. The WSUS server comes with a mini version of SQL Server that gets installed with it automatically. You can run it with the full SQL Server too, if you want.

As you can see, I've edited my previous post to show that I've created the The WSUS support thread which I think you'll find useful.

 

[sy5tem]

I'm not using a separate database with it. The WSUS server comes with a mini version of SQL Server that gets installed with it automatically. You can run it with the full SQL Server too, if you want.

As you can see, I've edited my previous post to show that I've created the The WSUS support thread which I think you'll find useful.

oh ok cool thank you!

 

[yogurt_21]

wsus looks similar to dell it assistant. I think it assistant is a little more advanced though as it does all software updates including firmware for hardware devices.

IT assistant is free if you have a dell server. It seems to work pretty well for what it does.

 

[qubit]

wsus looks similar to dell it assistant. I think it assistant is a little more advanced though as it does all software updates including firmware for hardware devices.

IT assistant is free if you have a dell server. It seems to work pretty well for what it does.

WSUS is actually quite fully featured, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Dell offering does more or different things. There's actually a bigger version of WSUS too, geared for large enterprises, but I can't remember what it's called now. It has a completely different name.