I registered for the beta of Windows Update Services today. This is the successor to the OS only patching tool and will also include patches for office etc. Not sure whether I will get a chance to deploy it here as they want to minimise network changes (and we’re doing enough interruption as it is) but we’ll see. I may even deploy it at home for updating friends pc’s quickly.
Funtime Franky blogs about MS reveals Windows Update v5 which is interesting reading. Apparently I’m meant to be on the beta team but I’ve not heard anything from Microsoft since February. Note that you can’t go to the website if you are not running Internet Explorer 5 or above (well you can if you change the user agent in Firefox)
Jeremy is blogging his Setting Up Software Update Services in a Non-Active Directory Environment experiences and includes some useful scripts to check everything is setup correctly.
According to Microsoft Watch, Software Update Services has been renamed “Windows Update Services” and the newest beta is on its way to testers (ie me). I’ve not had any notification from Microsoft about this but it will be interesting to see how different it is.
From an email I received this week – “We’re very close to finalizing the plan for the SUS 2.0 beta program. Once final decisions are made, customers chosen to be part of the beta will be notified at the e-mail alias provided in their nomination.
In addition, in response to the tremendous interest in SUS 2.0, we will announce an evaluation program where you will be invited to participate if you are not chosen. Under the evaluation program, you will be able to download and install beta code. Details of this program will be sent to this alias as well as the newsgroups in mid to late March.
We look forward to working with each of you to make SUS 2.0 a tremendous success. If you have questions regarding the SUS 2.0 Beta program please contact us at [email protected]”
Incidentally, the reason why I’ve only just installed the patch, several days after it was made available is because last week I cleaned up the disk space used on our SUS server and one of the things I (mistakenly) did was to select what I thought was all the urlscan log files, but actually included urlscan.ini. This didn’t stop urlscan working – it just blocked practically every request as GET was not on the list of allowed verbs (as this list didn’t exist). It was only when I realised that the patch hadn’t been installed yet that I realised this was the culprit.
Microsoft sent me an email the other day saying that their Software Update Services beta program has been delayed and the *plan* won’t be finalized until January 2004. So goodness knows when it’s actually going to commence. At least this way they won’t need to worry about supporting Win98 (which they didn’t in the previous version either – but now they have a REAL excuse not to)
A useful utility that can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Systems Update Server. If you have a pc that needs installing (or patching) but isn’t normally on the lan, then this utility forces the client to update against a named sus server, apply the patches and then on reboot sets it back to use Microsoft’s servers. Excellent for patching friends pc’s or remote worker pc’s who are not normally on the lan and are WAY out of date.