Everyone knows the importance of patching the system. However, the installation method of the system patch is generally based on the default method, which means that the system is automatically downloaded and upgraded by default. However, the automatic update download speed of the system is slow, and it often leads to “spitting” for no reason, resulting in the installation of the required patches. In fact, in addition to the default installation method, we can also have a more efficient installation method.

Simpler installation, homemade offline patch installation package

Because online automatic installation often cannot be successfully installed due to problems such as upgrading the server, for users with poor network conditions, we can use offline methods for local installation. Patch download can be achieved with WSUS Offline Update (download address: http://).

After downloading and decompressing, run "UpdateGenerator.exe" directly, switch to the "Windows" tab, check the system you are currently installing, and in the "option" tab, you can download more components according to your actual needs. For example, if you want to use the program developed by the .net framework, you can check the "incloude C++ Runtime libraries and .net Framewks" so that the C++ runtime and .net framework components that Windows 10 does not install by default can also be downloaded. The program also provides downloads of various patches (including Office, Windows Defender virus database, etc.) and can be selected according to actual needs (Figure 1).

Figure 1 download component settings

After completing the download settings, click "start", the program will automatically connect to the Microsoft upgrade server for patch scanning and download, you can see the program is to use the command line to connect and download (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Command line download patch file

The patch files downloaded by the program are saved in the decompressed directory “\wsusoffline\client” by default. After downloading all the patch files, run “wsusoffline\client\UpdateInstaller.exe”, which can also be set according to your needs. For example, many important patches need to be restarted after the installation is complete to take effect. Here you can check “Automatic reboot and recall” and click “start” to start installing patches (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Offline patch installation

At this point, the command prompt window will pop up and the specified patch will be installed. The patch installation will also use the command line. After the completion, all downloaded patches can be installed offline on the local machine (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Offline patch installation

Sharing of the road, LAN computer to install the patch together

For corporate computers, the system versions of many computers are the same, so after successfully completing the system patch update on a computer, we can also upgrade the downloaded patch files to other computers. By default, the LAN computer update is implemented through the WSUS server on the intranet. The operation is complicated. For small business LANs, we can use shared directory functionality for simple sharing.

Because WSUS Offline Update can download various types of patches, and download to patches is saved in a directory. Therefore, in addition to downloading offline patches, you can share the entire directory and then perform patch upgrades on other computers through sharing (for example, 32-bit Windows 10 patches can also be checked on x64-bit computers). Running the above program on 10 can also upgrade the patch.

The first operation is the same as above. Run WSUS Offline Update to set the download component according to your own company computer. For example, if your company computer has Windows 7 and Windows 10 computers and Office 2013 and Office 2016 programs, check these options on the program interface to make the program download as much as possible. To the full patch file. After downloading the patch, right-click the program installation directory and select Properties→Share. Click Advanced Sharing. Set the share name to Patch Upgrade, click Permissions, and set the Everyone permission to Read. LAN computers can access the shared directory (Figure 5).

Figure 5 Sharing settings

When other computers on the LAN need to update the patch, open the "Network→Shared Computer Name→Patch Upgrade (ie, shared directory)→client" and then run "UpdateInstaller.exe" to perform the offline upgrade. Figure 6).

Figure 6 Sharing an Offline Upgrade Patch

Reload/Restore is no longer updated and patch is integrated into the image

The above method is to install a patch to the current system on the line. For the already-backed image or reinstalled system image, in order to implement reinstall/restore no longer update the patch, we can use Dism++ to integrate the patch file into the image file.

Start Dism++ and click “File → Mount Image”. Then find the image (*.Wim file) that needs to be patched. Follow the prompts to mount it to an NTFS partition directory. After successfully mounting, click "Open Session" to switch to "Update Management" on the right panel, click "Scan", the program will be connected to the Microsoft server to scan the patch file that needs to be installed. After the download is complete, install the patch (Figure 7).

Figure 7 Online download patch

After completing the installation of the patch, click "File → Save as Mirror" to save the integrated update image. So after the next time you use these images to reinstall/restore Windows 10, you no longer need to download the installed patches. However, note that since Microsoft releases new patches every month, we need to perform these operations on a regular basis so that we can always keep the latest patches in the images.