Saving Windows Updates Files On The Hard Drive (POSReady Updates Included)

L

Lex24

This topic has been mentioned in the past and the application usually suggested was WSUS Offline Update. However, they stopped official support for XP long time ago and POSReady updates are not available. The solution which allows downloading and saving all POSReady updates (until 2019-Apr-05) on the hard drive is Windows Update MiniTool:

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img921/1843/mPNgUf.png

1) Click on green button to refresh Windows Update database (no KB...exe files get downloaded at this point).

2) Click "Select All". This is the best option considering that XP update servers may get shut down any time now.

3) Click on blue button. This will copy URL links for all selected updates to the clipboard.

4) Paste the content of the clipboard to a text file. Let's name it download.txt:

Code: 
[ Security Update for Windows XP (KB956572) ]
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/secu/2009/03/windowsxp-kb956572-x86-enu_a2463f484318332e8319dd931c87b27cf747b2de.exe

[ Security Update for Windows XP (KB952004) ]
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/secu/2008/11/windowsxp-kb952004-x86-enu_28e11ce4e9083f84c7b9903716904a94dc6b7280.exe
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/secu/2008/11/windowsxp-kb952004-x86-enu_09e9035221a8d945e27f97508213436068aca018.psf
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/secu/2008/11/windowsxp-kb952004-x86-express-enu_bb1028e1f5de91ab2a0466a8f0903d43f141a323.cab

5) Remove all comments, empty lines and lines with cab and psf files. Linux sed or grep command should work but the comments start with a square bracket and it just won't work out of the box. So for now let's just perform manual removal:

Code: 
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/secu/2009/03/windowsxp-kb956572-x86-enu_a2463f484318332e8319dd931c87b27cf747b2de.exe
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/secu/2008/11/windowsxp-kb952004-x86-enu_28e11ce4e9083f84c7b9903716904a94dc6b7280.exe

6) Now you can use wget in Linux to download all the files straight from the server. The process is much faster than Windows Updates run in IE8,

Code: 
wget -i download.txt

There should be some similar command available in XP's command line box.

7) WUMT can also be run in Offline Mode, which allows checking updates on a machine without internet connection. To get Offline Mode working you need to get file "wsusscn2.cab" from Microsoft and place it in the same directory as WUMT file:

Code: 
// Any directory
wumt_x86.exe
wsusscn2.cab

Offline Mode only allows getting a list of missing updates, there is no way to download any files. As long as WU servers are working Online Mode might be a better choice as it seems to offer more optional updates.

8) WUMT also has an option (red button on the screenshot above) to download KB files to:

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download

However in that case you get cryptic file names in the Windows Update format.


----------------
WUMT download links (from the developer and from Major Geeks):

https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/windows-update-minitool.64939/

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_update_minitool.html

File wsusscn2.cab is available from Microsoft:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wua_sdk/using-wua-to-scan-for-updates-offline

More information:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...dows-update-offline-scan-file-wsusscn2-cab-is

https://win10.guru/toolkit-item-windows-update-minitool-wumt/
 
In the first post (#6) I suggested using wget in Linux to download all KB...exe files from the server. I didn't realize that wget is also available for Windows. The command is the same as in Linux:

Code: 
wget -c -i download.txt

Parameter -c means "resume download in case of interruption". I have never tried running wget in Windows. If anyone is interested, the latest version can be found here:

https://eternallybored.org/misc/wget/
 
Update: wget won't work with POSReady 2009. I have tried v1.11.4-1 and v1.20-3 and there were DLL errors popping up with both versions. But it should work with XP.
 
Lex24 said:
This topic has been mentioned in the past and the application usually suggested was WSUS Offline Update.
However, they stopped official support for XP long time ago and POSReady updates are not available.
The solution which allows downloading and saving all POSReady updates (until 2019-Apr-05) on the hard drive is Windows Update MiniTool:
Click to expand...

They did not drop XP support long time ago, they did just remove POSReady links since the last version released back in 2014 but few other updated versions have been released till 2019

The definitive version is 9.2.6 it was me who ever convinced its developer to gather POSReady updates into the same package
BUT it's a shame some updates are missing according to Update Mini Tool and it takes almost two hours to get eveything installed (NET framework updates included)

So I don't really recommend that tool over anything else. I would just download everything from Windows catalog and do a script as you have done with wget tool. This way you can get other updates depending on your installed software
 
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Thanks for this information. I don't know when WSUS Offline Update v9.2.6 was released but I would assume that it only has POSReady updates available until that date and any updates released later are missing.

From my experience the installation of .NET Framework v2.0 SP2 (NetFx20SP2_x86.exe) only takes a few minutes, but v3.5 SP1 (dotnetfx35.exe) is a different story, it takes about an hour. And installing updates with Windows Updates after that takes a long time as well.
 
1) Update:

A new version of Windows Update MiniTool (v07.01.2020) has lately been released and Major Geeks download link provided in the first post is now pointing to that version. The problem is that it only works with Windows 10.

The previous version was v20.12.2016 and it works with XP through Win10:

File : wumt.zip
Ver: 20.12.2016
OS: XP to Win10
Size : 2,439,408 bytes
MD5: 200B3B2198F32AFC6FBF2D5B6110C5CC

v20.12.2016 is available directly from the developer in the second post here:

http://gallery.ru-board.com/topic.cgi?forum=5&bm=1&topic=48142#2

2) Some more information about installing multiple updates using a batch file can be found in the post dated "Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:54 am" here:

https://ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10479&start=550
 
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Lex24 said:
Thanks for this information. I don't know when WSUS Offline Update v9.2.6 was released but I would assume that it only has POSReady updates available until that date and any updates released later are missing.
Click to expand...

the last version 9.2.1 with integrated embbeded updates came out in 2014...
from 9.2.2 up to 9.2.5 embbeded updates are not included in the repack
definitive version 9.2.6 was relased on November 2019 but as mentioned above it misses some normal and embedded updates that are still listed throught windows update after a clean XP install.

the WU minitool was released in 2016 and uses the same updating system as Windows
whereas the CRAP WSUS utility has a new revision from time to time and it still misses critical updates !!!

Lex24 said:
From my experience the installation of .NET Framework v2.0 SP2 (NetFx20SP2_x86.exe) only takes a few minutes, but v3.5 SP1 (dotnetfx35.exe) is a different story, it takes about an hour. And installing updates with Windows Updates after that takes a long time as well.
Click to expand...

I don't understand why might you want to install NET versions KB951847 one by one
my experience tells otherwise, I have installed them with minitool multiple times and it doesn't take so long
but I admit that the embbeded updates are pretty slow in comparison to the normal updates
There is also a standalone repack (231 MB) on M$ site which already includes NET 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 & 3.5 it doesn't take more than 5 minutes
 
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