Deploying Windows Feature Update Version 1909 (the ‘November 2019 Update’) to Numerous Remote Computers Simultaneously

By Scott | Published: December 18, 2019

To remotely apply Windows 10 feature update 1909 (as well as the other Windows 10 feature updates) to numerous computers using BatchPatch, you should follow the process outlined below. The built-in, default Windows update features in BatchPatch will not work to successfully deploy these feature updates in most cases, so instead you’ll need to follow the deployment steps outlined below. EDIT: Beginning with the April 2020 release, BatchPatch can now also apply feature updates through the normal Windows Update actions in standard mode (not in cached mode). If using cached mode, then you’ll need to still use the method outlined below. Also note FYI even though these are called “feature updates”, the technical Windows Update classification by the Windows Update Agent (and WSUS etc) is called “upgrades”. The particular name of the update classification is likely not all that important for the sysadmin to pay attention to in many cases, but I did just want to highlight it just so that you are aware.

  1. Download (from Microsoft) the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. Use this link to download the media creation tool directly from Microsoft. The media creation tool web page contains two options: ‘Update now’ and ‘Download tool now’. Do NOT click on ‘Update now’ because doing so would begin the update process on your computer. Since your goal is to deploy the upgrade to remote computers, instead please click on ‘Download tool now’ to save the tool to your computer. Important: When you run the media creation tool per the next step, you will not have a choice to select which Windows 10 version is used to create the media. This means that if Microsoft releases a new version of Windows 10 when you follow this tutorial, you’ll end up with that version as opposed to the specific version 1909 that is available today at the time of this writing. If you have another channel for obtaining media for a particular Windows 10 version, such as with a Microsoft volume licensing agreement, you may use that instead of obtaining the media through the steps outlined in this tutorial.

  2. Open the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool that you saved to your computer a moment ago. IMPORTANT: It is NOT sufficient to run the tool as administrator from an account that is logged on without admin privileges. For whatever reason, you must actually be logged on to the computer with an account that is a member of the local administrators group. Otherwise the tool will not allow you to run it to completion. We have no idea why Microsoft made the tool work this way, but it’s what they did. So go ahead and log on to your computer as a local administrator, and then launch the tool and follow the rest of this tutorial.

  3. Create installation media with the Windows 10 Media Creation tool. When the tool is running you’ll have to choose between two options to either ‘Upgrade this PC now’ or ‘Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC. Since you are following this tutorial with the intention of learning how to to use BatchPatch to update other PCs, choose the option to ‘Create installation media…’ and then click ‘Next’.

  4. Choose your language / edition / architecture, and then click ‘Next’.

  5. Choose the media type. For the sake of this tutorial please select ISO as the type of media. After clicking the ‘Next’ button you will be prompted to choose a location on your computer to store the ISO file that will be downloaded/created. Select a directory/location to store the file, and then do something else until the download finishes. Depending on your connection speed it could take a little while because it’s in the range of 4GB.

  6. Extract the ISO contents to a location on your local disk. After the download in the previous step is complete you’ll have to locate the file on disk and then extract the contents of the ISO to another folder. I like to use the free 7-zip for this process, but you may use whichever tool you prefer: 7-zip. After the ISO has been extracted you’ll have all of the installation files for the feature update in a single folder.

  7. Configure a deployment in BatchPatch. In BatchPatch click on Actions > Deploy > Create/modify. In the window that pops up for the Deployment configuration, click on the ‘…’ button to browse to the location where your ISO contents have been extracted to, and then choose the ‘setup.exe’ file as the file to deploy. Make sure to check the boxes for ‘Copy entire directory‘ and ‘Leave entire directory‘ . After the initial deployment phase is complete, the target Windows operating system will end up rebooting itself at least once but usually more than once while it completes the setup and installation for the feature update. As the process runs it needs to have access to all of the files that BatchPatch will deploy. Having both of the aforementioned boxes checked will ensure that when the upgrade process runs on the target computer that it has all of the files it needs for the installation. After the feature update has completed 100% you may delete the files from the target computer(s). However, please make absolutely sure that the upgrade process is 100% completed before you delete any files. In your BatchPatch deployment configuration screen you will also need to add the following parameters: 
    /auto upgrade /quiet

  8. Execute the feature upgrade deployment. In the deployment configuration that you created in the in the previous step you can execute the deployment immediately for the currently selected rows in the grid by just clicking on the ‘Execute now’ button. Alternatively you may save the deployment for future usage by clicking the double-right-arrow button ‘>>’. If you choose to save the deployment instead of executing it immediately, then when you are ready to deploy the feature update to your remote computers, you can begin the process by selecting those computers in the BatchPatch grid and then clicking on Actions > Deploy > Execute deployment, and then choose the deployment that you just created/saved.

    You should expect that the entire process will take a bit of time to complete. BatchPatch has to copy the whole installation directory to the target computer(s), which contains several gigabytes, before it can execute the upgrade process on the target(s). IMPORTANT: After the BatchPatch deployment completes for a given target computer BatchPatch will show Exit Code: 0 (SUCCESS). However, this just means that the BatchPatch deployment component is finished. The Windows feature update/upgrade process will take additional time. Please be patient and let the target computer continue upgrading and rebooting as many times as is needed. It might take a little while with multiple automatic reboots before everything is 100% finished.

    NOTE: We have had a couple of reports from users who received the following error:

    Deployment: Error: Access to the path '\\TargetComputer\C$\Program Files\BatchPatch\deployment\autorun.inf' is denied.

    We don’t know the exact cause of this issue, but it seems likely to somehow be related to the way that permissions were applied or inherited during the ISO extraction process. If you encounter this error it can be resolved quickly and easily by just deleting the autorun.inf file from the source directory after extracting the ISO contents but before executing the actual deployment for any target computers. This will prevent the problematic file from ever being copied to target computers. As such, the error will not occur.

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A Tool to Automate Offline Windows Updates and Patches

By Scott | Published: December 9, 2019

A common issue that a lot of organizations face is how to apply various Windows updates and patches to “offline” computers that do not have internet access. Many companies operate high-security (or at least “higher-security”) networks that are segregated from their regular networks. The higher-security networks often do not have any internet connectivity whatsoever. Sometimes these high-security networks are referred to as “air-gapped” because there is no physical network connection between them and online networks that have internet connectivity, hence there is an “air-gap” in between the networks. While this can absolutely help to prevent malicious software from infecting computers on the network, it also increases the difficulty of administering and updating those computers.

BatchPatch Online Default Mode

**Online Windows updates with no caching**
(This mode is recommended for most environments)

BatchPatch’s default operating mode works for target computers that have access to either the internet for Windows Update and Microsoft Update, or to a locally installed/managed WSUS server. In this configuration, BatchPatch instructs target computers to search for and download their own updates from the configured update service (Windows Update, Microsoft Update, or WSUS). You can read more about that here:

Tutorial: BatchPatch Online Default Mode

BatchPatch Partially Offline Cached Mode

**Offline Windows updates with caching**
(The mode is recommended for restricted environments where target computers do *not* have access to the internet or a local WSUS but *do* have network access to an internet-connected computer running BatchPatch)

In this configuration, even though target computers do not have internet access and do not have a direct connection to a local WSUS server, they do have a direct connection to the computer where BatchPatch is installed/running, and that BatchPatch computer is connected to the internet. In this case the BatchPatch computer is then able to instruct target computers to perform an offline search for applicable/available updates. BatchPatch is then able to use the internet connection on its computer to downloads all of the updates needed by the offline target computers so that it can subsequently distribute them to target computers and initiate the installation process and reboots etc.

Tutorial: BatchPatch Partially Offline Cached Mode

BatchPatch Completely Offline Cached Mode for Lower-Security Networks

**Offline Windows updates with caching**
(The mode is recommended for restricted environments where target computers are on an air-gapped/offline network that does not have connectivity to the internet and does not even have connectivity to the computer where BatchPatch is installed and running. In this situation, the administrator needs to manually copy a text file from the segregated network to an internet-connected computer via an external hard drive or USB flash drive or similar)

In this setup, since target hosts do not have direct access to Windows Update and Microsoft Update via an internet connection, and they also do not have direct network connectivity to an internet-connected computer running BatchPatch, all updating occurs in a completely offline fashion. In this configuration, the search for available updates is performed offline, and then the list of available/needed updates is manually moved to an internet-connected computer running BatchPatch where the updates are downloaded. The entire update cache is then manually moved to the segregated/offline network where BatchPatch is used to distribute them to target computers.

Tutorial: BatchPatch Completely Offline Cached Mode for Lower-Security Networks

BatchPatch Completely Offline Cached Mode for High-Security Networks

**Offline Windows updates with caching**
(The mode is recommended for the most restricted environments where target computers are on a completely segregated, offline network, without access to the internet and without network access to an internet-connected computer running BatchPatch. In this case, the strict rules created to maintain the highest security of the air-gapped network disallow any files from ever being transferred from the high-security offline network to another network. When applying updates with this method, files will only ever be transferred *to* the high-security offline network, but files will never need to be removed *from* the high security offline network)

In this configuration, since target computers do not have internet access and also do not have access to an internet-connected computer running BatchPatch, all updating occurs 100% offline. In this configuration, an internet-connected BatchPatch computer is used to pre-download all Windows updates to its local cache. The administrator then copies/moves the entire BatchPatch cache of updates to the completely offline network where BatchPatch is able to distribute the updates to all the target computers even though they do not have internet or WSUS access.

Tutorial: BatchPatch Completely Offline Cached Mode for High-Security Networks

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Using BatchPatch in Non-Domain Environments with Standalone or Workgroup Computers

By Scott | Published: November 22, 2019

One of the questions we are asked regularly is can BatchPatch work on computers that are *not* domain members? How does one go about making that happen?

The answer is yes, in addition to working in a domain environment BatchPatch will also work on computers that are not members of a domain but rather are either standalone computers or computers assigned to a workgroup. However, you will most likely have to make a configuration change on your target computers in order for everything to work properly. That change is described toward the bottom of this page under the Third heading.

First:

Make sure that the account that you are using to connect to target computers is a member of the local administrators group on each of the target computers.

Second:

Decide how you will execute BatchPatch in the security context of the local administrator user that you previously defined on all target computers. You have three options here:

Option A:
Create the exact same account on the computer where you are running BatchPatch that you have already created on the target computers. The username and password of this account must be identical on the BatchPatch computer and the target computers. However, while the target computers’ user account must be a member of the local administrators group on the target computers, the user account created on the BatchPatch computer does *not* need to be a member of the local administrators group on the BatchPatch computer for most operations in BatchPatch to function properly. You certainly may add it to the local admins group if desired, but it’s not an absolute requirement since BatchPatch will generally work properly when run as a standard user for almost all of its operations. The operations that require elevation will inform you if you try to use them and they need more permission.

With the exact same account created on the BatchPatch computer as on the target computers, you may then simply log on to the BatchPatch computer as that user, and then launch BatchPatch normally by double-clicking the .exe. Since the entire BatchPatch application will now be running in the context of this user, all actions in BatchPatch will automatically have the appropriate permissions on the target computers. BUT… don’t forget to review the Third heading below in order to get everything working properly. The information provided there is necessary to get everything working in the large majority of cases.

Option B:
Just as in option A, on the BatchPatch computer you have to create the same exact user account with the same exact username and password that you previously created on the target computers. However, instead of logging on to the BatchPatch computer with that username/password, you could log on to the BatchPatch computer as a different user. Then when you launch BatchPatch, right-click on the batchpatch.exe and choose the option to “run-as” a different user. The different user that you choose to run BatchPatch would have to then be the user account that you previously created… the same one that exists in the local administrators group on all target computers.

Option C:
Launch BatchPatch with any user account on the BatchPatch computer, and then inside of BatchPatch enter alternate credentials for each row that you have added to the BatchPatch grid. To do this, select the rows and click Actions > Specify alternate logon credentials. The account that you specify here must be the account that you previously created on the target computers that is also a member of the local administrators group on the target computers.

Third:

After BatchPatch is running, you’ll find that if you try to perform an action on target computers, in most cases you will still see an error message or exception similar to the following:

Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

Whether or not you see this error message will generally depend on which operating system version is running on the target computer as well as which particular action was executed in BatchPatch.

In order to resolve the ‘Access is denied’ exception, there is a registry value that needs to be created/modified on all target computers where this exception occurs. Instructions for the registry change is described toward the bottom of this page under the section Additional BatchPatch Authentication Details: BatchPatch Authentication in Domain and Workgroup (non-domain) Environments

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Running the Disk Cleanup Tool (cleanmgr.exe) Remotely on Multiple Computers

By Scott | Published: November 13, 2019

We recently received a question about how to successfully run the Windows Disk Cleanup Tool remotely using BatchPatch. The user noted that when running cleanmgr.exe in BatchPatch on a target computer, the cleanmgr.exe would stay running indefinitely. This is essentially the same problem that we discuss in numerous places on this website when it comes to silent application deployment. If you execute a remote deployment without specifying the proper silent/quiet installation switch, the installer package attempts to run interactively, which means that it pops up dialog boxes that it expects the user to acknowledge. The problem is that when a deployment runs remotely, it is hidden. No dialog boxes will be seen, and so instead what happens is the deployment appears to hang indefinitely while the package waits for the hidden dialog boxes to be acknowledged.

In the case of cleanmgr.exe, if you run it without any consideration for the fact that it is being run hidden and remotely, its default mode will pop a dialog that will hang indefinitely since it cannot be acknowledged. However, cleanmgr.exe does have a way of executing silently/quietly without any user interaction: The /SAGERUN switch. However, you can’t simply use /SAGERUN without some setup.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/253597/automating-disk-cleanup-tool-in-windows

In the above link you can see that the cleanmgr.exe tool has two important switches: /SAGESET and /SAGERUN

The way these switches work is you manually run the following command on a particular computer at the cmd prompt:

cleanmgr.exe /SAGESET:123

Note, in the above command I specified the value 123 but you can actually use any integer from 0 to 65535. The number represents a kind of “profile”, for lack of a better term, for the cleanmgr to utilize. What happens when you run the above command is you’ll be presented with the cleanmgr.exe ‘Disk Cleanup Settings’ dialog.

This Disk Cleanup Settings dialog is where you would tick the various selections that you want the tool to clean for you. When you click OK, the tool creates some registry values that contain the settings/selections you chose. Then later if/when you run this command:

cleanmgr.exe /SAGERUN:123

The settings that you previously created for the “123” profile are used for the actual cleanup routine. So if you create multiple cleanup profiles, for example, using commands like these:

cleanmgr.exe /SAGESET:123
cleanmgr.exe /SAGESET:124
cleanmgr.exe /SAGESET:125

You can then later at any time execute a cleanup that specifies one of the previously created profiles:

cleanmgr.exe /SAGERUN:123
cleanmgr.exe /SAGERUN:124
cleanmgr.exe /SAGERUN:125

Now, the tricky part here is that if you want to run the disk cleanup tool on numerous computers, you’re not going to want to log on to each computer manually to run the SAGESET command since that defeats the purpose of using BatchPatch to execute the cleanup on numerous computers without having to log on to each computer. So the trick is that you would need to write a script to create the values that the SAGESET command would create if you were to run it for the desired cleanup operations that you select.

After I ran this command:

cleanmgr.exe /SAGESET:123

…a number of registry entries were made in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches

I’ve pasted below just a few of the keys/values, but in particular please note the StateFlags0123 REG_DWORD values that exists in the subkeys. The StateFlags0123 values were created when I ran cleanmgr.exe with the /SAGESET:123 switch. /SAGESET:124 would create registry values titled StateFlags0124.

OK, so what you can do to automate everything is run the cleanmgr tool with /SAGESET on a single computer. Then evaluate which registry values it created, and then write a script that will create the same registry values. This way you can then use a BatchPatch deployment to deploy your script, the script will create the desired StateFlagsXXXX registry values on the target computers, execute cleanmgr.exe with the appropriate SAGERUN switch to make use of the StateFlagsXXXX registry values that were set by the script, and then optionally delete the registry values it previously created.

The script below is just a sample. You should modify it for your needs. In particular please note that it actually creates a StateFlags0123 DWORD with value of 2 in *all* of the subkeys under this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches

However, this is not necessarily what you want because if you use /SAGESET:123 and you make only particular selections in that settings dialog for what you want cleaned, you’ll see the result is that only some subkeys get the StateFlags0123 DWORD with a value of 2. Other subkeys will have a value of 0. And some subkeys might have no value at all. Refer to my screenshots above of the registry where you can see that of the three subkey DWORDs I showed, only one of them had a value of 2. If you want the cleanmgr.exe to follow your settings created when you used SAGESET, then you need the registry values to match those that were created by the tool when SAGESET was used.

The script below first creates the registry values, then executes cleanmgr.exe with /SAGERUN specifying the value that corresponds to the registry values it previously created, then finally the script removes the registry values.

# Create registry values
$volumeCaches = Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches"
foreach($key in $volumeCaches)
{
    New-ItemProperty -Path "$($key.PSPath)" -Name StateFlags0123 -Value 2 -Type DWORD -Force | Out-Null
}
 
# Execute Disk Cleanup Tool (cleanmgr.exe)
Start-Process -Wait "$env:SystemRoot\System32\cleanmgr.exe" -ArgumentList "/sagerun:123"
 
# Remove the previously created registry values
$volumeCaches = Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches"
foreach($key in $volumeCaches)
{
    Remove-ItemProperty -Path "$($key.PSPath)" -Name StateFlags0123 -Force | Out-Null
}

If you save the above script to “cleanmgr.ps1” you can then deploy it to numerous computers using the BatchPatch deployment feature. See below for my deployment configuration. I have not made any modifications in the “Command to execute.” It’s simply the default commmand that BatchPatch generates when BatchPatch sees that I am deploying a .ps1 file, and that is all that is needed:

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Explanation of ‘Reattach Orphaned Windows Update Process’ Feature

By Scott | Published: October 29, 2019

There is a menu item in BatchPatch under ‘Actions > Windows updates > Reattach orphaned Windows Update process‘ that contains the following sub-menu-items:

  • Reattach orphan + do not reboot / shutdown
  • Reattach orphan + reboot if required
  • Reattach orphan + reboot always
  • Reattach orphan + shutdown

What is ‘Reattach orphan’ ?

The ‘Reattach orphan’ actions in BatchPatch are for the times where you might have accidentally (or perhaps intentionally) closed the BatchPatch grid while Windows Update actions were still being executed by BatchPatch on target computers. If you are not using cached mode and you have BatchPatch performing a Windows Update action such as “Download available updates” or “Download and install updates” or “Install downloaded updates” etc on target computers… but then you inadvertently close BatchPatch or (gasp!) BatchPatch happens to crash or your computer freaks out or you reboot it or something similar… the Windows Update process will still run on the target computer(s) until it completes. If this happens to you, you can simply re-launch BatchPatch and use one of the above listed menu items to reattach to the remote orphaned process so that BatchPatch can continue to monitor its progress (assuming it has not completed prior to your attempt to reattach), and so that BatchPatch can initiate the reboot or shutdown, if that was part of your original plan.

Example of ‘Reattach orphan’ usage

For example, let’s say that I executed “Download and install updates + reboot if required” on a remote computer, using BatchPatch. Then I closed BatchPatch while it was still running. At that point I could simply re-launch BatchPatch, enter the target host name into the grid, and then I could select ‘Actions > Windows updates > Reattach orphaned Windows Update process > Reattach orphan + reboot if required‘ to continue things as if I had never closed BatchPatch in the first place. If I don’t re-attach to the orphaned process, it will still finish downloading and installing updates, but the ‘reboot if required’ portion will never occur. If I re-attach to the orphaned process, I can re-attach with any of the reboot options listed at the top of this page.

‘Reattach orphan’ is not designed for usage when BatchPatch’s ‘cached mode’ is enabled

Note, if you have cached mode enabled (this includes both online as well as offline cached mode), things work a bit differently, so re-attach orphan won’t necessarily work the same as when cached mode is disabled. The reason for this is that in normal/default online mode, each Windows Update action is a single task that executes on target computers. If you close BatchPatch and then reattach to an orphaned process that is running on the target computer(s), you essentially get to come back right where you left off. However, when cached mode is enabled each Windows Update action is generally comprised of at least two or three separate individual task actions that BatchPatch strings together automatically in a kind of “macro.” This means that if you use ‘reattach orphan’ when cached mode is enabled, the orphaned task that BatchPatch reattaches to might be task 1 of 3 or task 2 of 3, and not necessarily task 3 of 3. BatchPatch will be able to successfully monitor the particular individual task that was orphaned (assuming it is still running when you attempt to reattach to it), but BatchPatch won’t have awareness of the state of original entire macro that was executed. This means that the individual task that was running on the target computer would be able to complete, but the other components of the macro action that the BatchPatch console would normally be responsible for executing would not occur. Therefore in cases like that you would have to re-execute the cached-mode action from scratch and make sure that you leave the BatchPatch window open until the process completes.

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October 2019 Version of BatchPatch Released

By Scott | Published: October 25, 2019

We released a new version of BatchPatch at the end of last week. Below I’ll explain some of the updates that we made.

  • Added Task Scheduler option to ‘Add/subtract days/hours/minutes to/from next scheduled run time‘

    We’ve had a lot of requests from users who want to more easily be able to modify existing scheduled task run-times on large numbers of hosts, particularly in cases where they simply need to push back their entire maintenance window due to a scheduling change. The challenge previously was that if they had lots of scheduled tasks configured with various different start times, if they then wanted to push the entire maintenance back by and hour or a day or whatever, there was no easy way to modify all of the different start times without dealing with each separate start time individually. Now BatchPatch includes an option that lets you select the desired hosts and just add or subtract days/hours/minutes to them, thereby enabling you to modify them all at once while still preserving the relative differences between each individual start time. You’ll find this option under ‘Actions > Task scheduler > Add/subtract days/hours/minutes to/from next scheduled run time’.

  • Added the following job queue special items:
    *Enable online cached mode (override global setting for this queue only)
    *Enable offline cached mode (override global setting for this queue only)
    *Disable cached mode (override global setting for this queue only)

    Most of our users operate BatchPatch in either the default operating mode or in offline mode. However, we do have some people using online cached mode. At some point in the not too distant past, Microsoft made a change to how the Windows Update Client works that caused the large cumulative monthly update to no longer download successfully when using online cached mode. One workaround for this problem is to use offline cached mode to install the cumulative update each month. However, for online cached mode users this creates more work because then they have to run BatchPatch on each target in both online and offline cached modes in order to get all the updates installed. By adding the ability to change the mode inside of the job queue on a per-target basis, it’s now possible to automate the process of downloading/installing updates using one mode followed by the other mode inside a single job queue.

  • Added ‘Search for only optional software updates‘ to Windows Update settings

    Microsoft made a change not too long ago that enables “seekers” (their term, not ours) to download/install updates that are not otherwise available through normal update channels. These updates would only be available when manually going into the Windows Update control panel on a given computer to click the “Check for updates” button a couple of times. However, the new version of BatchPatch now enables BatchPatch users to download/install these optional “seeker” updates using BatchPatch, if desired. Read more on this topic here. To find these optional “seeker” updates when using BatchPatch, go to ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update‘ and tick the box for ‘Search for only optional software updates‘

  • Added recursive file search to BP cache folder methods for downloading and copying files so that users can re-organize previously cached files into subdirectories, if desired

    This is another commonly requested feature by people who use cached mode. A lot of folks want to be able to re-arrange the update files in the cache folder, but up until now if they were to create subfolders to organize the files, BatchPatch wouldn’t find the files because BatchPatch would only look in the defined cache folder and not in any subfolders. However, now if you want to re-arrange the update files in subfolders you may do so without issue. BatchPatch will search for available updates in the top level cache folder as well as all subfolders, recursively.

  • Added the following menu items:
    *Get list of VMs on Hyper-V host + add to grid directly under host
    *Get list of VMs on Hyper-V host + add to grid at bottom

    I know that most of you virtual machine users are probably using VMWare, not Hyper-V. However, for the Hyper-V people out there, you can now instruct BatchPatch to automatically add the guest VMs that reside on a particular VM host to the BatchPatch grid.

To view the complete list of changes/updates/fixes in the October 2019 release, check out the changelog inside the software under ‘Help > Check for updates > View changelog‘.

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BatchPatch Host Status “LED” Indicator Image Icons

By Scott | Published: October 7, 2019

GREEN: online

BLUE: online after reboot (BatchPatch does its best to determine if a host was rebooted by counting the number of ping timeouts that are tracked immediately before a ping success. You can modify this setting in ‘Tools > Settings > Ping Failure Threshold‘)

ORANGE: host doesn’t exist / not found

RED: host offline / ping timed out / destination unreachable

YELLOW: BatchPatch is actively checking to see if the host is online

GRAY: no information

LIGHT PINK-GRAY: disabled from host status check thread

Host Status LED Image Usage / Behavior:

There are 2 ways that the orb icons are colored:

  1. The Host Status Check thread can be set to run in the background all the time. You simply left-click on the LED column header. You can also set it to run automatically if you want, in ‘Tools > Settings > Automatically start host status check on startup‘. However, it is not necessary to have it running all the time, unless that is your preference. See number 2.
  2. When an individual host is pinged (or when it’s rebooted and automatically pinged) by BatchPatch, BatchPatch will set the orb icon color based on the same criteria listed above. Personally, I prefer to leave the host status check disabled at all times so that the orb icon coloring is always controlled by each individual row, rather than by the Host Status Check thread, which runs independently of each row, and operates globally.

Miscellaneous:

  • The Host Status Check thread can be disabled by clicking on the orb icon column header. It can also be disabled from starting up when BatchPatch starts by unchecking the Tools > Settings > Automatically start host online/offline status check on startup.
  • You can reset all the colors by middle-clicking on the orb icon column header.
  • You can color an orb blue, manually, by shift-middle clicking an orb icon. This is handy sometimes when you want to indicate a status of ‘completed’ for a given row, so that you know not to go back to it.
  • You can disable an individual row from the Host Status Check thread so that it will be skipped every time the check thread comes around to it, by middle-clicking the orb icon for a given row. You’ll see that the color becomes a light gray-pink.
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How to Automate Monthly Windows Patching and Updates for Numerous Computers

By Scott | Published: September 25, 2019

While it’s true that our favorite way to use BatchPatch is for real-time control of the Windows Update process, it also works great for automating Windows updates and everything that goes along with Windows updates like reboots etc. In fact, BatchPatch is arguably one of the most powerful tools available when it comes to automation of complex sequences, especially around patching. Let’s go through some of the ways you can automate tasks with BatchPatch.

Task Scheduler

It goes almost without saying that in BatchPatch you can schedule nearly any task that BatchPatch can run manually. So, for example, if you want to schedule your target computers to apply Windows updates and reboot at 3AM, that’s very simple to do.

  1. Select all the of the desired computers, then click ‘Actions > Task scheduler > Create/modify scheduled task‘.
  2. In the Task Scheduler window select the desired task from the drop-down menu, and then set the run time and click OK.
  3. Lastly, click the small red clock/timer icon in the upper right corner of the main BatchPatch window to enable the scheduler. If the icon has a small red X on it, it’s disabled. When you click to enable it, the red X changes to a green + sign. Scheduled tasks will only be executed if the scheduler has been enabled.

  4. Note, if you want BatchPatch to execute scheduled tasks even when the application is not open, please check out the run-as-a-service feature.

Job Queue

Not only can you set almost any task in BatchPatch to run at a scheduled day/time, but perhaps more powerfully you can also create a queue of actions to execute on each target computer, and you can optionally schedule that queue to run via the task scheduler at the set day/time. One common way that people like to use the job queue is for executing multiple Windows update + reboot cycles in a row for the situations when Windows is a bit annoying and presents a new update to install only after you have installed the existing available updates and rebooted the computer. In this way you can, if you choose, have BatchPatch automatically download and install updates, then reboot, then download and install updates, then reboot, and repeat as many times as desired.

  1. To setup something like this you would select ‘Actions > Job Queue > Create/modify job queue‘. Then in the Job Queue window you can create a job queue that looks like what I have in the screenshot below. Give it a title and use the double-right-arrow button to save it. Once it has been saved, you’ll see it appear in the drop-down menu in the Task Scheduler window, thus enabling you to schedule the job queue to execute at a specific day/time.

Advanced Multi-Row Queue Sequence

Another great option you have in BatchPatch for automation is the ‘Advanced Multi-Row Queue Sequence’. This feature doesn’t limit you to executing a set of actions on a group of target computers. Instead with the advanced sequence you can actually orchestrate an operation that involves multiple dependent systems. So for example you could have target computers A, B, and C execute a certain set of tasks such as the job queue we created above, and you can use the advanced sequence configuration to ensure that target computers C, D, and E do not start executing their job queues until after all of A, B, and C have completed their queues. And mind you, each of these systems can have its own custom job queue. They don’t need to all be running the same queue. So if you have multiple dependent systems that operate together such that only one can be offline at a time or maybe a group of hosts can be offline at one time but certain other hosts must remain online during that same time, you can use the advanced multi-row queue sequence to create an entire patching/updating/rebooting routine that can be launched with just a single click (or through the Task Scheduler) but that executes actions across multiple systems in a specific sequence. Another use case is for virtual machines when you want to have a single click sequence to download and install updates on the guest computers but wait until all guest computers have completed installing updates before you download and install updates plus reboot the virtual host. Those are just a couple of example, but there are many other potential use cases for the advanced multi row queue sequence. We have tutorials for this feature posted at the following links. Once you have a good understanding of how it works you’ll be able to see how it might help you with various tasks that are specific to your environment:

Advanced Multi Row Queue Sequence – Video Tutorial
Advanced Multi Row Queue Sequence
Virtual Machine Guest Host Update And Reboot Sequence Automation
Custom Update And Reboot Sequences For Multiple Computers

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How to Convert HRESULT Decimal (DEC) Values to Hexadecimal (HEX)

By Scott | Published: September 18, 2019

How to convert HRESULT decimal values to hexadecimal

In the Windows operating system, when an exception is generated it is delivered with an HRESULT value. The HRESULT value is essentially a “reason code” that describes the underlying cause of the exception. In BatchPatch the HRESULT values are generally included in the text of any error, but HRESULTs will be in decimal format, which is not always optimal. In order to figure out what they mean we sometimes need to convert them to hexadecimal first. It’s especially the case for google searching the HRESULT value. If you enter a DEC HRESULT into google you probably won’t find much, but if you convert it to HEX first and then search the HEX value you’ll end up with more useful results, which in turn means you’ll likely have a much higher degree of success in figuring out what it means. The easiest way to perform the DEC to HEX conversion is with your Windows calculator app. Go to ‘Start > Run‘ and type calc.exe to launch the Windows calculator application. Once it is open, switch to the ‘Programmer’ calculator by clicking the button in the upper left corner of the calculator window, and then choose ‘Programmer’ from the drop-down menu.

In the Programmer calculator select DEC by simply clicking on it. With DEC selected, copy your HRESULT value to the clipboard (CTRL-C), and then paste the value from the clipboard into the calculator (CTRL-V). Yes, you can type it manually instead of using copy/paste, but just note that the HRESULT values are negative integers. Therefore if you type a positive integer into the calculator, the conversion will be incorrect, so you must type the complete HRESULT value with the negative symbol. It’s usually easier to just copy and paste it. Once you’ve done that you can immediately then see the HEX value appear directly above the DEC value in the calculator. In this example I’ve pasted DEC value -2147012867, and we can see the HEX value is 80072EFD.

Once you have the HEX representation of the HRESULT, you can look it up here to see what it means: Windows Update Error Code List. Unfortunately that list isn’t a complete list of every possible HRESULT, so if you don’t find it in that list try entering it into a google search to see what comes up. You may also enter it into the search box in the upper right section of this page as well as in our support forum.

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Clarifying the Confusion Surrounding Optional Updates for “Seekers”

By Scott | Published: September 5, 2019

Beginning with Windows 10 and Windows 2019 build 1809, Microsoft began pre-releasing some updates in advance of their formal release date. This has created a fair amount of confusion both for our users as well as for Windows users around the globe, so today I wanted to take a few minutes to try to clarify what’s going on.

As an example let’s look at the July 2019 cumulative update: “2019-07 Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2019 (1809) for x64-based Systems (KB4507469) (2019-07-09) – Security Updates.” This update was released on July 9, 2019, which was the Microsoft Patch Tuesday (second Tuesday) for that month. It was released in the ‘Security Updates’ classification through the normal update release channels: Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). BatchPatch would find/download/install this update, as expected.

KB4507469

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4507469/windows-10-update-kb4507469

If you were to install the update (along with whatever other updates were available at the time), and then if you subsequently used BatchPatch to check for available updates again, you would find no more applicable updates available for download/install. However, if you then waited until July 22, 2019, and on that day or soon after (but prior to August 2019 Patch Tuesday) you visited the Windows Update control panel directly on the target computer and clicked on the ‘Check for updates’ you would notice that Windows would download and install a different cumulative update: “2019-07 Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2019 (1809) for x64-based Systems (KB4505658) (2019-07-22) – Updates.” This July 22 cumulative update was released *NOT* in the ‘Security Updates’ classification but rather in just the ‘Updates’ classification. Furthermore, if you used BatchPatch to scan for updates on that target system, BatchPatch wouldn’t have found the KB4505658 as applicable for installation. So, what’s the deal?

KB4505658

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4505658/windows-10-update-kb4505658

If you scrutinize the links and images above you’ll notice that the ‘Available’ and ‘Next Step’ columns of the charts that Microsoft posted are not the same for the two updates. What Microsoft is doing (and has been doing since the release of build 1809 for Windows 10/2019) is release the normal cumulative security update on Patch Tuesday of each month to all release channels, but then later in the same month they release a new cumulative non-security update, but they do not release it to the the normal release channels. Instead they only release it to those who they consider “Seekers” — people who actively go to the Windows Update control panel on a computer and click on the ‘Check for updates’ button. In this case the way it usually manifests in the GUI is that there are no available updates visible until *after* you click on the ‘Check for updates’ button. Furthermore, it seems to be the case that you need to sometimes actually click on this button more than one time before it triggers the search that finds these optional “Seeker” updates. The content of each of these optional updates gets released as part of the following month’s normal/regular cumulative update, which makes these “Seeker” updates essentially like a “Preview” update. Microsoft does not use the term “Preview” per se, but they are nevertheless a preview of what is to come in the following month’s normal Patch Tuesday update release.

With all that said we do not recommend installing these optional updates. Unless you have a specific need for one of these updates (they may contain a fix for something that you need but they will never contain security/critical updates), we generally do not recommend installing them. We believe that unless you have a specific need for a fix that is included in one of these updates, it usually makes the most sense to wait until the following month when Microsoft moves them from optional status to the normal deployment channels.

At the time of this writing (September 2019) BatchPatch does not provide a facility to find/download/install these optional updates, but in the next release of BatchPatch (coming late 2019) we do expect to include such functionality just so that it’s there if you need/want it.

EDIT: This functionality was added in the October 2019 release of BatchPatch. You can access it under ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update > Search for only optional software updates’.

In the meantime if you ever have a specific need for one of these updates in between the time that they are released as optional and the time that they are published to the normal release channels (typically just a couple/few weeks later), you would need to either visit each target computer’s Windows Update control panel manually to trigger the download/installation, or you could download the update from the Windows Update catalog for deployment via BatchPatch’s deployment feature. In the next release of BatchPatch you’ll be able to use its normal Windows Update actions with a separate configuration option selected to find the optional “Seeker” updates.

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