Windows Update for Offline Computers and Disconnected Networks

By Scott | Published: December 31, 2018

It’s becoming increasingly common for companies and organizations to segregate at least some of their servers (and even non-server computers sometimes too) so that they don’t have any internet access. The goal in eliminating internet access for computers is virtually always to increase security by decreasing the attack surface or vector. However, while it’s true that removing internet access for computers will in many ways dramatically decrease the exposure for attack, it can be a bit of a catch-22. On the one hand when a system does not have internet access, it’s not going to be as vulnerable to as many attacks. On the other hand when machines are offline it’s more difficult to keep them up to date, and when an operating system or an application running on the OS is not up to date, the system becomes more vulnerable. An attack might be less likely to occur on an offline network, but if the computers on that network are not kept up to date and are subsequently attacked in one way or another, the attack has a much higher likelihood of being successful than it would if the computers were patched/updated regularly.

How to Deploy Windows Updates to Offline Computers

There are a number of ways to accomplish this task, but unless you want a heavy monthly burden that eats a lot of human-hours, you really need to use a patch management application that’s going to do most of the work for you. You don’t necessarily have to use BatchPatch for this purpose, but even though I’m obviously biased I’m just going to come right out and say that despite my bias BatchPatch is still likely to be the easiest, most efficient, and least expensive option that you have for applying Windows Updates to numerous offline computers.

BatchPatch has two primary modes of operation (or three, depending on how you look at it). The default mode that BatchPatch operates in requires target computers to have internet access or access to a WSUS server, but if you switch BatchPatch to ‘offline mode‘ you can use it to scan offline computers for needed updates, and then deploy the updates to those computers. And you can do it efficiently so that all of the offline computers can be updated at the same time.

At the following link I have described the three different scenarios for using BatchPatch in ‘offline mode’. Note, they are ordered from least stringent to most stringent offline network scenarios. There is always a balance between security and convenience. The offline networks with the most stringent rules will generally be the least convenient or least efficient to patch. The offline networks with the least stringent rules will usually be easier or more efficient to patch but of course it always depends on the particulars of your environment. That said, when choosing which BatchPatch ‘offline mode’ approach/method to use, start at the top and work your way down until you see the method that will work for your environment. If you choose the method that is designed for the absolute most secure environments, you might be decreasing your own efficiency for patching your network if your network’s requirements are not quite so strict.

Offline Patch Management with BatchPatch

More Details on BatchPatch Cached Mode and Offline Updates

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Configuring Per-Grid Windows Update Filter Exclusions Using Row Templates in BatchPatch

By Scott | Published: December 18, 2018

One of the topics that I have written about in the past is how you can configure filters in BatchPatch to prevent certain categories of updates from installing, or so that you can exclude particular individual updates from being installed on target computers. Those postings are here:

Additionally I have posted in the past about the ‘Row Template’ feature in BatchPatch here:

Apply Update Exclusions Per-Grid Using the Row Template

Today I’m going to demonstrate how you can use the ‘Row Template’ feature to pre-configure a grid with Windows Update filters that will enable you to exclude certain updates from being applied to target computers, depending on which grid you add the computers to.

The ‘Row Template’ feature enables you to create a single template row for each grid. After you enable a row template for a given grid, then when you add new rows/hosts to that grid, the new rows/hosts will receive the pre-configured values that you have stored in the row template for that grid. This may sound confusing when written down, but in practice it’s actually very simple.

For example, let’s say that you have a group of SQL servers that you manage in a single BatchPatch grid. You want to ensure that these SQL servers will not install a particular update KB112233, and you want to also ensure that when new SQL servers are added to this same grid that none of them install the update either. However, you also have a separate group of web servers that you manage in a separate BatchPatch grid, and for these web servers you want them to apply KB112233, but you don’t want them to apply KB445566. And similarly, you want to ensure that when a new web server is added to the BatchPatch grid (.bps) file that it will have the same exclusion/filter rules configured as the existing servers in the grid. How can you do this?

In BatchPatch we can create a row template on a per-grid basis, and then in the row template we can store the Windows Update filters / exclusions, so that any time a new row/host is added to a grid, it will automatically receive any values that were pre-configured in the row template. This means that the new hosts/rows can automatically receive the same Windows Update filters / exclusions that exist for other hosts in the same grid.

Here’s how it works:

  1. First we need to create a row template for our grid. For the sake of this example we will create a row template that will include an exclusions for update KB112233, so that KB112233 is never installed on computers that are added to this grid. In our grid we have 3 hosts to start. Create a Windows Update exclusion filter by selecting the rows and then clicking ‘Actions > Windows updates > Filter which available updates are included or excluded when downloading/installing > Exclude specific updates (textual)…’
  2. In the exclusions window that appears I will type/paste the KB112233 that I want to be excluded from being applied to the computers in this grid. Then I’ll click Save. You can see in the screenshots below what this process looks like.

  3. Now we can use one of the existing rows in the grid to create a row template. Select just a single row in the grid, and now click ‘Grid > Row template configurator’. In the window that appears click ‘Create/update row template based on selected row in main BatchPatch grid’. You’ll see now that the ‘Download/install filter’ column, including the data stored for the selected row, has been copied to the ‘Row Template’ for the grid.

  4. At this point we just need to make sure that we enable the Row Template by clicking the radio button ‘Enabled‘ in the upper right corner of the window. In the screenshot above you can see that when I captured the image it was still set to ‘Disabled.’ Make sure you click ‘Enabled‘ before clicking OK. If a row template has been created but is left ‘Disabled’ it will have no effect. It must be ‘Enabled’ to actually do something.

  5. Now the row template for the grid has been created and enabled. If we add more hosts to the grid, they will automatically receive the values that were stored in the row template. In this case we stored the ‘Download/Install Filter‘ value to exclude KB112233. So, after I add new hosts to the grid, you can see in the screenshot below that they have the same filter applied as the previously existing rows.
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Get Adobe Flash Version Number from Multiple Computers

By Scott | Published: December 11, 2018

We recently received the following questions: “How can one tell if Adobe Flash is installed on numerous target computers? If it’s installed, what’s the best way to determine which version is on each target?”

Today I’m going to demonstrate one possible way to get the desired information, but there are probably other equally viable methods, so definitely feel free to do what works best for you and your environment.

Get List of All Installed Applications

First, note that in BatchPatch there is a built-in menu item ‘Actions > Get information > Get list of installed programs‘ that one can use to obtain a list of all installed programs on target computers. This action queries the following two registry keys on target computers to obtain a list of installed applications. While this list is generally going to be pretty comprehensive, please be aware that a program can be installed without having ever registered itself with the system, so it’s possible that you could have an app that does not appear in the output list that this method obtains. Also note, this output will not necessarily include version numbers. Additionally, this output will generally include duplicate entries because many applications will be entered into both of the following registry keys as opposed to just one. For the sake of completeness BatchPatch gets information from both keys and does not extract unique results, which means that if an application is entered in both locations you will see it appear twice in the list.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Sample output:

Get Adobe Flash Version Number

A very quick Google search revealed this link ( https://forums.adobe.com/thread/912422 ) which explains that Adobe Flash version information can be obtained by looking at the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia

In BatchPatch we can obtain registry values from numerous computers simultaneously by selecting the desired computers in the BatchPatch grid and then executing ‘Actions > Get information > Get registry key/value‘, which will pop the following window:

In the window shown in the above screenshot you can add the desired registry key and value that you would like to read. Once the appropriate key and value name are entered, click OK to see the results.

We can see in the above screenshot of the result that the test computer I queried has version version 18.0.0.203. If a target computer does not have Adobe Flash installed at all, then we would expect this ‘Get registry key/value’ to return nothing for the registry key and value that we queried. Pretty simple! I hope this helps.

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Explanation of ‘Get Pending Reboot Status’ Actions in BatchPatch

By Scott | Published: December 5, 2018

Windows does not offer/provide a sanctioned, singular way to determine with certainty if a computer is in need of a reboot. However, Windows does mark in several places in the OS values that can be used to infer that a reboot is required to complete certain operations.

When using one of the ‘Get pending reboot status‘ actions in BatchPatch, a check is initiated that looks in the following locations of the target computer(s) to determine if reboot is needed:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update

If a subkey contains “RebootRequired” BatchPatch returns TRUE

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing

If a subkey contains “RebootPending” BatchPatch returns TRUE

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates

If the UpdateExeVolatile value exists and is greater than 0, BatchPatch returns TRUE

CCM_ClientUtilities.DetermineIfRebootPending method

If the host has SCCM installed and this method returns TRUE, BatchPatch returns TRUE

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

If the PendingFileRenameOperations value contains any filepaths, BatchPatch displays them, but this will not cause BatchPatch to return TRUE even though the rename operations will occur upon reboot.

All that said, when you use ‘Get pending reboot status’ and it returns TRUE it doesn’t mean that you absolutely must reboot the computer. It means that Windows has operations that are pending reboot to be completed. It does not necessarily mean that the computer is in an unstable or problematic state.

If you use one of the BatchPatch methods to install Windows updates, but you do not let BatchPatch also ‘reboot if required‘ then you could leave your computers in an unstable/unprotected/vulnerable state since it is the case that some updates will not be “live” until the reboot occurs. However, if you are rebooting the computers after Windows updates are installed, but then at a later date ‘Get pending reboot status‘ reports TRUE, it does not necessarily mean that the sky is falling and that you must drop everything and reboot immediately, though it may warrant further investigation to see why BatchPatch is reporting TRUE so that you can determine if you want to reboot the computers or not.

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Windows Update Options for Reboot Timing and Behavior

By Scott | Published: November 20, 2018

One of the questions that people sometimes ask us is can BatchPatch initiate the Windows Update download/installation on target computers *without* also triggering an immediate reboot of those computers? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that controlling the behavior in BatchPatch is very straightforward and simple, but the behavior of BatchPatch isn’t really what you have to worry about. It’s Windows and the various settings provided by Windows for reboots after updates that you have to be concerned about.

For this posting I’m going to focus on Windows 10 options when it comes to reboots after updates. Other Windows operating systems may vary, but since Windows 10 is the latest version of Windows, I think it makes the most sense to focus on Windows 10.

In BatchPatch you have numerous options for applying Windows Updates. The primary action items to select from in BatchPatch when downloading and/or installing updates are:

  • Download available updates
  • Download and install updates
  • Download and install updates + reboot if required
  • Download and install updates + reboot always
  • Install downloaded updates
  • Install downloaded updates + reboot if required
  • Install downloaded updates + reboot always

If you select one of the options that does not include reboot, BatchPatch will not reboot the target(s) after installing updates. You can, optionally, always come back at any time with BatchPatch and execute a standalone reboot, but the topic of today’s posting is about controlling reboot behavior specifically for when installing Windows Updates.

The first thing that you should do is acquaint yourself with the different options that Windows provides via Group Policy for controlling computer restarts around Windows Updates installations. Once you’re well acquainted you can then test accordingly so that you can determine exactly the behavior to expect in your environment based on the settings that you select. The primary settings to control reboot after Windows Updates all live in Group Policy in Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update It’s actually possible to control all of these policies via direct registry edits too, but for ease of operation it’s really best to control these settings via Group Policy (or of course you may also use Local Policy if you’re not on a domain).

Turn off auto-restart for updates during active hours
Use this policy to configure active hours, during which the device will not be restarted. This policy has no effect if the No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations or Always automatically restart at the scheduled time policies are enabled.

Always automatically restart at the scheduled time
Use this policy to configure a restart timer (between 15 and 180 minutes) that will start immediately after Windows Update installs important updates. This policy has no effect if the No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations policy is enabled.

Specify deadline before auto-restart for update installation
Use this policy to specify how many days (between 2 and 14) an automatic restart can be delayed. This policy has no effect if the No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations or Always automatically restart at the scheduled time policies are enabled.

No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations
Use this policy to prevent automatic restart when a user is logged on. This policy applies only when the Configure Automatic Updates policy is configured to perform scheduled installations of updates.
There is no equivalent MDM policy setting for Windows 10 Mobile.

You can review more details about managing Windows device restarts after updates at this link: Manage device restarts after updates

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What To Do When PsExec Is Blocked By Your Anti-Virus Software

By Scott | Published: November 15, 2018

First, let me just say that PsExec is *NOT* malware and it’s *NOT* a virus. It’s simply a very useful tool, particularly for systems administrators. However, because of the fact that it is so useful to sysadmins, it also happens to be useful to hackers. Some of the major anti-virus software vendors have at one point or another ended up flagging PsExec as malware or unsafe software. In some cases this is because of unsophisticated malware/virus detection, and in other cases it’s simply due to the fact that PsExec is sometimes used by malicious hackers, so some vendors and organizations think that by identifying instances of PsExec they could potentially be identifying hacker/attacker activity. However, just because someone could use PsExec maliciously does not mean that all uses of PsExec are malicious. Remember, it’s just a useful tool. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, in order for PsExec to be used maliciously, the attacker would need to have administrator credentials for the target system. And if an attacker is already in your network and has already obtained administrator credentials for a target system, then you can be sure that the attacker will *NOT* need PsExec to compromise the machine.

PsExec has been painted in a bad light and even banned in some organizations simply due to the fact that attackers sometimes make use of it. However, banning it does not actually make a network any safer. It merely enables a box on a security checklist in a bureaucratic environment to be checked/ticked. This may even create a false sense of security since it doesn’t actually increase the network’s security in any meaningful way.

If your anti-virus software has been configured to block PsExec through some type of execution policy, here are your options for getting it working again:

  1. Perhaps the most obvious method would be to modify the execution policy so that it no longer blocks PsExec. 🙂

  2. Another option, if your AV software has such functionality, is to whitelist PsExec. In this case you should whitelist psexec.exe as well as psexesvc.exe

  3. The simplest method to prevent your antivirus software from blocking PsExec is actually using a built-in switch that PsExec offers to change the remote service name. This option exists in PsExec version 2+. This method works for the large majority of situations, but depending on the actual blocking mechanism that has been used in your environment, it’s possible that this method might not work for you.

    -r Specifies the name of the remote service to create or interact with

    Under normal circumstances when PsExec.exe is executed on computer A, it creates a connection to a target computer B. On computer B a new service is created called PSEXESVC with an executable file psexesvc.exe. When you use the -r switch you are able to specify a new/different service name to be used, so the target computer will create a service and associated executable with the name you specific rather than the default/generic psexesvc. Believe it or not, this is actually enough to bypass or prevent detection in many/most cases, though again I would note that it really depends on the actual blocking mechanism that’s in place in your environment.

    This switch can be utilized when working with PsExec directly at the command line on a particular computer or it can also be used inside of BatchPatch. In BatchPatch go to ‘Tools > Settings > Remote Execution’. You’ll need to modify the value next to ‘Use PsExec -r switch to specify remote service name’. You can use any name that you want here. BatchPatchExeSvc is not a bad choice, and it’s what I have specified in my instance of BatchPatch, as you can see in the screenshot below. EDIT 2021: We actually made this the default configuration in BatchPatch

    Normally it’s just the remote service PSEXESVC and/or psexesvc.exe that is blocked by an execution policy, but if you want you could go a step further and actually provide a new name for the PsExec.exe too. This file normally only would exist on the BatchPatch computer. You can change its name to whatever you want such as YourCustomName.exe and then in BatchPatch modify the value for ‘Use psexec.exe custom filepath:‘ which also lives under Tools > Settings > Remote Execution. You’ll need to specify the full filepath to your newly named .exe file, so for example C:\YourDesiredPath\YourCustomName.exe

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Configure Each Host to Send a Separate Email Notification Upon Completion of Patching

By Scott | Published: November 5, 2018

I’ve previously written about configuring email notifications in BatchPatch. You can find those postings here and here. However, today I’d like to focus on an aspect of email notifications that I have not yet discussed in much detail. Today the focus is going to be on the situation where you need or want to have each host trigger its own email notification at the end of a patching operation. The emails can be configured to all be sent to a single administrator or group of administrators, or you can even configure each host to send to a separate administrator or group, if desired.

  1. First please note that there are global settings and well as per-host settings for email notifications. If you want all hosts to send notifications in the same format and to the same recipients, then you can simply use the global settings without touching any of the per-host overrides. However, if you want to have emails be sent to different recipients per target host, then you would need to use the per-host overrides. We’ll get into that later. Start by examining your global email notification settings under ‘Tools > Settings > Email notifications’

  2. Fill out all of the form with the desired information. You’ll need to specify a ‘from’ email address as well as recipients, the SMTP server address and port and logon credentials, if needed. For the body format we recommend plain text PLUS ‘Include HTML Attachment’. For the body text we have a few options. BatchPatch has some built-in variables for email notifications, which help you to customize the notification format:
    • $host – Will print the host name from the row that initiates the email notification
    • $row – Will print the entire row contents from the row that initiates the email notification
    • $grid – Will print the entire grid contents for just the grid that contains the row that initiated the email notification
    • $allgrids – Will print the contents of all grids in the BatchPatch instance

    In this tutorial since our goal is to have each host/row generate its own email notification after applying updates, we’re going to have the email alert only contain the $row variable, so that each email notification that is sent only contains information about the particular row/host that triggered the email notification. So as you can see in the screenshot above, the body text field only has $row listed.

  3. Click the ‘Test email settings‘ button to make sure that BatchPatch is able to send a test email notification using the settings that you specified. If there is an error here during the test, it will need to be resolved before continuing.

  4. Now that the global email notification settings have been completed, it’s time to configure a job queue for each row. The idea here is that each row will execute a job queue that includes applying Windows Updates. As the last step in the job queue we include the ‘Send email notification’ instruction.
    Select the desired target hosts in the grid, and then click ‘Actions > Job Queue > Create/modify…’ Create your queue, and then apply ‘Send email notification’ as the last step in the queue, just like what you see in my screenshot below, and then save the queue.

  5. If you want or need any individual hosts/rows to send their email notifications to different recipients, then here you can optionally override the global/default email notification settings on a per-row basis, as needed. For example, let’s configure ‘host1’ in my grid with a new/different email recipient. I’ll select ‘host1’ and then ‘Actions > Email notifications > Override default email notification settings‘

  6. In the window that appears you can see that I have ticked the ‘Recipients’ box and then typed in a new recipient email address. When this row triggers an email alert, it will send the email to this address instead of the addresses listed in the global settings that we modified at the beginning of this tutorial.

  7. At this point you’re done. You can execute the job queue either on-demand or via a scheduled task. When the job queue completes, the last step it executes will be the email notification step. Each host/row that runs that job queue will send its own notification to the hosts defined in the global email notification settings, with the exception of host1, which will use the email recipient that was specified in the ‘Override default email notification settings’ window.
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Using a Row Template to Automatically Apply Tasks to New Rows in a BatchPatch Grid

By Scott | Published: October 24, 2018

I think the ‘Row Template Configurator’ falls into the category of features that most people probably are not even aware of but would use if they knew it existed. This feature was published just a couple months ago. If you haven’t yet checked it out, now might be a good time to familiarize yourself with it.

The idea is simple… each grid can have its own Row Template. You can add anything to a row template that you would add to a normal row in BatchPatch. And once something exists in the template, then when you add a new row to the grid, the new row will receive all of the values that are applied to the template row. This is particular useful for those admins who have their BatchPatch grids configured to synchronize with Active Directory. When the sync operation is performed, new rows get automatically added to the grid. If you have configured a row template for the grid, then when those new rows are added during the sync you can have them automatically include a scheduled task or job queue or deployment etc.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Each grid has its own template, so to start please create a new row in the grid and add whatever you want to that row such as a job queue or scheduled task or remote command etc. In the screenshot below you can see that I have created a row and applied a recurring scheduled task to ‘Download and install updates + reboot if required’
  2. Once you have your row configured with the desired values, it’s time to use it to create the grid’s row template. In BatchPatch click on ‘Grid > Row Template Configurator’. In the ‘Row Template Configurator’ window that appears click on the button ‘Create/update row template…’. In the screenshot below I’ve done exactly that. You can see that the ‘Row Template Configurator’ form now shows a copy of the row contents from the previous step. The Host column is excluded, of course, because the host name will never be part of the template since each row will have its own host name already.
  3. Now that I have created the row template, if I want to activate it I need to set the ‘Row Template Status’ radio button in the upper right corner to ‘Enabled’. If it is left ‘Disabled’ then even though the row template will have been created for the grid, it won’t be active. New hosts added to the grid will not receive the template values until/unless you first enable it. In the screenshot below you can see that I have selected the radio button labeled ‘Enabled’. Click OK after enabling the template.
  4. OK, now that we’ve created the row template all we have to do is add some new rows to the grid. Notice that the new rows automatically receive the values that were included in the template. I just added 5 new hosts to the grid, and they all look the same as the original SAMPLE row. Note, the SAMPLE row does not need to be left in the grid. I’ve left it there only for the sake of illustration.
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Moving BatchPatch Saved Job Queues, Deployments, Remote Commands, and Other Saved Items to a New Server

By Scott | Published: October 18, 2018

This is a simple topic that barely warrants a whole blog posting, but I wanted to put it out there so that people can find it more easily. When you want to share your saved configurations in BatchPatch with a different BatchPatch user at your organization, or when you want or need to move your entire BatchPatch instance from one server to another, you can do it very quickly and painlessly by following the steps below.

  1. Regardless of whether you are moving the entire BatchPatch installation or if you are just sharing your saved deployments, job queues, remote commands, copy jobs etc with a colleague, you’ll need to start by exporting the saved items to a file. In BatchPatch select ‘Tools > Export saved commands, deployments, job queues, etc.’
  2. You will be prompted to choose a location on disk to save the export file. Go ahead and save it. You can give it any name that you want. You can see in the screenshot below that I’ve titled my export file ‘BatchPatch_Settings_Export_2018-10-18’.

    Note, the format of the file is standard XML, so it can be opened in a text editor. I would not recommend making any modifications to this file because it’s always easy to break things by adding or removing a space or linebreak in such a way that it causes the XML importer to balk. However, certainly if you had a strong need or desire to make modifications, you could do it. Generally though it probably makes the most sense to make modifications to your saved commands/configurations inside of BatchPatch first. Then when you create the export file it will already contain everything that you need with the correct syntax.

  3. If you are moving your BatchPatch installation to a new computer, move the batchpatch.exe from the old to the new machine along with the XML file you created in the previous step. If not, then just copy the XML file to the desired destination.

  4. Finally, import the file using ‘Tools > Import saved commands, deployments, job queues, etc.’

  5. It’s also not a bad idea to periodically backup your existing saved entries by using ‘Tools > Export saved commands, deployments, job queues, etc.’ This way if you lose the server that BatchPatch is running on or if you encounter some type of weird corruption you’ll be able to more easily get back your previously saved entries without having to re-create them from scratch.
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Copy a File to All User Profile Directories on Target Computers

By Scott | Published: October 8, 2018

We recently received a request for help with using BatchPatch to copy a Microsoft Outlook signature file to the appropriate user profile directory on numerous target computers. BatchPatch already has a built-in function for copying files from the BatchPatch computer to a specified directory on target computers, but a problem arises when trying to copy a file to all user profile directories on target computers because the ‘copy file/folder’ function in BatchPatch requires you to enter a specific folder, by name. How then is the administrator able to copy a file to multiple user profile directories without knowing in advance which user profiles are on which computers?

The solution to the problem outlined above involves some custom scripting. There’s no way around it. However, with a very simple script, one can then use BatchPatch to deploy the script to all of the desired target computers, thereby enabling the copying of the desired file to all the desired target computers in the user profile folders on those computers.

In the particular question that we received the user needed to copy an Outlook signature file into each user profile directory — %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures\. In order to do this we need to write a script that will first enumerate each of the user profile directories on the computer, and then will copy the desired file(s) into each user profile directory. Then use BatchPatch to deploy the script and the signature file to all of the desired target computers.

  1. Create a vbscript by pasting the following script text into a text document titled something like ‘script.vbs’. The .vbs file extension is required, but you may provide any name you desire for the file. The script below, when run on a computer, will check the registry to find out all of the user profile directories on the computer. It will then loop through and copy a file called “signature.file” from the folder that contains the script to each of the Outlook signatures folders on the computer. Note, we skip any profile directories that begin with ‘C:\Windows’ because we are interested in regular user profile directories that generally begin with C:\Users, so we have to discard the few that start with C:\Windows.

    On Error Resume Next
Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002
strComputer = "."
Set objRegistry=GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")
strKeyPath = "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList"
objRegistry.EnumKey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, strKeyPath, arrSubkeys
For Each objSubkey In arrSubkeys
    strValueName = "ProfileImagePath"
    strSubPath = strKeyPath & "\" & objSubkey
    objRegistry.GetExpandedStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,strSubPath,strValueName,strValue
	Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
	If InStr(Ucase(strValue),"C:\WINDOWS") = 0 Then
	'	Wscript.Echo strValue & "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures\"
		fso.CopyFile "signature.file", strValue & "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures\", True
	End If
Next
  2. Once we have the above script text saved to ‘script.vbs’ it’s actually very easy to deploy it with our signature.file. You’ll want to modify the script to substitute the actual name of your signature file for what I have just called ‘signature.file’ for the sake of this example.

  3. Put ‘script.vbs’ and ‘signature.file’ into a single folder on the BatchPatch computer. Make sure there is nothing else in that folder.

  4. Now you are ready to deploy the script using BatchPatch. In BatchPatch highlight the desired target computers in the grid. Then select ‘Actions > Deploy > Create/modify deployment’. In the deployment window you’ll select the file to deploy as the ‘script.vbs’. Then you’ll tick the box that says ‘Copy entire directory…’


  5. To begin the deployment, click on the ‘Execute’ button. When you do this BatchPatch will copy the folder containing the ‘script.vbs’ and ‘signature.file’ files to each selected target computer. BatchPatch will then execute the ‘script.vbs’ which will determine all of the user profile folders on each computer that it runs on, and it will copy the ‘signature.file’ file to each of the enumerated user profile folders.
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