Remote Script Deployment – Install Multiple .MSU Files in a Single Action on Remote Computers

By Scott | Published: September 8, 2014

One of the common questions we receive is “How does one go about deploying and installing multiple updates to offline computers?” If you’re looking for a way to apply Windows Updates to detached network environments or to environments that don’t have access to a WSUS or the internet, take a look at BatchPatch’s Cached Mode and Offline Update features. While it will address the bulk of requirements that most users have for deploying Windows Updates to computers that do not have access to the internet or a WSUS server, there is still an open question of how does one go about deploying multiple .MSU files to a computer without having to do a separate BatchPatch deployment for each .MSU file.

  1. Prepare the script. In this example we are going to install 5 .MSU files in succession, with a single script that will be deployed with BatchPatch. I’ve already downloaded the 5 .MSU files from Microsoft. They are stored in a folder on my computer called “5_MSU_Files.” Additionally, I’ve created a batch file called “Install_Multiple_MSU_Files.cmd” which is included in the same directory. Note the directory contents and the script contents below:
    Install_Multiple_MSU_Files_Batch
    MSU_Files_In_A_Folder
  2. Prepare the deployment. Select Actions > Deploy software/patch/script/regkey etc > Create/modify deployment. Note that after we select the Install_Multiple_MSU_Files.cmd in the first field, we also check the box to “Copy entire directory contents in addition to the specified file.”
    Deploy_Multiple_MSU_Files
  3. Execute the deployment. When we click the ‘Execute’ button, BatchPatch will copy the script file along with the 5 .MSU files to the target computer’s working directory. BatchPatch will then remotely execute the script, which will install the 5 update files sequentially.
    Deployment_exit_code_0

    4. That’s all there is to it. As you can see, the process is actually pretty simple. Now of course when we installed these updates we used the /norestart option, so now that the script completed, we will want to finalize the installation by rebooting the target machine. We can do this using the Actions > Reboot option in BatchPatch.

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Remotely Uninstall Windows Updates From Multiple Computers

By Scott | Published: September 1, 2014

Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of press about problematic Windows Updates causing stability issues for many users. As such, Microsoft recommends that users uninstall the offending updates. We think it’s a good idea for all users to remove these updates even if they haven’t experienced any specific issues that many users encountered as a result of installing them.

You can read more about Microsoft’s recommendations here: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2982791

The updates that should be removed are:

  • KB2982791
  • KB2970228
  • KB2975719
  • KB2975331

Using BatchPatch to Remove Individual Windows Updates, by KB ID, from Windows 7/2008R2 and newer OSes:

The good news is that BatchPatch makes it very easy to remove individual Windows Updates from multiple computers simultaneously. You may want to first scan your computers to see which ones have the offending updates installed.

The first three steps here are not absolutely necessary/required for our particular needs at the moment, but it’s good to know that we can search for update history on our machines to verify if they even have the offending updates installed in the first place, so I’ll run through what that looks like.

Optional: Scan Machines to Retrieve the List of Installed Updates

  1. Highlight your hosts in the grid, and then select Actions > Windows Updates > Generate consolidated report of update history
    GenerateConsolidatedReportOfUpdateHistoryA
  2. Select the date range that you want to include in the search. Optionally, if you’re looking for specific updates, you may enter them in the field provided, so that the results output includes only the particular updates in question. However, you don’t need to specify updates at this point and may simply search for all installed updates instead, which is what I’ve done in the screenshot below.
    GenerateConsolidatedReportOfUpdateHistoryB
  3. You can see the results for my search in the screenshot below. In this case, none of the offending updates are installed on my lab VM. However, we’ll move forward and uninstall one of the updates that is installed, so that you can see how it’s done.
    GenerateConsolidatedReportOfUpdateHistoryC

Required: Uninstall the Offending Updates:

  1. The test machine that I’m using in the lab here does NOT have any of the offending updates from a couple of weeks ago installed, so for the sake of this example I’ve selected to uninstall KB972270. When you’re removing updates from your own computer, you simply need to specify the KB ID for the update that you want to remove. Select Actions > Windows Updates > Uninstall individual update
    UninstallIndividualUpdateA
  2. Enter the KB ID that you want to remove.
    UninstallIndividualUpdateB
  3. Click ‘OK’ to proceed with the uninstallation

Using BatchPatch to Remove Individual Windows Updates, by KB ID, from Windows XP/2003:

Windows XP and 2003 do not support WUSA.exe, so we use an alternate method to remove individual updates from these older OSes:

  1. Highlight your hosts and select Actions > Execute remote process/command > Create/modify remote command 1
    UninstallIndividualUpdateRemoteCommandA
  2. The command that we execute is formatted as follows:
    C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB972270$\spuninst\spuninst.exe /quiet /norestart
    UninstallIndividualUpdateRemoteCommandB
  3. Click ‘Execute’ to proceed with the uninstallation
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Remotely Install Only a Subset of Available Windows Updates

By Scott | Published: August 19, 2014

Sometimes you might need or want to only install a specific handful (or more) of updates on remote computers, rather than installing all of the updates that are available for those computers. With BatchPatch we provide a few different ways to accomplish this task.

Method 1:

View a list of available updates, and then select or deselect a checkbox for each update that you want (or don’t want) to install. Then execute the update installation for the only the updates that you selected.

  1. Please review the following tutorial: Filter Which Available Updates Are Included Or Excluded When Downloading Or Installing Windows Updates
    2016-03-08 14_37_57-Individual Update Selection

Method 2:

Create a list of updates to be installed on target computers, and then execute the update installation for only the updates specified in the list.
(For a video demo instead of method 2, please see Installing Specific Updates on 20 Remote Computers Simultaneously – Video Demo.)

  1. Let’s start by checking the target host(s) to see what updates are available to install. Highlight the host(s) and then select Actions > Windows Updates > Check for available updates
  2. We can see in the screenshot below that there are 37 updates available on our target host. I’ve expanded the ‘Remote Agent Log’ column by middle-clicking on it, so that we can see the list of available updates.
    CheckForAvailableUpdates
  3. For the sake of this tutorial, let’s select 3 of the available updates to install. We’ll use KB2956575, KB2920189, and KB2964736.
  4. Select Actions > Windows Updates > Filter which updates are included or excluded when downloading/installing > Include specific updates (textual)
  5. Copy the KB IDs for the three updates into the provided field, with one KB per line. Then save the list. We do not strictly have to use KB IDs because the update filtering is actually done by comparing the title of the update to the entries in our list. If an available update’s title contains the text of an entry in our list, it will be installed. However, generally speaking, to guarantee uniqueness in our entries, it’s always best to use KB number whenever possible so that we don’t end up installing more updates than we actually want to install. For example, if we simply entered “Security update for Windows” in the list, then any available update that has “Security update for Windows” in its title would end up getting installed, which is not what we want in this case.
    CreateModifyListOfSpecificUpdatesForDownloadInstallation
  6. Now that are list of specific updates has been saved, the last thing left to do is install the updates. I will select Actions > Windows Updates > Download and install updates + reboot if required
  7. After the task completes, we can review the ‘Remote Agent Log’ column again to see that only the 3 specific updates were installed on the target host.
    ReviewInstalledUpdates

Method 3:

Create a list of updates to hide on target computers, hide only those specific updates, and then install all remaining visible updates.

  1. In this method, instead of first selecting the specific updates that we want to install, we instead first select all of the updates that we want to exclude. Let’s start by checking the target host(s) to see what updates are available to install. Highlight the host(s) and then select Actions > Windows Updates > Check for available updates
  2. We can see in the screenshot below that there are 34 updates available on our target host. I’ve expanded the ‘Remote Agent Log’ column by middle-clicking on it, so that we can see the list of available updates.
    CheckForAvailableUpdates2
  3. In this example, let’s select 4 of the available updates to exclude by hiding. This means that after we hide 4 updates, we’ll have 30 leftover to install. Let’s hide KB2962409, KB2967917, KB2971239, and KB2981655.
  4. Select Actions > Windows Updates > Hide/unhide updates > Create/modify list of specific updates for hiding
  5. Copy the KB IDs for the four updates into the provided field, with one KB per line. We do not strictly have to use KB IDs because the update filtering is actually done by comparing the title of the update to the entries in our list. If an available update’s title contains the text of an entry in our list, it will be installed. However, generally speaking, to guarantee uniqueness in our entries, it’s always best to use KB number whenever possible so that we don’t end up hiding more updates than we actually want to hide. For example, if we simply entered “Security update for Windows” in the list, then any available update that has “Security update for Windows” in its title would end up getting hidden, which is not what we want in this case.
    CreateModifyListOfSpecificUpdatesForHiding
  6. Click on the ‘Execute’ button. The four updates in our list will be hidden on the target host, leaving the other 30 updates available. We can examine the ‘Remote Agent Log’ column once again to confirm this.
    ReviewHiddenUpdates
  7. The last step is to install all of the remaining 30 updates. We can do this by selecting Actions > Windows Updates > Download and install updates + reboot if required. Only the visible updates will be installed. The hidden updates will remain hidden indefinitely, though we can unhide them at any time in the future if we want/need to install them.

    IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT HIDING UPDATES:It’s important to note that Microsoft can effectively unhide an update that you have previously hidden simply by republishing it at a future date. That said, if you hid an update on target computer at some point in the past days/weeks/months, it’s always good when starting a new session to first check for available updates to make sure that a previously hidden update that you still do not want to be installed has not been republished and unhidden by Microsoft in between your last session and your current session.
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Executing Remote Commands with BatchPatch

By Scott | Published: August 11, 2014

One of the tasks that BatchPatch can help with is executing remote commands or processes across many computers at the same time. For systems administrators this is a common need, and our goal was to make it extremely easy to perform this task in BatchPatch. This way you can avoid manually writing a script that steps through each target computer one at a time, and instead you can use BatchPatch to execute the same command across your entire network of computers, simultaneously, in just a few seconds.

In the BatchPatch actions menu we have two different methods for executing remote commands. One method (Remote Commands 1 and 2) will simply execute the command or process and then report the exit code. The second method (Remote Commands 3 and 4) will execute the command or process and attempt to retrieve any output that the command or process created. Under the hood, the actual code used to execute remote processes differs with these two methods. As such, in some cases you may notice the behavior of the two different methods is a bit different. This is expected. In some cases it’s possible that a remote command will execute successfully under one method but not the other, though in many cases a remote command can be executed using either option. Because the process execution and parsing differs under the hood for the two methods, we’ve included both the non-logged and logged-output options to help maximize compatibility with remote commands.

We generally recommend that if you need to execute a command on a set of computers but you don’t need to see the output of the command, that you use the Remote Command 1 or 2 actions. An example command for this type of use case might be something like ipconfig /flushdns where you need to flush the DNS Resolver Cache on target computers. In that case you simply need the command to execute successfully, but the command itself doesn’t produce any output that you care to retrieve.

However, in the case where you actually need/want to see the output of a particular command, you should use the Remote Command 3 or 4 actions, which in BatchPatch are listed with “(logged output)” next to them to indicate that they will attempt to retrieve the output of any command that’s run on target machines. An example of a command you might run in this instance is ipconfig /all where you want to see the output of the IP configuration on target computers.

Executing commands remotely when you do not need to retrieve output from the command:

  1. Highlight your hosts in the BatchPatch grid and select Actions > Execute remote process/command > Create/modify remote command 1
  2. Enter your command in the new window that appears. In this example we’ll use ipconfig /flushdns
    BatchPatchRemoteCommand1
  3. Execute the command by clicking the “Execute” button. This option will actually save the command to the grid and then execute it immediately. However, if you instead choose to skip the immediate execution option and select to only save the command using the “Save” button, you can still execute it later by using Actions > Execute remote process/command > Execute remote command 1.
    BatchPatchRemoteCommand1Completion

Executing commands remotely when you need to retrieve output from the command:

  1. Highlight your hosts in the BatchPatch grid and select Actions > Execute remote process/command > Create/modify remote command 3
  2. Enter your command in the new window that appears. In this example we’ll use ipconfig /all
    BatchPatchRemoteCommand3
  3. Execute the command by clicking the “Execute” button. This option will actually save the command to the grid and then execute it immediately. However, if you instead choose to skip the immediate execution option and select to only save the command using the “Save” button, you can still execute it later by using Actions > Execute remote process/command > Execute remote command 3.
  4. You can see in the screenshot below that I’ve displayed the cell contents of the Remote Command Output Log by middle-clicking on the cell. We can see the output of the ipconfig /all command.
    BatchPatchRemoteCommand3Completion
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How To Receive Notifications When Computers Go Offline Or Come Online

By Scott | Published: July 28, 2014

Let’s say you’re working through a list of computers to install Windows Update or a third-party software product, but only a percentage of the computers are actually online. The reason, of course, is because your organization provides laptops to its employees, but at any given time there are a lot of people who either aren’t in the office or are disconnected from the network for one reason or another. Wouldn’t it be nice to receive an email or hear an audio alert when the remaining, yet-to-be-updated computers come online so that you can get them updated before the users remove them from the network again? You can use BatchPatch to notify either via email or by playing a sound when a computer goes offline or comes online. Here’s how it works:

  1. Configure email settings: Launch the settings dialog by selecting Tools > Settings > Email Notifications. You’ll need to fill in the appropriate fields for your organization, which might include creating an email address specifically for the purpose of sending alerts. Once you’ve got everything filled out, make sure to verify the configuration by clicking the Test email settings button, which will send a test notification to the configured recipients.
    BatchPatch Email Notification Settings
  2. Configure default alert settings: Select Tools > Settings > Ping Status Alerts. The Global default alert settings for NEW rows section controls the default alert configuration of hosts that are added to the BatchPatch grid. However, after a host has already been added to a grid, it’s very simple to modify the settings for that particular host, which we’ll get to in a moment. For now you simply need to make sure that you’ve configured default settings for your installation of BatchPatch. For example, perhaps you love Star Wars and simply can’t help yourself from setting the online audio sound to a classic clip of Yoda speaking to Luke! Or you could opt to leave the default BatchPatch sounds as-is. I promise that no one will think less of you. 🙂
    PingStatusAlertSettings
  3. Configure alert settings for hosts in the grid: In your BatchPatch grid you have the option of configuring different types of alerts for different hosts. For example, you can configure some hosts to send email notifications when they come online, while having other hosts only produce audio alerts when they go offline. Highlight the hosts that you want to modify, and then select Actions > Ping status alerts. In the screenshot you can see that I’ve set host3 through host8 to only send email notifications when the host comes online. The other hosts in the grid are set to produce audio alerts when the hosts go offline or come online.
    BatchPatch Ping Status Alerts
  4. Configure email recipients for hosts in the grid: (Optional) If you want to configure specific rows in the grid to email particular administrators, you can do that by overriding the default email recipients for any particular row(s). Highlight the hosts and select Actions > Email notification > Override default email notification settings. In the screenshot I have configured host3 through host8 with ‘admin7@yourorganization.com’ as their only recipient for email alerts.
    Override email recipients
  5. Ping the hosts: The only thing left to do is start pinging the hosts in BatchPatch. Highlight the hosts and then select Actions > Start pinging. Hosts will only send email alerts or produce audible alerts while they are being actively pinged in BatchPatch. As soon as a given host’s ping changes from ‘TimedOut’ to ‘Reply from…’ you’ll receive an email notification or hear an audio alert, depending on the settings you configured for the row.
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Hiding Windows Updates Remotely In a Non-WSUS Environment

By Scott | Published: July 14, 2014

If you’re using BatchPatch in an environment that has no WSUS server, there might be times when computers show more available updates than you actually want to install. For example, perhaps you don’t want to install new versions of IE or .NET when you’re installing Windows Updates, but you do want to install updates to the existing versions of IE and .NET. Well, if you had a WSUS server, the procedure would be as simple as removing the approval for the particular update on your WSUS server. This approval removal would then be seen by computers that report the WSUS server, and it would then no longer appear in the list of available updates on those computers. However, for those of you working in environments that do not include a WSUS server, you need a way to hide these updates. Fortunately, with BatchPatch it’s a simple process to hide specific updates, by name, so that they no longer appear as available or visible updates on target computers. In the same way that updates can be hidden, they can also easily be unhidden at any time with just a few clicks.

To hide an update on target computers using BatchPatch:

  1. First, let’s check for the list of available updates, so that we can see the titles of all the updates that are ready to be installed on the computer. Highlight the host and then select Actions > Windows Updates > Check for available updates. In the screenshot below we can see the list of updates on available on my computer at the moment.
    CheckForAvailableUpdates
  2. For the sake of this example, let’s hide the first update in the list, titled “Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2952664).” Highlight the hosts that you want to hide the update on and then select Actions > Windows Updates > Hide / unhide updates > Create/modify list of specific updates for hiding.
  3. In the new windows that appears, we have the option of either listing the exact title of the update or just a piece of the title. We can enter one entry per line. BatchPatch will examine the list of updates that are available, and if any of those updates contains one of these entries in the update title, the update will be hidden. Generally speaking, the simplest way to proceed is to enter the KB ID number for each update that we want to hide. However, occasionally an update title might not contain the KB ID, in which case we would simply copy and paste the exact title into the list. In this example I’ve input the KB ID of the update that we want to hide.
    CreateListForHidingUpdates
  4. Once we’ve added the update(s) to our list, we are ready to execute the action to hide the update. There are two ways to do this. We can either simply click the Execute button, which will hide the update on all selected hosts, or we can click the Save button, which will save this “Hide list” for all of the highlighted rows. Once the “Hide list” has been saved for a given row or set of row(s), to actually hide the update we would click on Actions > Windows Updates > Hide / unhide updates > Hide updates.
    HideUpdates
  5. We can see in the screenshot above that the update has been hidden. Now when we execute a new “Check for available updates,” the hidden update doesn’t appear in the list. When we install the available updates, the hidden update will not be installed. If at some point we decide that we want to view the list of installed updates and/or unhide the update, we can do so very easily by using Actions > Windows Updates > Hide / unhide updates > List hidden updates along with Actions > Windows Updates > Hide / unhide updates > Unhide updates.

    ListHiddenUpdates

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Create a Consolidated Report of Windows Update History

By Scott | Published: July 8, 2014

We have received numerous requests for the ability to create Windows Update history reports with BatchPatch. I’m happy to announced that the latest build of BatchPatch (2014.07.01) has a new reporting option that enables you to quickly retrieve the entire history of Windows Update actions from target computers. The output is consolidated so that you can look at all updates across all target computers in a single grid. This means that it’s now simple to retrieve a list of updates that have been installed on a particular computer or set of computers.

To generate an update history report, add hosts to a BatchPatch grid and then highlight the hosts that you want to include in the report. Next, click Actions > Windows Update > Consolidated report of update history. This will launch the Update History Report settings form.

BatchPatch_ConsolidatedUpdateHistoryReport

The report settings allow you to easily view just a specific date range, with the default set to show only the most recent 30 days of history. Additionally, you can choose to specify inclusion or exclusion criteria, so that only updates titles that match the text entries you provide will be included or excluded. This makes it easy to retrieve update history for only a specific update, or to exclude update history information for a particular update. Note that exclusion criteria will override inclusion criteria in the event there is a conflict when both search fields are used simultaneously. Using the inclusion/exclusion fields are completely optional. You may instead choose to simply retrieve all Windows Update history for a given date range, and then you can simply sort the report to view the information that is important to you.

The report is generated in real-time by querying each machine for information about its Windows Update history. The output includes the host name, update title, date installed/uninstalled, action performed (installation/uninstallation), status of the action performed (success/failure/in-progress), as well as the application that performed the action.

The final output is both sortable and exportable, and there is also a find feature that enables you to quickly jump to a cell that contains your search text. The export options give you the ability to create pipe-delimited, tab-delimited, or XML reports, which can then be opened in your favorite spreadsheet application or imported into a database.

Consolidated Update History Report Output

This new report feature should make it easier to monitor the status of Windows Updates on your PCs while maintaining compliance with the security guidelines of your organization. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or issues, please feel free to post a note in the forum or send us an email.

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BatchPatch – New Build Released July 2014

By Scott | Published: July 2, 2014

Hey everyone! We published a new build today, and I wanted to take a moment to share with you some of the updates that have been made. While this build was primarily a bug-fix release, we also included a few features worth noting. In particular, we’ve added some reporting options for Windows Update history, which many of you have been asking for!

Consolidated Windows Update History Reports

You asked for it and now you’ve got it! Windows Update history can be viewed very easily now using the report history option. To generate an update history report, add hosts to a BatchPatch grid and then highlight the hosts that you want to include in the report. Next, click Actions > Windows Update > Consolidated report of update history. This will launch the Update History Report settings form. From there, select the options you want and click Generate Report. More info on this feature is available here.

BatchPatch_ConsolidatedUpdateHistoryReport

Consolidated Update History Report Output

Exclude Specific Columns from Being Automatically Unhidden by BatchPatch

This minor addition makes it easier to customize BatchPatch so that it displays only what you want it to display. By default, when an action is executed in BatchPatch, BatchPatch automatically opens any column that is written to by the action. However, there are times where you might not want to ever see certain columns, and now it’s easy to exclude them from auto-unhide operations.

ExcludeColumnsFromAutoUnhide

New Row Index Column

A number of you have asked for a Row Index column to help keep track of your hosts. This has now been added, but it’s hidden by default. If you want it to be displayed at all times, simply untick the ‘#’ box in the “except these columns” form mentioned above.

RowIndexColumn

New Build Downloads Now Accomplished In-App

Some of you have had problems downloading BatchPatch from the “New Build Available” form using “Help > Check for updates.” These problems occur as a result of IE security settings. While it’s simple enough to whitelist https://batchpatch.com in the security settings to resolve the issue, we modified the code to now execute the download process inside of BatchPatch instead of launching the default web browser, which should ease some of the pain and confusion when updating your software. The web browser download will be used now only in the event of a failure of the in-app download.

UAC Elevation Code Update

Generally speaking there is no need to run BatchPatch with elevation. However, in the event that you are trying to perform actions on the computer that is running BatchPatch, as opposed to a remote target computer, BatchPatch does need to run as administrator. The code that warns you of this fact has been updated to be more accurate and robust. Previously there were certain conditions that would prevent the elevation prompt from appearing, but now BatchPatch should be better about telling you if you need to elevate.

Bug Fixes!

We fixed a number of very minor to slightly-less-minor bugs in this build. I’ve listed a few of the more notable ones below:

  • Fixed bug in Get Registry Key/Value so that quotation marks are automatically added, preventing Invalid Syntax errors
  • Fixed email notifications and HTML exports to not display Event Log, Remote Agent Log, and All Messages columns unless they are visible in the BatchPatch grid
  • Fixed bug in Remote Process/Command where WMIC commands would fail to execute under Remote Command 1/2 even though they would execute successfully under Remote Command 3/4
  • Fixed bug in concurrent thread maximum where trying to set it below the number of logical processors in the system would not change the setting at all
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BatchPatch Performance Tuning

By Scott | Published: June 23, 2014

Hey everyone! This week I’d like to take some time to talk about getting the most out of BatchPatch from a performance perspective. As you have probably already discovered, BatchPatch is geared toward doing a lot of things at once. One of the most important design elements for us was to figure out a way to allow the user to execute a lot of tasks in a very small amount of time. We didn’t want to bog down the user interface with a lot of extra windows requiring lots of clicks to get the software to do your bidding. We wanted to keep things simple, intuitive, and fast, while still being very powerful for getting the job done effectively.

We know that the large majority of BatchPatch users are highly skilled technical wizards (frequently referred to as sysadmins) who really know what they’re doing when it comes to computers and networking. We like to think of ourselves as more than just average power users, and we wanted BatchPatch’s interface to be driven as much as possible by function, giving the user as much control as possible, rather than dumbing-down the interface at the cost of functionality. We know as well as you do that there’s nothing more annoying than a clunky app that shields the user from the core functionality of the app so much that it begins to feel like you’re not driving the app, and instead the app is driving you.

There were a number of trade-offs that we made during the development process, always bent toward providing the user with maximum control, even if it meant that in some cases the user could dig him/herself into a performance bottleneck. For example, BatchPatch allows you to execute actions such as remotely installing Windows Updates, remotely installing software, or remotely executing scripts on an unlimited number of machine simultaneously. The awesome thing about this is that tasks can be accomplished extremely quickly since BatchPatch can be configured to allow a very large number of execution threads to run concurrently. The downside is that if you attempt to execute more simultaneous threads than the computer or network connection is able to gracefully handle, you could end up causing the computer to stutter a bit in its responsiveness while it completes all those tasks.

I know for myself that I don’t want to be limited by some over-protective factory setting that isn’t changeable. We we believe that our super-savvy users should have the final say over how the app runs rather than being limited to settings geared for less savvy users. One area where this holds true is with maximum thread count. BatchPatch is a multi-threaded app that takes advantage of the capability of modern processors to run numerous different execution threads simultaneously. In fact, if you happen to watch the ‘Threads’ column in the ‘Process’ tab of Windows Task Manager when you execute an action across a large number of hosts in BatchPatch, you’ll see that BatchPatch might quickly spin up many more threads than any other app running on your computer. Of course once the action completes those threads are released back to the OS.
TaskManager_BatchPatch

In the Tools > Settings window, we provide an option called “Concurrent Thread Maximum.” The default value is set to 100, but you can choose any number you like, with 0 being an unlimited number of threads. The concurrent thread maximum value is used to control the number of worker threads that will execute concurrently. If you execute a set of actions simultaneously on more computers than the concurrent thread max value is set to- so for the sake of this example let’s imagine executing a remote Windows Update installation on 200 computers when the concurrent thread max is set to 100- you’ll notice that the first 100 rows begin execution immediately while the second 100 rows show a status of ‘Queued.’ As computers in the first 100 rows complete their actions, their threads are freed up for the queued rows to begin executing.
ConcurrentThreadMaximum

If you’re running BatchPatch on a computer that doesn’t have a lot of CPU power and/or RAM you might want to decrease the concurrent thread max. If your computer has a lot of horsepower, you might consider increasing the concurrent thread max or even removing the limit altogether by setting it to 0. It’s your choice.

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Wake On LAN with BatchPatch

By Scott | Published: June 9, 2014

BatchPatch provides Wake On LAN (WoL) capabilities, which makes it convenient when you need to remotely power-on (wake) computers on your network. Some folks like to use Wake On LAN in conjunction with their routine maintenance for patching / updating their computers. The reason this can work nicely is because once you have Wake On LAN configured for your computers, you’ll be able to patch them even if they are powered down when your maintenance window begins. With Wake On LAN you’ll be able to remotely power-on the computers, initiate the patching process, and then optionally shut them down again after completing the maintenance. Note, Wake On LAN needs to be enabled in two places before it will work. Below we will explain how to enable it in both the BIOS and in Windows.

Enable Wake On LAN in the BIOS


To access the BIOS on a computer, you’ll need to restart the computer while sitting watching the console. During the setup phase, you should be prompted to enter the BIOS by pressing a hotkey on your keyboard. For many BIOS manufacturers this is F1 or Delete, but it could be any key. Read what is displayed on your console and follow directions to enter the BIOS or SETUP. If you’re unable to proceed, consult the documentation for your computer hardware from the manufacturer.

Once you’ve entered the BIOS / SETUP for your computer, go to the power management section. You need to find the entry for WOL, Wake-up, PME (Power Management Events) or similar. Enable the setting. The AMC BIOS page for Wake On LAN is shown below under “PME Event Wake Up.”
PME_Event_Wake_Up

Enable Wake On LAN in Windows


Now that you’ve enabled Wake-on-LAN in the BIOS, you must also enable it in Windows. Launch the ‘Network Connections’ screen by opening the ‘Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings’ screen. You can also get to this screen by clicking ‘Start > Run,’ and then type “control netconnections” without the quotes.
NetworkConnections
From here, right-click on your ‘Local Area Connection’ and select “Properties.”
LocalAreaConnectionProperties
In the Local Area Connection Properties window click the “Configure” button. You’ll be presented with all of the configuration options for your network adapter. In the “Advanced” tab, find the option for Wake-on-LAN. This might be presented as “Magic Packet” or similar. Use your judgement to determine the correct setting since different network adapter drivers will present it slightly differently. In the screenshot below you can see that my computer lists it as “Wake on Magic Packet.”
WakeOnMagicPacket

Adding MAC addresses to the BatchPatch Grid


Now that you’ve configured your computer to wake when it receives the “magic packet,” you’re ready to use BatchPatch to initiate the wake-on-LAN process. The MAC address of the target computer is required for Wake-on-LAN, and you have a couple different ways to get it into the BatchPatch grid.

Option A:
Load the target host name into the grid and then retrieve the MAC address by using the “Get Information > Get MAC Address” option. Note, that under certain conditions if a machine has many MAC addresses with multiple active network adapters, it’s possible that BatchPatch will retrieve a MAC address for an adapter that is not on the network that you expect. In this case you might have to revert to Option B.

Option B:
Load the target host name WITH its MAC address by using the following syntax in the “Add Hosts” dialog:
targetHost1#1B6C65E5541D
targetHost2#1A5D27F3451B
targetHost3#1C4B38C2214C
BatchPatchAddHostsWithMACs
BatchPatchX3

Sending the Magic Packet


Now that you have your hosts and MACs loaded into the BatchPatch grid, you’re ready to send the magic packet to wake the target machines. Highlight the hosts and go to Actions > Wake on LAN.
BatchPatchWakeOnLANMagicPacketsSent

Subnet-Directed Broadcast for Wake on LAN


The default broadcast address that BatchPatch uses when performing Wake on LAN is 255.255.255.255. This address is used to specify the local network that the BatchPatch computer is connected to. If you wish to direct your Wake on LAN packets to a different subnet, you may modify the broadcast address in BatchPatch by selecting the row(s), and then clicking ‘Actions > Wake On LAN > Modify broadcast address / port‘. So for example if your BatchPatch computer is on the 192.168.0.0/24 network and your target computer to wake is on the 192.168.1.0/24, then you would use the broadcast address 192.168.1.255 to send the magic packet.

It’s important to note that routers are frequently configured to disallow subnet-directed broadcasts, so in order for this to work you would have to configure the routers involved to allow such broadcasts.

When testing Wake on LAN it always makes the most sense to start by having the device that is sending the WoL packets on the same network as the devices that will be woken up. First get everything working with the devices on the same network before you attempt to perform WoL to a different subnet. This way once you have gotten everything working on the same network, if you then subsequently have problems with the subnet-directed WoL you’ll know that the issue is due to the cross-network configuration, not with the target computer configuration.

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