Windows Patch Management Software

By Scott | Published: August 11, 2020

The Ultimate Windows Update Tool

BatchPatch is the “Ultimate Windows Update Tool” for a reason. It’s inexpensive, it’s very easy and intuitive to use, and it “just works” when it comes to updating Windows. It can be used to apply standard Windows Updates in addition to managing patch deployments and software updates for third-party applications.

BatchPatch Animation

A Tool Designed for Systems Administrators

Systems administrators love BatchPatch because it was designed specifically for them, with a simple, straightforward interface that works in a way that “just makes sense” to people who work with computers for a living. A wise sysadmin once compared BatchPatch to a fighter jet, whereas some other Windows patch management applications can seem more like an aircraft carrier. We think the analogy is a pretty fair assessment. Some patch management software products can be extremely complicated and expensive to operate. They are slow moving and hard to steer. Their setup typically involves numerous servers with lots of moving parts, which can not only cost a lot of money but can also be a massive time sink for the administrators. They’re bloated, difficult to operate, and frustrating to troubleshoot. While it’s true that they will often offer a ton of different features, in many environments they are just way too much to deal with, especially when only a small subset of the features are typically even utilized. BatchPatch, on the other hand, is able to just swoop in rapidly with high maneuverability to hit the needed targets, and then get out quickly. The patching is completely done practically before it even started. We have many customers who have either completely switched to BatchPatch from these behemoth applications, or who have added BatchPatch as a supplementary tool for those times when they simply need to “get it done” without wasting hours struggling with their standard patch management tool.

Free Evaluation

If you’re new to BatchPatch, please download the free evaluation version so that you can test the software for yourself. In many environments it will “just work” right out of the box with zero configuration required. In those cases you can literally download the app, launch it, and start patching within seconds. In some environments BatchPatch will require a minimal amount of configuration to setup the proper permissions and firewall rules to get going. Have a look at the ‘Getting Started‘ page for details on how to setup your environment to work with BatchPatch.

Instructional Materials and Tutorials

We have numerous tutorials and instructional materials posted here, that will help you get the most out of BatchPatch, whether you just want to apply Windows Update to numerous computers, or if you need to deploy 3rd-party software to your entire network, or even if you need to orchestrate a complex sequence where target servers are patched and rebooted in a specific order, with scripts executed before and after patching, and with detailed requirements for which machines are offline at any given time.

Help and Troubleshooting

If you encounter any problems, have a look at these troubleshooting pages:
Troubleshooting Common Errors in BatchPatch
BatchPatch Troubleshooting Guide

Forums

You may also search the forums for help, or post a question there if you can’t find the answer you’re looking for.

Contact us

And of course you may also reach out to us directly with any questions or concerns.

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Applying Windows Updates to a Large Group of Computers En Masse

By Scott | Published: July 29, 2020

Many environments will be ready to use BatchPatch without any special or additional configuration required, but some might require a few tweaks in order for everything to work properly. If it’s the first time you’ve used BatchPatch, check out the ‘Getting Started‘ guide to learn how to configure your computers and network for BatchPatch.

Once you have everything configured properly, it’s shockingly easy to download and install updates on a large group of computers, en masse. It doesn’t matter if you’re using your own local WSUS server or if you’re using Windows Update or Microsoft Update. BatchPatch can work with all three. If you’re using a local WSUS, then your target computers are already going to be configured by Group Policy to point to the WSUS. When this is the case, BatchPatch should be configured under ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update > Server Selection’ to use ‘Default/Managed’ like in the screenshot below.

If you want to override the GPO and use Windows Update or Microsoft Update instead, then just select the desired option. For ‘Search Preferences’ we recommend that WSUS users select ‘Search for software updates’ AND ‘Search for driver updates’, and then tick every box under ‘Update Classification Filtering’ (except for “Upgrades”). This allows BatchPatch to find and download/install every possible update, which means that so long as an update is approved in your WSUS, BatchPatch will be able to find/download/install it. For people who are *not* using WSUS, we generally recommend selecing ‘Important’ AND ‘Recommended’ in the ‘Search Preferences’. Then tick every box on the left side of the ‘Update Classification Filtering’ settings. This will effectively enable BatchPatch to find/download/install the updates that Microsoft thinks you should have.

After your settings have been configured, the process is very straightforward to apply updates to numerous computers all at one time.

  1. Load the desired target hosts into your BatchPatch grid:Click on ‘Grid > Add hosts’ (or use one of the other options in that menu for importing hosts into the grid), and then add the desired hosts.
  2. Start the download and/or install process:Highlight the desired hosts, then select ‘Actions > Windows updates > Download and install updates + reboot if required’ to begin the download and installation process. If you want to first check to see which updates are available and would be downloaded/installed, use the ‘Check for available updates’ option or the ‘Generate consolidated report of available updates’ option.
  3. Monitor to completion:Once the process has begun you can pretty much sit back and watch everything happen. You’ll be able to see the status of download and installation for each target computer in the grid. As each target computer completes its update installation, BatchPatch will initiate a reboot (unless none of the installed updates require a reboot to complete) and automatically start pinging the target. You’ll be able to see the ‘LED’ status orb icon for each row (left-most column) change color as the host goes offline and comes back online, giving a very clear picture of the state of each host.
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Deploying a Registry Key / Value to HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU) – Part 2

By Scott | Published: July 20, 2020

Last year I posted this tutorial about how you can deploy a registry key/value to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU) registry hive of target computers. Following those instructions will enable you to place a registry key/value into the registry hive of all users who have logged on to the target computers. However, what if you want to deploy a registry key/value to target computers that will appear in the registry hive for users who have not yet ever logged on to the target computers? Is that possible? It sure is!

To deploy a registry key to HKCU for users who have not even logged on to the computer yet, you have to modify the *default* user profile. Windows uses a default profile as a template to create the profile for new users who log on to the computer. If you can successfully modify the default user profile to contain the changes that you want, then when a new user logs on to the computer for the first time, his/her profile will be created based on that default profile, which will include the modifications that you previously made to the default profile. So in this case what we have to do is load the registry for the default user profile on all target computers that we desire the modification to exist, then add our desired registry key/value to it, and then unload it. Pretty simple, actually. The process works like this: We’ll start by creating a batch file on the BatchPatch computer. This batch file is what will actually perform the work. We will use BatchPatch to deploy it to all of the desired target computers. BatchPatch will copy the batch file to each target computer and then execute it, effectively modifying the default user profile on all target computers.

Before we get started, if you have not already done so, please review this link, which explains the relationship between HKCU and HKU. It’s important to understand that HKCU is actually just a view into HKU for a specific user’s registry, which is explained at the aforementioned link.

  1. Create the batch file. To do this simply open notepad or your favorite text editor, add the following lines, and then save the file with a .bat or .cmd extension. I have called my batch file “Default_User_Reg.cmd” 
    REG LOAD "HKU\temphive" C:\users\default\ntuser.dat
REG ADD "HKU\temphive\Software\TestKey" /v TestValue /t REG_DWORD /d 1
REG UNLOAD "HKU\temphive"

    IMPORTANT: For your file, you’ll need to modify the second line to reflect the registry key/value that you want to create.

    As you can see, the second line in the script above is:

    REG ADD "HKU\temphive\Software\TestKey" /v TestValue /t REG_DWORD /d 1

    This will have the affect of creating a DWORD called TestValue with a value of 1 inside the HKCU\Software\TestKey of the computer that the batch file is deployed to.

    You’ll notice the script lines use HKU, not HKCU, so what’s happening here?

    Line 1 of the script loads the ntuser.dat file for the default user temporarily into the registry. The temporary location where we will be able to access the ntuser.dat registry will be HKU\temphive. Have a look at the screenshot below. You can see here what the registry looks like if you were to just run the “REG LOAD” command on its own. Notice how under HKEY_USERS we get a new “temphive” key. This “temphive” key is the HKCU hive for the default user profile, which is stored in the ntuser.dat file that we find in C:\users\default\ntuser.dat. If you have any questions about the syntax for REG ADD review this link from Microsoft.

  2. Once you have created your batch file, you’ll need to create a deployment in BatchPatch. Select ‘Actions > Deploy > Create / modify’, and make your deployment configuration look like mine in the screenshot below, optionally saving it with the double-right-arrow button, if desired:

  3. Now you’re ready to execute the deployment. Select all the desired rows in the grid, and then click on the ‘Execute’ button in your deployment window. Or if you have saved the deployment, then go ahead and execute it by selecting the menu item ‘Actions > Deploy > Execute saved deployments > Default_User_Reg

  4. If you want to check that the registry key/value has been properly added, go back to one of the computers where the script was deployed, and then run *just* the REG LOAD command in an administrator/elevated cmd prompt. Then launch REGEDIT to check for your changes. When your’re done, close REGEDIT, and then run the REG UNLOAD command to unload the ntuser.dat. The next time a brand new user account is logged on to the computer, it will already have the registry key/value.
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Deploying Windows 10 Feature Update Version 2004 (the ‘May 2020 Update’) to Numerous Remote Computers Simultaneously

By Scott | Published: June 29, 2020

Beginning with the April 2020 release of BatchPatch, all Windows 10 feature updates/upgrades can be applied using the standard/normal Windows Update actions in BatchPatch (‘Actions > Windows updates > Download and install updates‘ or ‘Actions > Windows updates > Install downloaded updates‘). However, please note that for that to work, BatchPatch must be running in default/non-cached mode, and you’ll need to select the ‘Include Upgrades‘ option in ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update‘. If you are using cached mode you’ll have to either switch BatchPatch to non-cached mode OR you may follow the procedure outlined below to deploy the feature update to your target computers. If you are using a version of BatchPatch that was released prior to April 2020, then just follow the instructions below.

  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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BatchPatch Remote Command Execution Options

By Scott | Published: June 24, 2020

BatchPatch has a number of commands and actions that are built-in and come with the software… Windows update commands, reboot and shutdown commands, wake on LAN, commands to get information from target computers about disk space usage, uptime, logged-on users, file version information, registry values, commands to review/modify services and processes, and a lot more. But what if you want to execute a command that isn’t already built-in? Obviously not all commands are going to be useful for all users, and we can’t include every command that ever existed in the history of all commands 🙂 Inevitably you might find yourself wanting to hard-code some of your own commands into BatchPatch to execute on remote systems.

BatchPatch provides a few different places and ways to store and execute your own commands.

1. Under ‘Actions > Get information > Create/modify user-defined commands‘ BatchPatch provides and interface for you to add your own commands. Once a command is added in this interface, the command will appear in the BatchPatch menu under ‘Actions > Get information > Execute user-defined commands‘

2. Under ‘Actions > Execute remote process/command‘ there are several options. Remote command 1, 2, 3, 4 can be created and will be stored in the current grid and visible in the row under which they are created. Commands 1 and 2 do not attempt to capture output and will only report exit codes upon execution. Commands 3 and 4 attempt to capture output, so that you can display the output in the grid upon execution. Under the hood the logged-output commands (3/4) have to be executed differently from the standard commands (1/2), and in some cases this difference can cause failure, which is why we separate these completely. If a command fails to execute under 3/4 it might be successful under 1/2.

Additionally under ‘Actions > Execute remote process/command‘ we have ‘Create/modify remote commands‘ and ‘Create modify remote commands (logged output)‘ where you can create commands that won’t be tied to a particular grid and will instead be saved globally for all BatchPatch instances that you launch. Commands created under these interfaces appear hard-coded in the BatchPatch menu under ‘Actions > Execute remote process/command‘ as ‘Execute saved remote commands‘ and ‘Execute saved remote commands (logged output)‘, respectively.

More details on hard-coding custom commands into BatchPatch can be found here: How to Hard-Code Your Own Custom Commands in the BatchPatch Actions Menu

Once a command has been hard-coded into BatchPatch, not only is it available for direct execution on target computers, but now it can also be included in job queues or be executed by the Task Scheduler. You can see in the screenshot below that the Job Queue window shows all of my previously created hard-coded commands, deployments, copy jobs etc. I can add any of them to a job queue for automation.

Additionally, all job queues will appear along with all hard-coded commands, deployments, copy jobs etc in the Task Scheduler so that you can schedule any job queue or command that you have previously created.

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There are no applicable updates in the filtered collection

By Scott | Published: June 15, 2020

Sometimes we’ll get an email from someone who is confused about the message ‘There are no applicable updates in the filtered collection‘. They’ll note that when they execute ‘Check for available updates‘, BatchPatch finds updates, but when they execute ‘Download and install updates‘, BatchPatch reports There are no applicable updates in the filtered collection. Below I’ll explain why this happens, how to understand what is going on, and how to get past it.

When you perform a search for updates using ‘Check for available updates‘, BatchPatch utilizes the search preferences that you have configured under ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update‘. You can see in the screenshot below that my search preferences are set to search for software updates (we generally recommend selecting ‘Important‘ and ‘Recommended‘ to emulate the search that the Windows Update Agent performs when searching for updates directly at the Windows Update control panel of a computer without using BatchPatch, but in this case I happened to have my setting on ‘Search for software updates‘ while I took screenshots for this blog posting).

You’ll also notice in the screenshot above that I have all ‘Update Classification Filtering‘ boxes unchecked. This creates a situation where even though BatchPatch finds updates when it searches for them, BatchPatch does not download or install any updates because the ‘Update Classification Filtering‘ checkboxes only apply to download and installation operations, while the ‘Search Preferences’ checkboxes apply to the search. When the ‘Download and install updates’ operation executes, instead of updates downloading and installing, BatchPatch displays There are no applicable updates in the filtered collection.

If we then look at the contents of the ‘Remote Agent Log‘ column we can see the details of exactly what occurred:

Six updates were found, but since all ‘Update Classification Filtering‘ boxes were unchecked in the settings, when BatchPatch applied the filters to the collection of updates that were found in the search, all updates were excluded. If you look at the section between “::Begin filtering collection” and “::End filtering collection” you can see that updates were “skipped” for the reasons shown, such as “Reason: UpdateClassification-Upgrades“, which indicates that the ‘Update Classification Filtering‘ box for “Include ‘Upgrades’” was not checked when the operation was executed.

There are other filters, in addition to the update classification filter, that could be the reason for you to find the filtered collection is empty when you attempt to download or install updates. The two other ways that updates get filtered are by date (see ‘Update Date Filtering‘ section of ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update‘) and by including or excluding individual updates (see ‘Actions > Windows updates > Filter which available updates are included or excluding when downloading/installing‘). In all cases, when you see ‘There are no applicable updates in the filtered collection’ all you have to do is check the ‘Remote Agent Log’ data (either by viewing it directly in the ‘Remote Agent Log‘ column after a Windows Update action or by using ‘Actions > Windows updates > View BatchPatch.log‘ which will retrieve the BatchPatch.log file from the target computer’s remote working directory. This file will include the log data for every BatchPatch Windows Update action that you have ever launched (unless you have ever deleted the file or directory that contains it)). The log data detail will point you to the particular reason your filtered collection is empty, and then you can adjust your filters, as desired.

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Windows Offline Update for Multiple Computers

By Scott | Published: June 4, 2020

You can use BatchPatch to apply Windows security updates to numerous computers that do not have internet access. Many organizations will have a high-security network where no computer on that network may access the internet. Further, it’s common to have the network so protected that it cannot even house a WSUS for update delivery. If you don’t have a WSUS and you don’t have internet access, how do you keep computers up to date? Below I’ll explain how you can use BatchPatch to fill the void.

On the one hand when you don’t allow the computers to access the internet, you increase their security by making it impossible to remotely access anything on the network, but on the other hand you make it harder to install updates, which is something you generally would want to do in order to improve security of the computers and close vulnerabilities in the operating systems. This is definitely a balancing act, but if you have a simple, straightforward method for applying updates to all of the offline computers, you’re going to be in much better shape than simply leaving the computers as-is, without ever updating them or with having to manually handle the update process on a periodic basis.

How does BatchPatch enable administrators to download and install security updates on an entire air-gapped / segregated network of computers?

BatchPatch actually provides a handful of different modes and methods for getting updates installed on offline computers. The method that you select will be primarily dependent on how strict the security rules and requirements are for the offline network. For example if the offline network is not completely air-gapped, and if you’re able and allowed to put BatchPatch on a computer that has both internet access as well as access to the computers on the offline network, then you’re going to select a different method than if the network is truly air-gapped or at least truly segregated such that no computer that has internet access can ever have direct access to computers on the network. However, even when you’re dealing with a completely segregated network, there might still be different levels of security required for that network. For example, in some cases you might be able and allowed to remove files from the offline network when needed, whereas in other cases the rules might be so strict that you are never allowed to remove anything from the offline network… or perhaps in some cases you are technically allowed to do such a thing, but the bureaucracy involved when it comes to change management processes is so burdensome that it’s barely ever worth actually trying to remove a file. BatchPatch provides different methods for each different scenario. There is always a balance between security and convenience, and BatchPatch attempts to provide the administrator with as much flexibility as possible to choose the least painful, most convenient method for any given offline network environment.

At the following page we go through all of the different scenarios, with detailed explanations. Each different scenario has a tutorial that explains how to download and install updates on your network, depending on the details and rules of your environment.

Cached Mode And Offline Windows Update

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Looping, Branching with Goto:Label in the BatchPatch Job Queue

By Scott | Published: May 21, 2020

The April 2020 release of BatchPatch has some new functionality in the job queue that we’re excited about. People have been asking for a while for more flexibility in the job queues, particularly to be able to create loops and have branching etc. We wanted the functionality to be as simple to use as possible while at the same time offering the most power and flexibility, and so we spent a lot of time working through the best way to incorporate these updates to meet those criteria. In the end we decided to use a combination of ‘Goto:Label’ with built-in ‘If/Then’ statements to accomplish that, and we’re happy with the results. Below I’ll give you some ideas of ways that you can use these new job queue entries. We have added the following entries to the ‘Special’ items list in the job queue:

'Insert label:X
'Goto label:X
'If previous action failed/errored (returned non-0), goto label:X
'If previous action was successful (returned 0), goto label:X
'If most recent 'Check for available updates' found 0 updates, goto label:X
'If most recent 'Check for available updates' found any updates, goto label:X
'If 'Get pending reboot status' returns FALSE, goto label:X
'If 'Get pending reboot status' returns TRUE, goto label:X
'If host is offline, goto label:X
'If host is online, goto label:X	
'If specified file exists, goto label:X'
'If specified file does not exist, goto label:X'
'If specified registry key exists, goto label:X'
'If specified registry key does not exist, goto label:X'
'If specified registry value exists, goto label:X'
'If specified registry value does not exist, goto label:X'
'If version of specified file is newer than Y, goto label:X'
'If version of specified file is older than Y, goto label:X'

Simple loop to update and reboot target computers until no more updates are found

1. label:YourCustomNameGoesHere
2. Download and install updates + reboot always
3. Wait 5 minutes
4. Wait for host to be detected online
5. Check for available updates
6. If most recent ‘Check for available updates’ found any updates, goto label:YourCustomNameGoesHere

Notify end users, hourly, to reboot, until the reboot has been completed

1. label:YourCustomNameGoesHere
2. Your custom notification message goes here, such as “Please reboot your computer as soon as possible.”
3. Wait 60 minutes
4. If ‘Get pending reboot status’ returns TRUE, goto label:YourCustomNameGoesHere

Execute a custom deployment only if a certain registry entry does not exist

1. If specified registry value does not exist, goto label:YourCustomNameGoesHere
2. Terminate queue
3. label:YourCustomNameGoesHere
4. Your custom deployment goes here, such as to install a particular piece of software

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Error 1605: Failed to create remote working directory. HRESULT -2147024829: The network name cannot be found.

By Scott | Published: May 13, 2020

Today I’d like to take a moment to talk about an error that I haven’t addressed specifically in the past but that does crop up sometimes. It can appear in any of the following ways, but each has the same cause/resolution:

Windows Update: Error 1605: Failed to create remote working directory.  Please check permissions on the target computer and verify your working directory path in Tools > Settings. HRESULT -2147024829: The network name cannot be found.
Windows Update: Error 1614: Failed to create remote working directory.  Please check permissions on the target computer and verify your working directory path in Tools > Settings. HRESULT -2147024829: The network name cannot be found.
Deployment: Error: Failed to create remote working directory.  Please check permissions on the target computer and verify your target working directory path in Actions > Deploy > Create/modify deployment: The network name cannot be found.

IMPORTANT: You might see 1605 or 1614 appear with a different HRESULT value and different error text. However, in this particular example we are specifically looking at HRESULT -2147024829: The network name cannot be found. Any other HRESULT value and error text would have a different cause and resolution.

Troubleshooting this issue is pretty straightforward, as there are generally only a couple/few reasons why it could be occurring.

  1. As suggested in the error text itself, the first thing you should do is check the ‘remote working directory‘ and ‘deployment directory‘ values under ‘Tools > Settings > Remote Execution > Remote Working Directory‘ and ‘Actions > Deploy > Create/modify deployment > Target working directory‘, respectively, depending on whether you are encountering the error while executing a remote command or a Windows Update action, or if you are encountering the error while executing a deployment. The default values that we recommend for these two fields are:
    Remote Working Directory: C:\Program Files\BatchPatch
    Deployment Target Working Directory: C:\Program Files\BatchPatch\deployment

    If either of these fields references a drive letter that does not exist on the target computer, the ‘network name cannot be found‘ error will occur. So, for example, make sure you don’t have your remote working directory set to Q:\Program Files\BatchPatch, unless the target computer actually has a Q: drive. If the drive letter itself exists, then BatchPatch will be able to create the directory/folder without issues (unless there is some other problem, such as a permissions issue, but that would manifest with a different error message).

  2. If you have verified that the target working directories are set to a valid drive letter and path, then the next thing to look at it DNS. Instead of entering the host name into BatchPatch, try the IP address. If the IP address works but the host name does not work, then you know you have some kind of name resolution problem on that system.

  3. If neither the host name or the IP address works without throwing the ‘network name cannot be found‘ error, then you’re probably looking at a firewall issue. Check the firewall on the target computer because it’s probably the culprit.

  4. If after all of the above steps you are still getting ‘The network name cannot be found‘ you could have an issue with your network connection. Are you able to ping the target computer either by name or by IP address? Are you able to browse directly to the target computer shares in explorer? You can try clicking on ‘start > run‘ and then typing ‘\\targetComputer\C$‘ without the quotes. Substitute the actual target computer’s name in place of targetComputer, and substitute the actual drive letter that your target working directory values are configured to use, if they are not configured to use the C: drive.

Hopefully this helps you get to the bottom of the issue and find the root cause.

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BatchPatch – New Version Released in April 2020

By Scott | Published: April 30, 2020

At the end of last week we released a new version of BatchPatch. Today I’d like to go over some of the new features available, some of which we think are going to be popular with our users. For a complete list of of changes, click on ‘Help > Check for updates > View changelog‘ inside the software.

Deploying Windows 10 Feature Upgrades with the Standard BatchPatch Windows Update Actions

For those of you who have used this BatchPatch deployment method to apply Windows 10 feature updates, note that you can now use the standard/normal Windows update actions in BatchPatch to install these feature updates. If you perform a ‘Check for available updates‘ and have a Windows 10 feature update showing in the list of available updates, now instead of using the deployment method, you may simply tick the ‘Include “Upgrades”‘ classification filter in the BatchPatch settings form. Then when you use the standard BatchPatch Windows update actions either to “Download and install updates” or “Install downloaded updates” (if the feature update has already been downloaded), that feature update will be downloaded/installed in the same way that other updates are. Note, this capability only exists in BatchPatch’s default operating mode. It will not work in BatchPatch ‘cached mode.’ If you are running exclusively in ‘cached mode’ then you’ll still need to use the deployment method described at the link above.

Job Queue Looping and Branching with Labels and Goto

For a while now people have been requesting even more flexibility with the job queue. In particular, users have been asking about looping and branching, so that they can effectively have a higher degree of control over their queues. We didn’t want to release such functionality until/unless we could make sure it would fit in with BatchPatch’s existing functionality in such a way that would enhance it without making any features more difficult to utilize.

In the BatchPatch job queue you can now set labels and create ‘goto’ commands that enable simple looping and branching in a very easy-to-use way. For example, one of the things that users like to do is repeatedly check for available updates, install any that are presented, then reboot and repeat the process until there are no more available updates. Yes, it would be great if you could simply install updates and reboot one time and be done with it, but all patching administrators know that sometimes Windows makes things a bit more tricky by not presenting certain updates until other updates have been installed first and the computer has been rebooted. So, sometimes it’s helpful to be able to repeat the download/install/reboot process a few times in a row. In BatchPatch you could always accomplish this, but it required you to manually set the number of iterations. However, now with the new label/goto functionality, you can create a single loop to perform the desired steps. Here is one possible way to do it (note, there are definitely other ways to structure your job queue to accomplish something similar, so don’t feel locked into this particular example)

Loop to download and install updates plus reboot until no more updates are found:
1. label:YourCustomNameGoesHere
2. Download and install updates + reboot always
3. Wait 5 minutes
4. Wait for host to be detected online
5. Check for available updates
6. If most recent ‘Check for available updates’ found any updates, goto label:YourCustomNameGoesHere

You’re also now able to goto a particular label based on whether or not the previous action failed or succeeded, the target computer is in a ‘pending reboot’ state, the target computer is offline or online, a particular file or registry key/value exists, a particular file version is newer or older than some number etc. Additionally, inside the job queue you can now set the row color or disable the row.

Other / Miscellaneous

The new version contains various other improvements and bug fixes. If you encounter any issues or have a suggestion for a future build, you can reach us here.

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