Category Archives: General

Offline Windows Patching for Isolated or Air-Gapped Networks

By Scott | Published: February 4, 2020

Applying Windows security updates to a network that is isolated from or completely air-gapped from the primary network can be a challenge and a pain. At the very least it means that you, the sysadmin, have to devise a patching plan for multiple networks. However, it also means that you need a way to figure […]

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Automatically Trigger an Email Notification for an Entire Grid Only After All Targets’ Actions Have Completed

By Scott | Published: January 28, 2020

There are different ways to utilize email notifications in BatchPatch. For example this link illustrates how to schedule email notifications or include them inside job queues. Additionally we have a couple of other tutorials on email notifications here and here. Today I would like to address a particular scenario for triggering email notifications that some […]

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A Utility to Schedule Windows Updates on Numerous Computers

By Scott | Published: January 14, 2020

When we first created BatchPatch it was intended to be used primarily as a real-time utility, where an administrator could initiate the download and installation process for Windows Updates on many target computers at the same time, while also being able to monitor the progress of each action on every computer all the way through […]

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Say Goodbye to Remote Desktop for Patch Management

By Scott | Published: January 8, 2020

Sometimes I forget just how many systems administrators are still using Remote Desktop to connect individually and manually to each and every computer on their network via Remote Desktop in order to manually install Windows Updates or third party software applications. The process often goes something like this: Sample Manual Update Process ::Maintenance window begins […]

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

By Scott | Published: December 18, 2019

To remotely apply Windows 10 feature update 1909 (as well as the other Windows 10 feature updates) to numerous computers using BatchPatch, you should follow the process outlined below. The built-in, default Windows update features in BatchPatch will not work to successfully deploy these feature updates in most cases, so instead you’ll need to follow […]

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A Tool to Automate Offline Windows Updates and Patches

By Scott | Published: December 9, 2019

A common issue that a lot of organizations face is how to apply various Windows updates and patches to “offline” computers that do not have internet access. Many companies operate high-security (or at least “higher-security”) networks that are segregated from their regular networks. The higher-security networks often do not have any internet connectivity whatsoever. Sometimes […]

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

By Scott | Published: November 22, 2019

One of the questions we are asked regularly is can BatchPatch work on computers that are *not* domain members? How does one go about making that happen? The answer is yes, in addition to working in a domain environment BatchPatch will also work on computers that are not members of a domain but rather are […]

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

By Scott | Published: November 13, 2019

We recently received a question about how to successfully run the Windows Disk Cleanup Tool remotely using BatchPatch. The user noted that when running cleanmgr.exe in BatchPatch on a target computer, the cleanmgr.exe would stay running indefinitely. This is essentially the same problem that we discuss in numerous places on this website when it comes […]

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Explanation of ‘Reattach Orphaned Windows Update Process’ Feature

By Scott | Published: October 29, 2019

There is a menu item in BatchPatch under ‘Actions > Windows updates > Reattach orphaned Windows Update process‘ that contains the following sub-menu-items: Reattach orphan + do not reboot / shutdown Reattach orphan + reboot if required Reattach orphan + reboot always Reattach orphan + shutdown What is ‘Reattach orphan’ ? The ‘Reattach orphan’ actions […]

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October 2019 Version of BatchPatch Released

By Scott | Published: October 25, 2019

We released a new version of BatchPatch at the end of last week. Below I’ll explain some of the updates that we made. Added Task Scheduler option to ‘Add/subtract days/hours/minutes to/from next scheduled run time‘ We’ve had a lot of requests from users who want to more easily be able to modify existing scheduled task […]

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