How does Update Date Filtering Work?

[ps1705]

I am using Batch Patch in Offline & Cached mode. It is November & I need to apply updates from October, but not apply November updates yet. The November updates were released on Nov 8th, which is the same day I downloaded the wsusscn2.cab file. I set “Update Date Filtering” to 18 days, which is between the time that the October & November updates were released. When I run “Retrieve consolidated url list of available updates (with filters applied)” on the offline BP PC, it returns a list of URLs that includes November updates, but not any October Updates. It appears that this can be used to skip installation of the November Updates. However, is there a way to get it to add the October updates to the URL list?

[doug]

The filtering mechanism enables you to filter which of the available updates you want to be included or excluded. The key word here is “available.” That is, an update has to be presented as available to then be included or excluded by the filter. If an update is not presented as available, then it can’t be installed.

When Microsoft releases the new cumulative update for a given month, it replaces the cumulative update from the previous month. Similarly, the WsusScn2.cab file from November will contain the cumulative update from November. It won’t contain the cumulative update from October.

If you are in November and want to install the October cumulative update using offline mode, then you would need the WsusScn2.cab file from October. If you don’t have that file then you would need to manually obtain the desired updates from the Microsoft Catalog. After you download the desired updates from the catalog you can then use the ‘Deploy’ feature in BatchPatch to deploy that update to target computers.

In the future if you intend to always be working in offline mode a month behind, then just make sure to download and retain the WsusScn2.cab file from each month. Then when it comes time to perform the installation you can use the WsusScn2.cab file from the desired month.

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