Microsoft ofters a free tool that allows you to scan your computer (or via the network, any computer you have administrative authority over) for any security vulnerabilities, these include:

• Administrative Setting Vulnerabilities
• Weak Passwords
• IIS Vulnerabilities
• SQL Vulnerabilities
• Missing Microsoft Updates (Windows, Office, .Net, etc)

You can download it here

Once you scan your computer, it will point out the problems, including the missing updates. You can click the link titled ‘result details’, and it will provide a list of missing updates, with download links. Store all of these missing updates in a folder

The Advantages to this method are:

1. You only need to download each update once
2. We will run the updates with some extra switches to make them faster
3. There is no need to install the Windows Update ActiveX control, so you can keep your browser locked now. This solution also beats ‘Windiz Update’, because you are getting the updates directly from Microsoft, instead of a third party.

The keep to speeding up the install of the updates are the following switches:

1. /passive - so you don’t have to click ok, next, next, next, finish for each update
2. /norestart - so your computer doesn’t reboot until the end
3. /nobackup - this stops the update from creating a restore point, and uninstall information, this saves ALOT of time when you are installing the 70+ updates for a fresh install of windows.

So, here is my little batch file for running the updates on all of the computers on your home network.

@echo on
net use U: \\COMPUTERNAMEsharedupdatefolder /persistent:no
U:
for %%f in (*.exe) do %%f /passive /norestart /nobackup
pause

[tags]windows, xp, vista, security, patch, updates, microsoft, virus, spyware[/tags]