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Any way to get automatic updates in reusable form?
Is there any way to re-use the Windows updates that I've already installed?
I upgraded from 32-bit XP to 64-bit Win7, and I'm trying all kinds of shareware and drivers to get it the way I want. I end up discarding most of them, and I like to reinstall Windows after I've accumulated a bunch of junk in my registry (a bad experience has put me off of registry cleaners forever).
I don't mind letting Windows download and install updates once, but if I reinstall Windows, I don't want to have to download them again (I have very limited bandwidth). Reading through this board, I found a post that said the downloaded updates are stored in Windows/Software Distribution/Downloads, but when I looked there, I only had one file, and the name was no clue to what it did. I know that when I installed Win7, I downloaded over a dozen updates, and I know I've never deleted anything from that folder. Did turning Automatic Updates off make the files disappear?
I ran Windows update again today for the first time in a month, and it said there were four new updates for my OS. I let it download and install, and now the Download folder has three files with long hexadecimal names, plus two folders that contain over a hundred items between them. Not intuitive, to say the least.
Is there any way to just download the updates without installing them, so I can save them and run them any time I do a reinstall? I know I can go to the Windows download site and download the KB files, but they have about 50 files for every one I really need, and it would take a day to sort through them all. So I would really like to let Automatic Updates do the downloading for me, but then leave them in KB form, so I can install them and re-install them whenever I want.
Is there any way to do that? Thanks for any help.