Hi guys, I just wanted to know if there's a way where I can store in an ISO, or external Hard Drive an image of all the updates which have been applied to the computer?
Is that I don't want to be downloading them again after I reformat my machine...
Thanks
.
Hello!
Unfortunately, this cannot be done. As Bill2 is giving you excellent advice on what you can do, I shall leave that to him, but just talk a little about your first question, partially so that future readers will know.
Contrary to popular belief, Windows Update does NOT store as many downloaded updates as many people believe. Once a downloaded installer is finished with, it is deleted to save disk space.
The directory for these still in use downloads is (as Bill2 said) "
%WinDir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download\" ("
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\")
For reasons I really don't want to get into, these are the updates you usually get left with in that folder:
Microsoft Office Language Pack parts/updates. (hard to re-integrate)
Microsoft IE - multiple versions/updates, including beta updates. (therefore most are useless to you on a new computer)
A few seemingly random (but actually not) Windows Updates)
There is also duplication between the downloaded installer, and extracted files from that installer.
Firstly, due to the complicated contents of that folder, you should not just copy it over to a new computer.
The folders within that folder only contain extracted files.
The actual downloaded installers are the files at the bottom.
And as I have already said, most are very small or useless (ie multiple version of Internet Explorer, when you only need the latest version)
Occasionally you might find a gem like an Office Service Pack, but then you have to correctly identify it, rename it, and then patch outside of Windows Update.
If I were you, stay away from that folder - there isn't much of value in it anyway, which is why I have never released a program which I wrote to recover installers from that directory (also, please don't try to clean it out - although it is a safe troubleshooting step should an analyst find evidence in a CBS.log that one of the extracted files or downloaded installers is corrupt - those installers are kept where others are not for a reason - and deleting this does have knock on effects, especially if you want to roll something back at a later date)
Finally, Microsoft sometimes releases multiple versions of the same installer quietly to sort out various issues - and you don't want old versions re-surfacing on a new computer.
I hope this helps you to understand that you really aren't missing much! Mine only has 399MB of installers, the majority of which are out of date, duplicated, or useless.
Richard
P.S. Try imaging as described above or
WSUS Offline. I sometimes help around WSUS Offline a little!