Monthly Rollup... the real truth!

Hi,

please don't send me to read other stuff because I read many things but I am still very confused.

I will be clear so please help me.

There are many "unofficial" release of Windows 7 around, many of them are updated to the currect month.

INSTEAD, I prefer to use the old official Win7 SP1 ISO that is named: "X17-59215.iso" (64 bit).

Said that, I need to have a cumulative patch to apply after a fresh install.

To achieve that I should use the famous "Monthly Rollup".

But it's not so clear. A rollup *should* be a one and only patch that is cumulative and that take Win7 updated to the month of the rullup.

INSTEAD, many rollup are TOO SMALL to contain HUNDREDS of updates, i.e., the january 2017 rollup is 146MB!!!

I shoud think that a 2012 ISO is updated to NOW (after 5 years!) with a small 146MB patch???

ALSO, there are many patches that must be installed BEFORE apply the rollup, that update Windows Update service...

I am very confused about these concept.

May someone help me to understand it, starting to the fact that I always start from an ISO of 2012?

Thank you very much!

Pipppero2007, see the first post in this forum thread, especially the first two graphics. It explains your confusion.

The term "rollup", as Microsoft is using it, refers to updates only from last October. You'll still need to apply all earlier updates separately.

Microsoft plans to eventually include pre-October updates in future rollups, but I don't know if they've started that yet. According to the graphics in that post, they were hoping to start that with the "preview rollup" in February (and, I assume, the regular rollup the following month, though the graphic didn't go that far). But remember that MS had to cancel the February releases, so obviously they've fallen behind schedule, but I don't know by how far.

There're someone like me that use the first official ISO from MS?
Since W7 will install without issue even the latest "rollup", what's wrong if someone use it and then leave the rest to the Windows Update?
That's because the Windows Update wont work because its too old in that very old (but still the only official) ISO.

I'm still not exactly sure how the rollups work! If a user has been only installing the security-only updates, then decides to do the latest monthly rollup, will the rollup just download the non-security updates that are part of the rollup (since Oct 2016)? Or does everything get reinstalled again?

The size of each monthly rollup seems to be consistent each month, which makes it seem like either old updates are superseded by newer ones. Or, does the monthly rollup first check which post-Oct 2016 updates the user has installed, then download them separately?

Basically I'm wondering if the monthly rollup only downloads the "deltas" (latest changes since last monthly rollup install). If a user hasn't installed a monthly rollup yet, does it recognize that the security-only patches are already installed?

So confusing.

Btw, someone is still using the original ISO?

I still have an assortment of original ISOs I use whenever I need to do a clean install.

If I'm refurbishing a Win7 computer I'll reformat/repartition the hard disk, then use a DVD-RW made from the ISO to do a clean install. After that I install all the pre-October updates (which I have already downloaded and keep on a flash drive using WSUSOfflineUpdate), then finish by installing post-September Security-Only updates.

I do not deal with the monthly rollups, so have only anecdotal insight as to how they actually work. I'm only interested in security updates, and the monthly rollups include non-security updates as well, which I have no interest in installing.

Hi,

Why you speaking about October rollup?

Mine first is april 2016.

Also why only security and not the whole?