We Got Served

Andreas M is the author of Advanced Admin Console, one of the most popular add-ins for WHS.  Recently, Andreas released a new add-in called Update History.

And what is Update History?  Per Andreas:

This addin displays the complete system update history so that Windows Home Server owners can make sure their machine is fully patched and up to date.

Updates can be listed in groups (grouped by installation date). The details panel shows descriptive information on the update selected in the list. For updates that contain a Microsoft Knowledgebase article id in their title a direct link to the respective article is provided.

You can review the Windows Update log file and the system event log from the toolbar. So in case an update installation failed you can easily access the logs to find out the reason for the failure.

Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:SoftwareAdd-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

Reopen the WHS console, scroll over and click on the Update History tab.  You will be presented with a listing, by date, of the Update History for your WHS.

In most cases (hopefully all), you will see that green checkmark to indicate a successful update has occurred.  As can be seen below, I did find one that did not install, at least the first time.  Clicking on this update item, or any item for that matter, will provide you the details associated with that particular update.  This information is displayed in the right-hand window, as can be seen below.

If you click off the Group item and Details item along the top menu bar, you will get a simple listing of updates as seen in the following picture.

Turning on the Group item will provide you the update history by date

while turning on the Details item will bring back the Details window.

If you click on Open log file, the add-in will open up the WindowsUpdate.log file in Notepad.  As can be seen below, this option provides you all sorts of information that is most assuredly at the top of your “must know” list.

A nice option is the ability to limit the listing of updates to a keyword.

Going back to the Details window, you will notice one to two links are listed there.  One is the general Microsoft Help and Support URL,

while the other link will take you directly to the KB article associated with that particular update.

And that is Update History.  Is this a “must-have” add-in?  No.  Is it a useful add-in?  I think so.  It will let you know if an update failed to install.  This add-in provides you the link specifics for a particular add-in, so that you can obtain additional information on the reasons for an update.  Both of which are very nice features to have.

The one “feature” that is hinted at, which would be the most useful, is this: “This addin displays the complete system update history so that Windows Home Server owners can make sure their machine is fully patched and up to date.”  If I read this correctly, then Update History should also let you know if you are missing any updates.

It was time to test this theory on a different WHS machine, as my production WHS is up to date.  I have an old Dell 2350 sitting around.  I stuck a 120 WHS Evaluation Disk into this machine; installed WHS; installed any missing drivers; installed Update History.  I opened the console, clicked on Update History, and watched the console close after a bit.  OK, I assume the Update History requires PP1.  I went to Windows Update and installed PP1.  Along the way, Microsoft also auto-installed Update Agent.  The results?

I could now open Update History.  As can be seen below, it showed my initial PP1 update failure plus the the successful PP1 update.  It did not show the Update Agent update

as can be seen below in Windows Update History.

Next, I let Windows Update do an Express update.  287 MB’s later, Update History provided a listing of all the updates that had tried to install or had installed.  Going back to Windows Update indicated 4 additional High Priority and 4 Optional Software updates could now be installed.  Update History did not provide any information about these available updates.

So, just do not think that this add-in will tell you that your “machine is fully patched and up to date.”    Simply not true.

It is still a very useful add-in, however.  It simply does not do everything it says it can do.

Author: Andreas M

Version Reviewed: 0.2.0 Beta

Release: 13April2009

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