Teh Tech

Okay so Service Pack 3. Scary I know, I am always weary of big service pack rollouts. However if you don’t update to SP3, you are open to contracting some nasty bugs. Here are some simple install possibilities if you don’t have it on your network yet.  I suggest that you take a look at some of the install articles on SP3 and some of the complications people have experienced before doing a mass rollout.  Below are some options that might be helpful to you, but as always test on a few computers before rolling out to a bunch.  You might also want to check out this link for a explanation of the switches and arguments for installation. In my scripts below the switches I use will force all aplications closed, and do a backup of of the replaced files, and make a log.  A progress window is displayed during the install and at the end the computer is rebooted.  I found this to be the best option for rollouts as you can see the progress bar to estimate time remaining, and you do have a log and a backup if things go wrong.  I suggest you find the right mix of switches that work for you though.

1. Windows Update:  Works on small networks, though it might not be the best option on any network with more than a few computers.  

2. Network Install:  The file is available from Microsoft here.  Then all you have to do is install it, or script it.   I used this script to accomplish this at a few of my locations.  Note that you can run it over the network, but I like to copy it locally, just incase there is a network failure or i need to rerun it later for some reason.

3. Kaseya with cURLing:  This will create a ton of bandwidth usage if you push this to more than a few computers on the same network, as every computer will be downloading it to their local disk.  So I don’t recommend this to a really large network, and it is also best done at night just so you don’t get any complaints of slowness.  Also note that you are going to have to have curl on your kserver to make this work.  Check out this post for a quick explination of cURL or just download it here    The script will check to see if the computer is running SP3 already, if it is it will stop, if not it will download it and run an unattended install followed by a reboot.  

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