RSSUnified Microsoft Update Site Goes Live
By David Worthington | Published June 6, 2005, 8:47 AM
After several months of testing, Microsoft Update has gone live. Microsoft Update unifies patching for Windows and Office, providing performance and security updates to customers through Microsoft's "Update Services" platform.
The advent of Microsoft Update was first announced by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates during his keynote address delivered at the RSA 2005 conference in February.
Steve Ballmer will publicize the delivery of Microsoft Update during a keynote presentation at Tech Ed this week.
When a user visits the site, they are welcomed by a legal notice and are prompted to review their original product license agreements. "When you use this website, original Microsoft product license agreements may apply to the updates you choose to install. This is because some license agreements for Microsoft products indicate that they also apply to updates for those products," read a notice on the Web site.
"In addition, you may have elected, for example, during product installation to accept future updates for a product without reviewing another copy of the applicable licensing agreement."
The launch of Microsoft Update coincides with the launch of Software Update Services 2.0 (SUS) and Windows Update Services (WUS) - known collectively known as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). The services audit desktops for necessary patches, and extend options for patch deployment, data migration and reporting. Ballmer is also expected to announce these services in his keynote.
Although it is intended for business customers, WSUS is the baseline management infrastructure for Microsoft Update. Microsoft Update will contain Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS 2.0) to make better use of available bandwidth, as well as packages wrapped in Windows Installer (MSI) 3.1 to improve the patching process.
Microsoft Update is located at update.microsoft.com. Windows Update and Office Update will remain open for an indefinite period of time while users are transitioned to Microsoft Update.
I am running Windows XP, Office 2003 and MS SQL 2000 SP4.
I can only update Windows and Office. I can't see SQL on Microsoft Update.
Is SQL 2000 not supported?
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|SQL was planned to update as well, but I think it is going to come out at a later date.
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|Well you had better luck than I did, I can't even get it to give me office updates. At first I thought it was because there were no updates for my version of office, but right after I went to Microsoft update I used office update and it found four updates that I needed to install. However, Microsoft update only seems to be looking for windows updates. I am using office 2003, any thoughts on why this might be happening? The other thing I've noticed is that when you go to microsoft update it is still refered to as windows update, as if it is still primarily intended for updating just windows. In short, aside from the new interface, I don't see much of a difference at all between windows update and microsoft update. Am I doing something wrong?
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|Be sure to visit http://update.microsoft....e/v6/default.aspx?ln=en
It should work for Office 2003
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|Apparently Microsoft doesn't have all their redirects to Microsoft Update yet, just the Windows Update V6 redirects. For the moment, you must opt-in to the Microsoft Update V6 site using the URL posted by Limbo.
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|Well that URL definitely works, thanks so much. Is this a problem that is being worked on?
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|It certainly works, but it seems a bit slow at checking for the updates now. Probably a lot of people using it however. Its great that it now works with all products. But I've just been handed an update for Frontpage 2003 which I don't own!
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|If you have installed Microsoft Office (any version) and have done a Custom/Full install, then you allowed it to install the Web Components which allows office to generate web page content, which is based on the FrontPage Extensions. That is probably why you received the update.
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|This has been a long time coming. Good work Microsoft for making every SQL, Exchange, Network and Systems Administrators lives that much easier. Job well done.
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