All support for Auto Patcher has ended as of the August 2007 release. There will be no new releases. The Auto Patcher team is working on a new web oriented substitute with no planned release date.

This is a 3rd party utility, periodically updated, which contains all the hot-fixes, patches and updates for Microsoft Windows. There are separate versions for Win XP and Win 2000. This allows us to get a Windows install up-to-date (or very nearly so) without connecting it to the network. It also contains useful scripts for turning off problematic Windows features and other extras.

The autopatcher home page is http://www.autopatcher.com/ .

There are two primary steps to using Autopatcher: First, install a full release and any available updates of Autopatcher, and second, run Autopatcher on the system, select the desired updates, and have it actually update the system. Updating a system generally takes tens of minutes.

The ITS "Disk of Tricks" (DOT) includes a fairly current autopatcher release. Autopatcher is updated monthly, but many monthly packages include only the recent changes. Therefore, when installing autopatcher to a new machine, it is NECESSARY to always install a full release and then any monthly update releases. Autopatcher will fail or will not properly update the system if Autopatcher updates are installed without a previous Full release and all intervening updates.

Here are our "preferred" autopatcher settings, as of Dec 2006

Note that items that have already been installed have blue text.

MS Windows - Critical Updates

All

MS Windows - Recommended Updates

All

MS Windows - Updated Components

Use Autopatcher's defaults, which were all but Windows Messenger, Windows Media Connect, User Profile Hive Cleanup, and Windows Live Messenger

MS Windows Genuine Advantage

All (Otherwise Windows Update will require you to install it later)

Windows Addons

Registry Tweaks

• Security : All but "Disable password saving in IE" and "Disable Shared Documents"
• Speed : All

See also: Staff Pc Setup