Many IT Pros know that Microsoft releases their monthly Patch Tuesday security updates as a downloadable ISO image each month as a tool that can be used by IT departments to manually update local systems.
Well did you also know that Microsoft has all of these images listed in a single Knowledge Base (KB) article?
According to Microsoft these monthly images are released so that system administrators in the following scenarios can easily distribute the updates:
- Manage large multinational organizations
- Must download multiple individual language versions of each security update
- Do not use an automated solution such as Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
As I was browsing through my RSS feeds this morning I saw a link to the August ISO download and decided to check out the Related Resources link, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/913086, that was provided in the KB article.
As I mentioned above, that KB article lists every single monthly ISO that Microsoft has released with their Patch Tuesday security updates since January 2006.
That is more than nine years worth of security updates in one place. I highly recommend bookmarking that site for future reference as it could be very handy.
While Microsoft listed a few usage scenarios above, I also think these ISOs could be used to update a clean install image of Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 without having to go through the Windows Update download and installation process that can be laborious and painfully slow.
You will want to make sure at least one cycle of Windows Update online is also performed after installing the ISO based updates so that any that have been revised since their initial release will be updated. I am sure the overall time and bandwidth saved will be well worth the initial download of these images.
Once that is done you can save that image for future use and minimize the subsequent update time required to deploy it for an active system.
Microsoft also recommends that you review the security bulletins at the TechNet Security website for specific info about the issued updates and the issues they address.
