Getting started with WuInstall

WuInstall is a Windows command line tool that allows IT administrators to script Windows updates. It makes the whole update process more controlled and user friendly. It allows administrators to force Windows updates to be checked, downloaded and installed at times when it makes sense. The possibilities you have with WuInstall are huge, you can use it as a standalone tool or in combination with WSUS or other system management tools, you can manage a small network with 10 machines as well as huge networks with thousands of clients or servers.

Typical use cases for WuInstall are for example patching office clients at night time with a pre-defined set of update or servers at a certain maintenance window. Many times, WuInstall is used in combination with psexec in order to remotely patch machines. Many users also integrate Wuinstall with an existing system management tool (such as: Microsoft SCCM, NinjaRMM, Atera, Microsoft InTune).

1. Download and Install WuInstall

You can get WuInstall from the website http://www.wuinstall.com - there is a free, full functional 30 day trial where you can test whether WuInstall fits your IT infrastructure. After that, you can purchase your WuInstall version either online with credit card or contact us if you like to purchase via PO. Details see in our FAQ

There might be a free version of WuInstall with just the basic features at some point in the future, but right now we are focusing on the commercial version with advanced features.

Just download the zip files and unzip it - the only file you need is WuInstall.exe, there is no further installation of anything required, it is just a lightweight exe file you can call from any location. The biggest advantage over Powershell or other third party solutions is that Wuinstall has no dependencies on external DLLs, frameworks or Powershell library, so the .exe file can be used standalone.

There are three basic function of WuInstall: searching for updates, downloading updates and installing updates, with the options /search, /download, /install - each WuInstall call needs to contain - among other possible options - exactly one of those three options to make sense.

2. Search for Updates

A simple search is triggered via

wuInstall /search

It searches for all Microsoft Updates that are available for install on the current machine (Windows, Office, ...) - in quite the same way you would also see it in the update menu of the Windows OS - and lists them on stdout. Doing just a search has no effect on the machine and is mostly for automated or manual checking  which updates are available and for testing your scripts.

Of course, not always every update is welcome to install - there are many options to filter the search and include / exclude certain updates by name or KB number, also there is an option to write the result of the search including all information about the updates in an xml file - this can be very helpful when interacting with other software tools or custom scripts.