Patch Tuesday with PowerShell

It’s actually Wednesday here, but yesterday was another “Patch Tuesday” and Microsoft released its update packages.

So – it’s time to patch! 😊

Not sure how you’re patching your machines, but just wanted to make you aware of the nice PowerShell module called PSWindowsUpdate.

You can read more about it on the official PowerShell Gallery page and also here.

In short – this module takes care of controlling Windows Update from within PowerShell on your local and also remote machines.

And… I know it’s not nice like the Windows Update screen, but it does its job! 😊

To make use of it, you’ll have to take care of some minor prerequisites and install it via PowerShell Gallery.

Once done, you can use it to control Windows Update:

To make it easier for you, here is the installation script which takes care of… everything:

And that’s it – we’re done!

Happy patching!

Cheers!

Latest “Patch Tuesday” – errors installing update

Latest “Patch Tuesday” (May 13th, 2014) has brought us a pack of updates (you can read all the details about them here and here), but one of them was making trouble for me. The update I’m talking about is called “Security Update for Windows Server 2012 R2 (KB2920189)”. You can read more about this update in KB2920189.

I’ve tried to install it on a number of my Hyper-V virtual machines (Generation 2), but the update keeps failing with error 800F0922:

image

ISSUE:
This error and its cause is described in
KB2962824. In short, this update expects that the BitLocker feature is installed (not enabled or used, but installed) – in my case, the problem was Secure Boot, which is enabled by default on Generation 2 virtual machines.

RESOLUTION/WORKAROUND:
You can install the BitLocker feature on your Windows Server 2012 R2 servers before installing this update, or you can switch the Secure Boot off, install the update and switch it back on (I’ve decided to do the latter).

After switching the Secure Boot off, installing the update and switching it on again, the update installed successfully:

image

Have fun!