Software update services / Technet ability

I am the owner of a computer repair shop. We reinstall the OS on several
machines per day due to excessive spyware and/or virus infections. We are
CONSTANTLY downloading windows updates for machines that we have formatted
and installed a fresh copy of 98/XP/2000/etc.
I subscribed to Technet in hopes of a quicker and more efficient way to
update these "fresh installs", but the information is overwhelming!! Let's
take one of the most common scenarios as an example... and maybe you all can
tell me if this is possible: Fresh (re)installation of XP Pro on a
machine:::: We first install a local copy of XP SP2... then what?
1)Shuffle through the (in excess of 30+) CD's since November of 2004,
installing each and every update/download/hotfix?
2)Or... is there a way to load all of the current updates/hotfixes/downloads
that are contained in my technet CD's, as well as the ones that we get each
month - onto my server and point Windows/Microsoft Update utility there
instead of Microsoft's servers, letting that utility show me which updates
are there that this particular machine doesn't have, giving me the option to
install them? It would seem that MS would love to make this easy for us,
taking a load off of their servers and Internet connections, but I haven't
found an easy solution???

Hello Patrick, MVP Daniel Petri has done an excellent job at explaining
Microsoft Software Update Service: http://www.petri.co.il/sus.htm I am
guessing you are looking at something similar.
-- Anando Microsoft MVP-
Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org


Anando, Sounds like a fairly decent solution to the problem, but why doesn't
technet provide the same thing rather than, again, having to DOWNLOAD every
update... when they are all supposedly on the CD's/DVD's??? Anyway, I thought
I would give it a shot... downloaded the server and client... thought I would
install the client on a XP Pro SP2 machine first, and I immediately get the
error: "Microsoft Windows Update Auto Update requires Windows 2000 SP2 or
Windows XP." As I said, this is on a XP Pro SP2 machine... is this an
indication of the operability of this application?


Hello, I am not aware of the requirements of Software Update Services
provided by Microsoft. You might want to pose your question at the following
newsgroup: microsoft.public.softwareupdatesvcs
Good luck !