Thursday, June 11, 2009

Patch Tuesday - time to get to work

Patch Tuesday is the day of the month that Microsoft releases the month's security updates (second Tuesday of the month). This month is a doosie, so it's more important than usual.

(Yes, I know it's Thursday. No, it's not "Patch Thursday." I've been busy.)

Windows Update will do everything you need - all you have to do is make sure its turned on. There's a great tutorial over at James Madison University, that will walk you through getting it set up. Recommended.

3 comments:

Eseell said...

When I did internet tech support, Patch Tuesday was a dark day most weeks. In addition to Microsoft, several security companies push patches for their products on Tuesday.

Z@X said...

I have the auto-updater set to check for goodies everyday. This morning it came through with quite a blob of stuff; took 3 reboots if I remember correctly.

Is auto-updates still the best way to go for Windows?

Borepatch said...

Eseell, it was even worse before Microsoft put all the updates into a single release. People had to patch five or six times a month. :-p

James, yes = Auto Update is precisely what you want for Windows. The reboots are annoying, but there are actually good solid reasons why this has to be done.

To their credit, Microsoft has put a lot of work into making this easy. Hundreds of millions of folks getting security updates pretty painlessly, that's actually quite an accomplishment.