What servicing questions do you have?

I am finishing up some training internally here on servicing technologies and will probably leverage some of that content to this blog for external consumption after the holidays. 

One thing I wanted to know from those of you who look over the blog is what specific questions you have in regards to servicing and how it works?  I would like to make sure that I address some or all of those questions next year.  I ask that you dont ask questions that you know I cant really answer for you like "Why dont you bring back update.exe?" and things like that, I dont have control over that.

However I think we could have some good discussions on how different things work, how they are fixed, etc.  I still welcome criticism in the comments too, I just wont be able to do much about them here :)

Hope everyone has a good holiday period, please load up the comments and I will do what I can.

--Joseph

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Thanks for the comments so far guys, keep them coming.  I will address both of these early next year.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Another one: Why is the /passive switch not supported for updates. With update.exe, there was a "/passive" switch that was IMMENSELY USEFUL when installing batch updates via a script as it was UNATTENDED but displayed the progress. WUSA only has the /quiet switch but does SILENT unattended installs. Please also support the /PASSIVE switch for future updates perhaps beginning with Windows 7 SP1. Right now I am forced to use a command prompt/cscript to install MSU updates to I can see its process has exited and the next one has begun installing.

• Anonymous
  December 19, 2009
  Many times after reinstalling Vista, I can't reliably install already downloaded *.cab updates (things like Ultimate Extras and Bitlocker repair tool etc) using pkgmgr. Sometimes, the packages "install" (appear in Programs & Features) but actual files are not installed (no games in program files) and shortcuts don't appear in Start menu. I have to uninstall and installing again makes them work sometimes. This never happens with MSU updates because they're maybe handled by WUSA.exe? The same issue also doesn't arise if I install Extras and cab updates from Windows Update. This happens on Vista SP2 (both 32-bit and 64-bit).

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2009
  Another question as there seems to be confusion over the internet: Can SP2 be slipstreamed into an Vista with SP1 image or not? Or we must use the complex install SP2 on SP1, capture, generalize (Reverse integration method?