andrewm.

Thanks workablob and Pedro. Do you know if the "Detect Now" and "Report Now" commands in the context menu in Patch Manager do the same thing as wuauclt.exe /detectnow and wuauclt.exe /reportnow on the client? Also, do you know how long it takes for the views in Patch manager to reflect any status updates that have been…

I don't know what I was looking at. I must have had my eyes crossed. On second look, I see the same as you. There is no 14.0.0.179 ActiveX in the catalog. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for the suggestion. For testing, I delete any previously published test packages, duplicated a template package and changed the applicability and installed rules on each duplicate, then published all test packages. I then performed a detect and report on the client and checked the windowsupdate.log and the status on…

Thank you for the explanation, but I'm afraid that I don't understand why it is not supported to replace this self-signed certificate with one signed by my own CA which would be automatically trusted by client computers. It seems that this would not only prevent the certificate warning, but would be much more secure as…

Feel free to review a list of bugs and feature requests that I compiled for version 1.72. Many of these concerns are applicable in version 2.0 List of bugs and feature requests for Patch Manager 1.72

Thanks for the prompt and straightforward answer. I would certainly be interested in having a conversation about Patch Manager. I'll send you my number privately

As an aside, it looks like Patch Manager doesn't consider the additional files when calculating the package size. I haven't implemented the utility to increase the size limit, but I am still able to upload my 1.5GB package, though it takes forever. Also, in the package details view, PM shows that the package size is only…

Thanks, I'll give that a try

Thank you Brendon, that worked perfectly! I still don't understand why I couldn't use the .MSI installation with the PATCH and TRANSFORM switches like I was trying at first, but I could never get it to work, even though it works fine from the command line. WSUS must do some sort of pre-validation check on the msi that…

Sounds great! I've been using the third party package editor for custom updates and software deployments for awhile and it's been a huge time saver. I'd be glad to participate as a panelist if you still need any.

I was finally able to update the content by locating and deleting the read-only file from the package cache both on the server at C:\Program Files\EminentWare\Server\packages\publisher\<Package ID> and on my local workstation at C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\EminentWare\Packages\<Package ID>

Thanks David, that did it. Do you know what causes the database to become corrupted? Are there any precautions that I can take to help prevent it or to detect it before it begins to cause problems?

LGarvin wrote: ... both the registry value and the file must exist, and the File Version must match the specified criteria for the rule to return True; otherwise, if the registry value is missing or the file is missing, the rule will return False.... Don't you mean that the rule will return True if EITHER (1) the registry…

Thank you, I never considered the auto-approval rules but that's exactly what was happening.

In addition to JRE 7u17, Oracle has released the final-final patch for JRE6: JRE6u43. Java Downloads for All Operating Systems Version 6 Update 43

**7/5/2019: Updated to include summaries of updates through version 2.1.7 (6/6/2019). Still no notable improvements, aside from adding support for technology that had been out for over a year** Here's a short summary of the release note changes from the past 5 years of updates to Patch Manager. No new features in over 3…

I have seen no indication that there has been any significant development focus on this product for at least the past 5 years, and almost no development at all in the last 3. If you are hoping for any improvements in functionality, I wouldn't hold my breath. You may be better off looking for an alternative patch manager…

I'm still not seeing it. You claim that you've got folks working on this product, but the 2.1 update included only minor changes and, other than Windows 2012 R2 support, added no major features and addressed no significant long-standing bugs or UI issues. I have seen no updates on the progress of the new automation…

Thanks for the suggestions antwesor and Mark. I also found a very helpful resource in the Acrobat Enterprise Administration Guide for anyone else who needs to do this in the future. antwesors link (Update, patch | Acrobat, Reader 7.x - 9.x | Windows) has a helpful list of the required patches to bring Acrobat 9.0 up to…

You might also be interested in a detailed explanation from on how the file version with registry value works in applicability rules:

If the file is imported into the package, you will need to use packageboot and specify the path as [firefox.exe] /ini=%MODULEPATH%\configuration.ini In my experience, packageboot doesn't evaluate this environment variable when used in the command line of the main package, so you may need to add this install as a pre- or…

Now that the RC has been published are there any preliminary release notes available for the update? Can you disclose what has been fixed and what new features have been added?

Yep, perfectly acceptable. Even some of the SolarWinds third party packages do this - See the Java x86 on x64 update packages which run a couple of packaged batch files by calling cmd.exe from %windir%\system32 and passing the %MODULEPATH% variable

I have also caused the application to hang repeatedly by attempting to copy selected text. In the Managed computers node, select the Computer Details tab of a machine, highlight a block of text and press Ctrl+C. The mmc will often hang and must be forcefully terminated. I can't reproduce this reliably, but it seems to…

After more investigation, it appears that the application did install, at least partially. The java.dll file has been upgraded to 6.0.350.10; but in the control panel, Java is still reported at version 6.0.330 and as I mentioned above event viewer reports that the install failed and the msi install log was not written

So it appears that the folder names have some significance. I substituted the folder names in some of my previous examples above. Here are two blocks of data from the log file with verbose tracing on.. It doesn't really clear anything up for me, but this is the log for the failed package testing the actual file path…

Now I'm quite confused. I tried some more tests with different file names and paths in the applicability rule and I'm including the full results below "C:\9.1.4.3.5.1-03.txt" WORKS (returns applicable/not installed) "C:\foo.bar.txt" WORKS (returns applicable/not installed), so the problem isn't multiple dots…

It will take awhile for the client to first detect that the update is available and applicable, and then report the status of the update to WSUS/patch manager (up to 22 hours by default). You can speed this up by running a DetectNow task, wait about 10 minutes and then run a ReportNow task. What does PatchManager report as…

I suggest having a look at the Flash player install log. On a 64-bit machine, this will be in "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\FlashInstall.log" for the 32 bit installer and "C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\FlashInstall.log" for the 64 bit installer. If you are using the MSI installer, you could also add a switch…

I found it much simpler to do this in group policy. * First, copy the mms.cfg file to the NETLOGON folder on your DC * Create a new group policy object in Group Policy Management * Under Computer Configuration/Preferences/Windows Settings, open the Files node. Add a new file using the Replace action. Specify the source in…