This is the first in what is going to start being a monthly recap of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday.  It will be a quick summary of how many patches where released as far as our Windows Server Update Server (WSUS) is concerned.  The way that we currently are configured, we push the updates out to the IT Department on the first day that a patch is released and two servers for to test the updates and make sure that everything works.  After one week if there are no problems we will release the updates to the rest of the factory.  This process will get modified if there are any high priority updates.  This would include any update that is actively being exploited.

The computer in the test group are:
2 Windows XP installations
1 Vista installation starting in January 2008
1 Office 2003 installation
1 Office 2007 installation
2 Windows 2003 servers (1 Domain Control, 1 Application Server)

This month there were 16 updates covering Windows XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007.  There were no updates 6 for our Windows 2003 servers.  We did not have any Vista machines before this round of updates.  I am just setting the first Vista machine up for the company today for testing.  After two days everything seems to be running pretty good.

I did have a problem with my personnel notebook which is running Vista.  After installing this months updates and rebooting, my CPU was running at about 95% utilization.  It would swing up to 95% for about 10 seconds and then drop to 5% for 5 seconds and then repeat.  I let it run for almost an hour to see if it would settle down.  I tried reboot a couple of times but had the same results.  I when back to the restore point from before the updates were installed and that fixed the problem.  For some reason I decided to try installing the updates again today and everything went fine.  I am not getting the big spikes in utilization.  I didn’t think much of it until lunch today.  I was talking to the other half of the IT Department and he had a similar problem with the updates this month.  After installing them and rebooting, he had not networking.  He restored to the restore point from before the updates and then reapplied them and everything worked fine on the second try. 

Update: It does not look like I will have a Vista machine to test after all next month.  The Time and Attendance software that we are using does not run on Vista.  I guess we may have to upgrade to the new version before we start looking a rolling Vista out.

Update: Not sure why, but two days after approving the updates from the WSUS server the Windows 2003 servers FINALLY decided that they did have some updates.  The servers are usually the first machines on the network to show that there are updates available.  That said there where 6 updates for the servers.