The Microsoft Update Catalog is a website that offers updates for computers running

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

SP3,

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

, and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

and later operating systems including Windows 10.

Scope

Created by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

, the service provides a list of updates for corporations to distribute over a network. Security updates are released once a month on the website, except in special circumstances; for instance, in the event of a widespread computer virus or worm, Microsoft releases a corresponding update as soon as possible. Gordon Mangione, Microsoft's Security Business & Technology Unit vice president (from 2004-03 to 2005-11), remarked:

"Because the new services and technologies draw information and updates from a single source—the Microsoft Update catalog—and use a common polling engine (provided by the new Windows Update Agent), our customers will have a much more integrated and reliable update management process."

Usage

The latest iteration of the site was launched in August 2007, and at the time, only worked in the

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

, version 6 and version 7. Before using the catalog, the user must install an

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

control so that they can search the updates available on the website. Searches can be saved as an

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

feed so that it can be monitored for new updates. On the Microsoft Update Catalog, downloads are accelerated with Microsoft's

Background Intelligent Transfer Service Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is a component of Microsoft Windows XP and later iterations of the operating systems, which facilitates asynchronous, prioritized, and throttled transfer of files between machines using idle network ...

, which downloads updates from the website asynchronously while attempting to use as little bandwidth as possible. In addition, the service integrates with

Windows Server Update Services Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), previously known as Software Update Services (SUS), is a computer program and network service developed by Microsoft Corporation that enables administrators to manage the distribution of updates and hot ...

and

System Center Configuration Manager Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, formerly System Center Configuration Manager and Systems Management Server (SMS) is a systems management software product developed by Microsoft for managing large groups of computers providing remote cont ...

2007 so that network administrators can deploy updates downloaded from the website remotely across a network.

Resurgence

As of late 2015, and the release of Windows 10, Microsoft has been making updates available exclusively through Microsoft Update Catalog. The website no longer requires an ActiveX control and can be used from any modern browser rather than being exclusive to Internet Explorer. This allows users on other platforms to download updates for archive or distribution.

References

External links

* {{Official website, name=Microsoft Update Catalog Microsoft websites

Scope

Usage

Resurgence

See also

References

External links