Simplifying updates for Windows 7 and 8.1

While we’ve spent a lot of time over the past year talking about Windows 10 (including new roadmap details), we know that organizations are still working with Windows 7 too, regularly updating their Windows 7 SP1 images to include the latest updates, app versions, and more.  For those that are involved in that process, you’ve probably seen a display like this too many times:

New Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup makes image creation much faster

We’re happy to announce today that we’re making available a new convenience rollup for Windows 7 SP1 that will help.  This convenience rollup package, available to download from http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=3125574, contains all the security and non-security fixes released since the release of Windows 7 SP1 that are suitable for general distribution, up through April 2016.  Install this one update, and then you only need new updates released after April 2016.

And since this update can be injected into Windows 7 SP1 media, it’s fully supported to mount a Windows 7 SP1 image (WIM file), then inject this update into it.  See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744559(v=ws.10).aspx for the details of how to do this.

This convenience update is completely optional; it doesn’t have to be installed and won’t even be offered via Windows Update – you can choose whether or not you want to use it.

To apply this update, you must install the April 2015 servicing stack update for Windows 7 (KB3020369).  You can read more about the Convenience rollup update for Windows 7 SP1 here.

We hope that you find this convenience rollup package useful.  This same convenience rollup also applies to Windows Server 2008 R2.

Monthly Rollups

Also today we are announcing that non-security updates for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 (as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2) will be available as a monthly rollup (fixes rolled up together into a single update).  Each month, we will release a single update containing all of the non-security fixes for that month.  We are making this change – shifting to rollup updates, to improve the reliability and quality of our updates.

These fixes will be available through Windows Update, WSUS, and SCCM as well as the Microsoft Update catalog.  We hope this monthly rollup update simplifies your process of keeping Windows 7, and 8.1 up-to-date.

Simplifying finding and downloading updates

Updates have historically been published on the Microsoft Download Center and the Microsoft Update Catalog.  Security Bulletins have linked directly to update packages on the Microsoft Download Center. To simplify this, within the next few months Windows updates will no longer be available from the Microsoft Download Center.  Security bulletins will continue to link directly to the updates, but will point to the packages on the Microsoft Update Catalog instead of the Microsoft Download Center. Customers that use tools linking to the Microsoft Download Center should follow the links provided in the Security Bulletins or search directly on the Microsoft Update Catalog.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Microsoft Update Catalog website, note that it still requires using Internet Explorer at this point because of an ActiveX control used.  Later this summer, we will be updating the site to eliminate the ActiveX control in order to support other browsers.

As always, all updates will still be available via WSUS, SCCM, and Windows Update – this change is only for manual downloads.

Source: Microsoft Technet