Office Administrative Installation Patching

[JD]

I went to the Windows and Office Update Websites and it showed that there
were a couple of patches I needed. So I applied the patches to the
Administrative installation point for Office XP and then redeployed Office.
Afterwards I went back to the Office Update Website and saw that all of the
updated had been successfully applied. However when I went to the Windows
update website it still said that I was still missing the same updates for
Office XP.

Any ideas why the Office Update Website would say that I was current and the
Windows Update Website would say that I am still missing those updates?

Thank you,

 

[David Levine]

This one's been driving me a little nutty too. Noticed this behavior with
both Office 2002 (XP) and 2003. If I'm interpreting Bob Buckland's reply to
my post of 3/7/06 it seems that there is some "play" between Office Update's
ability to detect the presence of updates installed to an AIP and then
"redeployed" by running setup again to update the actual Office
installation. I guess the bottom line is that if you know you've
successfully patched your AIP then don't worry about what the Office Update
web engine says about your Office installation.

Dave

 

[Ajith]

Hi,

The scan engine for Office update and windows Update are not the same.
On top of that, if we have done any sort of mixing in patching ( say, most
of updates are patched from AIP, but one or two patches, we might have tried
to install locally ), then this kinda issue is likely to occur.
However, the main issue is with the difference in the scan technology.
When Office engine scans the client computer, it checks the installer folder
and certain registry guids for office but windows update works a different
way( i'm not sure how !!!).

cheers,
Ajith

 

[David Levine]

Yes, the scanning engines are different ... However, don't you think that
when an Office INSTALLATION is scanned that whatever engine is scanning it
should be able to tell that a patch has been applied, regardless of whether
or not it was applied to the AIP or the actual installation? I mean a patch
is a patch. It's just another "Office Annoyance". Just whining out loud ...

David

 

[Eric-Jan]

I ran into the same problems.
But your conclusion is not right. The scan engines are not different.
The scan engine of Microsoft Web Update is wrong. It should be fixed by MS.

Wth kind regards,
Eric-Jan Hoogendijk,
Ther Netherlands

 

[Ajith]

As a matter of fact, the scan engines are different.
Thats why when you run Officeupate, it says that patches are not required
and when you run windowsupdate, it says that patches are required.(Check,
JD's post to confirm this).
The reason why this happens is because, when you do a re-cache from an
AIP(Admin Install Point), on the client machine, the cached MSI file inside
C:\windows\installer folder is getting replaced. However, when you try to
install any client side patching on the same machine, it will create a cached
MSP file.
Office update runs a script to detect whether its an Amin install or a
client side install but windows update does not detct this and gets confused.
One more thing to notice is the difference between client side patch (which
are binary versions )and admin patch (which are always fullfile versions).
Thats the reason for Office 2003, all POST SP2 patches are fullfile versions
to avoid the confusion. The same rule applies for Off XP POST SP3 too.
Hope this info might be useful to you.
More information on this scanning problem is documented in a kb article
which i dont recollect now. But will certainly find if for you, if you are
interested.

cheers,
Ajith

 

[Eric-Jan]

Thanks Ajith for your expose. But I stand my ground.

If an update engine is offering me updates that I already have installed
that update engine is not different, but iho is in error and should be
fixed. Otherwise what is the purpose of integrating hotfixes if they are not
recognized by the update engine.

I sense some rivalry between Office and Windows development teams. I think
the Office team was shut out of the development of the new Microsoft update
engine,
hence they didn't hand over their Office update script.
The Windows OS boys on the other hand are thinking, "If you (Office team)
won't streamline your fixes the way we do, we are not going to spend effort
in making our Windows update engine to recognize your hotfixes. They OS
update engine is quit capable of recognizing all the streamlined OS SP's and
HF's.

With kind regards,
Eric-Jan Hoogendijk,
The Netherlands