Viewing installed Hotfixes on Servers

[Guest]

I'm a little confused by how Hyena shows hotfixes applied to servers. For instance, I know full well that I installed the security rollup for an NT server about a week ago yet when I view the hotfixes installed for this server in Hyena, it just shows that service pack 6a has been installed and thats it.
Anyone know how this works? How does Hyena check for which hotfixes have been installed?

[cmccullough]

Re: Viewing installed Hotfixes on Servers

Hyena actually just looks in the registry and reports what is listed there. The only reason that I can think of for this is that those particular hotfixes put their information in a different location than what Hyena is looking for.

What Hyena has to do is go to the registry on the machine and manually search through specific keys for that information. Currently it looks at the following keys:

{_T("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Hotfix")},
{_T("SOFTWARE\\Citrix\\Metaframe\\CurrentVersion\\ HOTFIX")},
{_T("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\SP4\\Hotfix")},
{_T("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\SP5\\Hotfix")},
{_T("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion")}

If you can determine the location for the hotfixes you are missing, we can add that location to the list of places we search.

[Guest]

Re: Viewing installed Hotfixes on Servers

Thanks for the info on which registry key it checks. Here's what I have noticed. When you install a hotfix for Windows NT, then for whatever reason you need to re-install SP6a, it removes the registry entry for the hotfix. So then it seems like the hotfix was never installed. The only place in the registry I can find that has the hotfixes listed that doesn't get modified is under hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows\curr entversion\uninstall.
In there it lists all the hotfixes that have been installed and can be un-installed.
Can this be something that Hyena will look into? Thanks.

[cmccullough]

Re: Viewing installed Hotfixes on Servers

We have a version planned for late Summer or early Fall that will show the information on installed software, which comes from this key. That will probably display this information as well.

[Guest]

Re: Viewing installed Hotfixes on Servers

Don't forget that Microsoft recommends (and I 2nd the notion), that when you re-install any service pack, especially SP6a, you should also reinstall all hotfixes that have been released since.

Yes, that's a lot, but you have to remember that the SP has priority when overwriting files. Even if the file is newer, the SP will overwrite, in sense un-doing what all the additional hotfixes have "fixed".

Once you re-do any hotfix, for that matter, any additional hotfix dated on a later date, should be reinstalled.

Then all will show up in the registry and Hyena.

Hope this helps!