Ok, that actually helped me a lot. One confusing thing was how to select a list to download. At first I was selecting a list from the "Update List" tab but that didn't do anything. Then I realized I have to select a category from the drop down list. Does WHD download all updates for a OS ever released? Can I use them to update a fresh installation, provided that I can figure out how to install them? Thanks.
Little tips from a battle-hardened guide dog: #1. The task you challenged yourself with isn't that complicated, but needs a bit reading through the already offered links. As long as you only download the updates you cannot break anything. #2. To avoid any breaking it's recommended to use a Virtual machine to test around with the update install. If you create a snapshot or backup the Virtual Machines install folder, you can reset to a fresh install state and start over. When you got familiar with the mechanics you can start using the new tricks on a physical machine (preferrably after creating a system image). #3. Till this point you will have realized it is actually quite simple .
I tried using that first. In order for WUMT to work, Windows update service must be on. When it is on, Windows goes ahead and starts downloading updates, and that is not what I want.
hazardass: You mentioned that you're a basic Windows user and you don't know what WHDownloader does. What's the reason that you want to try the program? Are you having problems using Windows Update? What are you looking for? As abbodi1406 mentioned, please post what problems you read that other people are having with WHDownloader.
I tried to search for the answer, but I'm still not sure about how this works. Say I download all updates for Office 2010 Post-SP2 and extract them via the MSP Extractor. When I do this step-by-step (download first, then open up the MSP Extractor and point to the updates folder), I end up with different .msp files in the extraction folder when compared to when I set ExtractMSP=True. It seems quite random: some .msp files have later dates in folder of the manual process, others have later dates in the folder of the ExtractMSP=True process. Should they even be overwritten at all? I reckon the updates that were downloaded aren't superseeding each other, so my guess would be they should all be installed, no matter if the .msp happens to have the same file name. In that case, WHDownloader's MSP Extractor would be useless, unless files with the same name were to be renamed according to their versions.
Guillaume: Thank you for posting your findings. I was able to reproduce what you're seeing. And there is a problem. The problem only happens with Office 2010 updates though since some of them contain the same named .MSP files, but are different versions. Office 2013 and Office 2016 updates don't have this issue (no duplicate .MSP file names in them). If I remember correctly, support for Office 2010 was not initially included in WHDownloader and only added by Alphawaves after a few users suggested adding it (and abbodi1406 kindly volunteering to maintain the lists). The following Office 2010 updates contain duplicate .MSP files, but are different versions (and WHDownloader is choosing the file that was last extracted, but not necessarily the latest version): Code: word2010-kb3128034-fullfile-x86-glb.exe wordloc2010-kb2965313-fullfile-x86-glb.exe excel2010-kb3128037-fullfile-x86-glb.exe excelloc2010-kb2956084-fullfile-x86-glb.exe olcoscoutlook2010-kb2726880-fullfile-x86-glb.exe outlookloc2010-kb3118313-fullfile-x86-glb.exe powerpoint2010-kb3118378-fullfile-x86-glb.exe powerpointloc2010-kb2920812-fullfile-x86-glb.exe project2010-kb3118393-fullfile-x86-glb.exe pjloc2010-kb3054882-fullfile-x86-glb.exe visio2010-kb3114872-fullfile-x86-glb.exe visioloc2010-kb2881025-fullfile-x86-glb.exe I even tried extracting the 2010 update's .MSP files with a script that another user posted (whose post was deleted in the hack a while back) and his script failed to choose all the correct files. His script also works fine on Office 2013 & 2016 updates since there are no duplicate names in the updates. My advice for now would be to use the "ExtractMSP=True" setting in the config.ini to extract out the files and then to manually extract (using 7-Zip, WinZip or the /extract switch) the latest of the six duplicate files (word-x-none.msp, excel-x-none.msp, outlook-x-none.msp, powerpoint-x-none.msp, project-x-none.msp & visio-x-none.msp) from the list above and then adding them to the other extracted files. Maybe somebody else here has a better workaround though..
The problem @Guillaume poses applies to Office 2013 and 2016 updates? If so, can your script be a lil adjusted to deal with them?