A Gift from Microsoft - Goodbye to the "AutoPatcher Project"
Some of you may never have heard of AutoPatcher. Well, how many of you
have received a new computer with Windows XP SP2, and immediately
hooked it up to the Internet to download all the post-SP2 hotfixes?
What a pain, right? AutoPatcher was the fix for that. I say was - more
on that later.
From their FAQ, which will probably go down soon:
Q: What is AutoPatcher?
A: AutoPatcher could be described as an offline Windows Update.
AutoPatcher provides an interface to a large collection of updates,
common applications and registry tweaks, that can be easily and
quickly applied to your computer system.
Q: What are the advantages of AutoPatcher over Windows Update?
A: The main advantage is that you just have to do one download in
order to have all the patches and add-ons, such as Sun Java, MSN
Messenger 7.x and Windows Media Player 10. If you have many
computers or if you format your computer frequently, it saves both
time and bandwidth. With AutoPatcher, you can install critical
patches offline, eliminating the risk of getting infected while
using Windows Update. You can also come in handy when updating a
friends PC, if he/she can't access the Internet (or uses a
narrowband connection).
For IT admininstrators, or just John Q. Public, this was a great tool.
AutoPatcher also reduced the number of reboots, and handled the "can't
install X until Y is installed first" problems. They had flavors for
XP, Vista, Windows 2003 Server. And it was free! Now it's gone.
According to the AutoPatcher project, posted today:
Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate
take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher
is probably history. As much as we disagree, we can do very little,
and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we
took the download page down.
We would like to thank you for your support. For the past 4 years, it
has been a blast. Unfortunately, it seems like it's the end of
AutoPatcher as we know it.
Comments are welcome...
Antonis Kaladis
neowin.net was a mirror, and they have this post:
I had a call from Microsoft Legal this morning and they have told
me that we are no longer allowed to endorse AutoPatcher on Neowin.
Microsoft will only allow updates to be downloaded from its own
servers.
AutoPatcher started in 2003 and has been redistributed in some of
the worlds best computer magazine cover CD/DVD's. I have no
explanation for why Microsoft allowed it to continue unchecked for
4 years before making this decision.
I asked the representative if Windows Genuine Advantage had
anything to do with it and he categorically told me this was not
the case, he added that Windows Update for pre-Vista versions of
Windows can now be accessed using Firefox and that the concern at
Microsoft had more to do with the possible malicious code that
could be redistributed with certified Microsoft updates.
We have no grounds to challenge the decision by Microsoft.
Until this point, some representatives from Microsoft had even
endorsed AutoPatcher! Why the change? All it takes is a little
thought. These patches and updates don't require WGA in order to be
installed. Thus, a hacked copy could get patches.
I can see that, but this just hurts the legitimate users. And with the
WGA server outage last weekend, during which you couldn't get patches,
this is a great time to do this, isn't it? I recommended this tool to
all my friends; I have been using it for years. It's sad to see it's
gone.
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