Introduction to Get-Hotfix
Get-Hotfix is a useful PowerShell 2.0 cmdlet for researching Microsoft updates and patches.
Examples of Get-Hotfix
- List the Updates and Service Packs
- Research Get-Hotfix's Parameters
- Another Useful Parameter is -Computer
- Alternative to Get-HotFix:- Win32_ReliabilityRecords
♣
List the Updates and Service Packs
Let us see Get-Hotfix in action, this is how to display a list of patches, service packs and security hotfixes.
# PowerShell's Get-HotFix Example
Get-HotFix | Format-Table HotfixID, Description, InstalledOn -AutoSize
HotfixID Description InstalledOn
——– ———– ———–
KB2764913 Update 03/07/2013
KB2832414 Security Update 07/10/2013
KB976932 Service Pack
……
Note 1: I modified the output with PowerShell's Format-Table.
Research Get-Hotfix's Parameters
Hardly a day goes by without I give thanks to Microsoft for including the Get-Help cmdlet as a mechanism for researching parameters.
Clear-Host
Get-Help Get-Hotfix -Full
Note 2: The -Description parameter presents a convenient way of filtering the hotfixes. For example, to find service packs: Get-Hotfix -Description Service*.
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Another Useful Parameter: -ComputerName
Here is a technique to discover which machines on your network have a particular hotfix. As a prerequisite for my example you need to obtain a list of the computers and save it in a file. My computer list is stored at C:\PShell \Machines.txt.
Clear-Host
$Machines = "C:\PShell\Computers.txt"
$Patch = 'KB976932'
$Computers = Get-Content $Machines
ForEach ($Item in $Computers) {
Get-Hotfix $Patch -ComputerName $Item
}
Note 3: To solve your problem, change the value for $Machines and $Patch.
Interrogate Domain Machines
Here is a technique to list all your machines in a domain environment by using Microsoft's ADSISearcher.
([ADSISearcher]'objectCategory=computer').FindAll() |
ForEach-Object {Get-HotFix -Computername $_.properties.dnshostname}
Note 4: Once you obtain the list of machines from active directory, employ PowerShell's ForEach loop technique.
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Alternative to Get-HotFix:- Win32_ReliabilityRecords
It surprised me to learn that Get-Hotfix did not return all the patches installed on my computer, so I investigated suitable classes of Get-WmiObject and came up with Win32_ReliabilityRecords.
Counting the items returned by two different techniques.
# Compare the number of items returned by Get-Hotfix and WMI
"Number of Get-Hotfix Objects"
Get-HotFix | Measure-Object | Format-Table count -AutoSize
"—————————————————– `n"
"Number of Win32_ReliabilityRecords Objects"
$Patches = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ReliabilityRecords
$Patches | Measure-Object | Format-Table Count -AutoSize
Using Win32_ReliabilityRecords
#PowerShell example to list all patches
$Patches = Get-WmiObject –Class Win32_ReliabilityRecords | `
Sort-Object $_.timegenerated -Descending
$Patches | Format-Table @{LABEL = "Date";EXPRESSION = `
{$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.TimeGenerated)}}, ProductName -Auto
Filtering Patches
Clear-Host
$Patches = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ReliabilityRecords `
-Filter "SourceName = 'Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUpdateClient'"
$Patches | Sort-Object $_.timegenerated -Descending | Format-Table ProductName,`
@{LABEL = "Date";EXPRESSION = {$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.TimeGenerated)}} -Auto
Investigate Update Failures
Clear-Host
$Failures = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ReliabilityRecords
$Failures | Where { $_.message -match 'failure' } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty message
See more real-life PowerShell tasks »
Summary of PowerShell's Get-Hotfix
Get-Hotfix is a handy PowerShell cmdlet for listing Microsoft security updates and patches. An alternative is to employ Get-WmiObject and the class: Win32_ReliabilityRecords.
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See more Microsoft PowerShell Examples of Real Life Tasks
• PowerShell Real-life Examples • Test-Connection • Invoke-Expression • Invoke-Command
• Windows PowerShell • Trace-Command • PowerShell Registry MaintainServerList
• PowerShell Registry • Compare-Object Registry • Desired State Configuration • Get-Hotfix
Please email me if you have a better example script. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.
