Recently I needed to know if a particular windows patch was installed on my machine. I went to Add/Remove Programs and checked the "Show Updates" option, but the list there was too long and my eyes too tired to try and scan them all manually. I thought this should be an easy task for PowerShell, but I didn't know how to access a list of installed updates. I decided WMI would be a good place to start and did quite a few searches using "Get-WmiObject -List". I queried a few different providers that I thought would list them, but I wasn't getting anywhere. I'm sure there is a WMI Provider that lists all windows updates, but couldn't find it.*

Luckily, a coworker of mine who I had been discussing this with helped immensely when he pointed me to a script that would list all installed software. The script uses a registry entry that lists all "uninstallable" software. I knew I could easily search the registry using PowerShell and set about looking for my particular update with the following...

dir HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall | where {$_.Name -Like '*kb956391*'}


*I have since found that Win32_QuickFixEngineering will list all windows hotfixes…

Get-WmiObject -Query 'select * from Win32_QuickFixEngineering' | where {$_.HotFixID -eq 'KB956391'}

While installing a Java update I came across the typical bundled software option and found Sun was promoting the MSN Toolbar.  I recall previous Java updates offering the Google Toolbar and was a bit surprised to find a Microsoft product being bundled with a Java update.  Aren't Sun and Microsoft competitors?  At least their frameworks are (.Net vs. Java).

 

 

The install option was selected by default.  I took the screenshot after I unchecked it.

If you want to use Windows Server 2008 or Vista SP1 as a guest operating system with Virtual PC 2007, you'll need Virtual PC 2007 SP1. Updates for both x86 and x64 clients are available. Not sure if you could get either of these working using a different OS selection in VPC. I'm eager to try out the remoting feature in Powershell v2 and currently these operating systems are they only ones that support Powershell remoting.

Jon Galloway posted an article describing a way to view low bandwidth optimized MSDN pages by modifying the URL.

Try it out...


Also check Jon's site for a bookmarklet he wrote which you can use to switch this functionality on or off at any time.

This option will be very useful when my laptop's cellular connection has a bad signal (like when on the train). I imagine this will also be helpful to all those smart phone browsers out there. Any smart phone owners care to try it out?

Check out his comments section. The Product Unit Manager for MSDN responded with some insight into what they're doing. It sounds like they might change the way the "loband" option is specified. I was wondering why they didn't just make it a query string item, but I'll bet they've already got some serious url rewriting going on.

I didn't go to MIX, but I did read a few blog posts of people who did. Definately need to dive deeper this weekend. Here is my quick overview of what was announced/released...

DLR

• Dynamic Language Runtime
• Lets your .net code iteract with dynamic languages like Ruby, Python, Javascript
• Lets those languages interact with your .net code! Neat!
  

CLR on a Mac

• A browser plug-in that will run .net 3.x apps
• OSX Only
• Intel based Macs only?
• Safari, Firefox, IE
• Subset of the BCL
• Rewritten CLR
  

Silverlight

• Lots of classes to make working with media easier.
• 720p

Some links for further review...
http://www.silverlight.net/
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Wanna try it?
Get the plug-in. - Quick install. No need to restart computer, but you will have to restart the browser. Definately works in FireFox.
Go to http://silverlight.net/fox/