Expired updates

It’s strange, but there seems to be a large number of “expired” updates in WSUS these days. Because of server restarts due to updates (which annoys the crap out of me), I have been reticent to approve the weekly updates. This has caused a small back-log of updates waiting to be either approved or declined. While going through them today, I have found some that have been expired, with a replacement waiting to go.

Just as a refresher, there are a couple of ways an update can be replaced, from this article

• Revision – originally, this was just a metadata change, but since the WDS fiasco MS has changed it’s tune and now says that revisions CAN include changes to the executable/binary.
  
• Re-release – the original update is expired, and a new update is released in it’s place. From what I can tell, this is used for updates in which the metadata DOES NOT CHANGE, but the executable/binary does.
  
• Superseded – in which one updates does something, another update is going to do the same thing, but will do more. A good example is with security fixes leading up to a Service Pack; the SP will include all of the security fixes, along with a lot more, so it supersedes the original fixes.
  
• Expired – Normally, if an update is expired, you will see a re-release for it, but sometimes they can just be expired because it was a bone-headed move in the first place (see the WDS link above for a good example).

So, what I have seen, has been re-release updates, rather than just expired updates. But that makes me wonder why they had to re-release updates so quickly? I would suspect that an update would be expired because it failed testing after it was released, but isn’t the reason for WSUS is so that updates can go under more rigorous testing?

So, why is it that I have 6 updates that have been expired in the last month? All of them were sent out on Sept 9th. Two are for System Update Readiness Tools, which were expired that same day, and have no replacement. The other four went through revisions over the next 2 days, including the ever lovable “information has changed about how to install the update files.” On the third day, they were expired and an update was re-released for them. One is a Security Update to XP, and the other three are Security Updates for Media Encoder 9.

Also, why is it that the WSUS window says”
“The selected update has expired and cannot be approved for installation. It is recommended you decline this update.”
Well, no shit Sherlock. You say I should “decline” the update. What the hell else would I do? I can’t approve the damn thing; and you don’t give me a ‘bugger off’ option!

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