Windows and Anti Virus program update

A lot of laptop users do not have constant internet access on their machines. This makes scheduling of important programs like Windows Update or automatic update of virus definitions a bit of a challenge. How do you make sure you are running with the latest Windows patches and the latest virus definitions if your computer never gets the change to download them?

Windows Update has a feature that can download important updates in the background as soon as the computer has access to the internet. But if a particular user only spends 1 hour a day at some public hotspot, there's a large change that Windows doesn't get the chance to completely download the patches. The result is that it may take weeks before an important patch is downloaded. Neither Windows update nor your anti virus software can be expected to do a good job under these circumstances.

So, what you'd want is a solution that forces Windows and Anti Virus updates to run as soon as you have network access. For a large group of laptop users, getting network access is the same thing as getting connected to a WLAN access point. And that's exactly the type of solution that you could easily create with MyTrigger. Here's how we suggest that you do it:

Create a script that runs windows update

As stated above, Windows Update can be run in automatic mode in the background. The automatic feature doesn't really suit our needs here, so we have to use the normal way. Running Windows Update is the same thing as navigating to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com with Internet Explorer. This can be easy or tricky; it depends a lot on how your computer is configured and what program defaults you are using. If you are an administrator on your computer and are using Internet Explorer as your default browser, all your script need to do is a simple:

 start http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

If you're not using Internet Explorer as your default browser, you could launch iexplore.exe and navigate to the same URL with this script (on one line):

"c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe
  http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com"

And for those users that neither use Internet Explorer nor is an administrator, the following script could be used. Note that this script will begin with asking for the Administrators password:

runas /user:administrator /savecred 
  "c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe 
  http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com"

Note! For the group of users that aren't trusted with the administrators password, using the Automatic Update feature of Windows Update is the only working solution as far as we know today. Type or copy the most suitable version of the above script into a text file and save that file on your hard disk, we suggest you save the file as

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Scripts\winupdate.cmd

Double click on the file in explorer to make sure that it actually launches Internet Explorer and navigates to the Windows Update website.

Update your anti virus software

Note that the following step will vary depending on what anti virus software and what version of it you have installed. To start with, we will describe the process that applies for Network Associates Virus Scan Enterprise product. We'll provide information about other vendors programs as they become available to us.

Updating NA Virus Scan Enterprise

Virus Scan Enterprise includes a program named mcupdate.exe that resides in the folder c:\Program Files\Network Associates\VirusScan. Mcupdate.exe updates your virus definition database using the same process as a normal scheduled update. If you've installed Virus Scan the standard location on C:, the following command (on one line) starts the update process:

"c:\Program Files\Network Associates\VirusScan\mcupdate.exe"
  /task [taskid] /UPDATE

The only trick is to find the appropriate value for the parameter [taskid]. To find it, we need to look in the registry. Open regedit and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Network Associates\TVD\
  VirusScan Enterprise\CurrentVersion\Tasks\

You should find one or more keys with names on the form of a windows GUID. On our test machine, the first key we find is named {818C7543-358A-4C84-899A-14334EMS4BGS}. So the complete command that updates the virus database on this system is:

"c:\Program Files\Network Associates\VirusScan\mcupdate.exe"
  /task {818C7543-358A-4C84-899A-14334EMS4BGS} /UPDATE

Type or copy the above script into a text file, adjust with the value that you find in your registry and save that file on your hard disk, we suggest you save the file as

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Scripts\virusupdate.cmd

Double click on the file in explorer to make sure that it actually starts the update process for Enterprise Virus Scan.

Combing the two scripts

Now, all that's left is to write a simple script that launches the above two scripts. It only takes two lines of code:

call winupdate.cmd
call virusupdate.cmd

Copy the above script into a text file and save that file on your hard disk, we suggest you save the file as

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Scripts\force_update.cmd

Setting up MyTrigger

For the force_update.cmd script to be really useful, we need to make sure that it starts every time our computer connects to a WLAN access point. This is where MyTrigger comes into the picture. If MyTrigger isn't already running, start it from the Programs menu. As soon as the MyTrigger icon shows in the system tray, right click on it and select "MyTrigger settings" to bring up the settings dialog.

On the WLAN tab, click the Add button to add a new trigger. In the "Access point name" edit box, type the name of your WLAN network (to be correct, the access point identifier, SSID). For the sake of this example, we'll use "MyHomeNetwork" as the WLAN network name. If you'd want to trigger the update script regardless of what network you connect to, you could use the regular expression [.]* as the network name. If you do, remember to mark the Regular expression radio button.

In the "Enter command" edit box, type in the path to the script we created in the previous step above. "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Scripts\force_update.cmd". You can use the ... button next to the edit box to navigate through the file system if you prefer that. Since the path we using in this sample contains spaces, we need to enclose the string in quote characters. The dialog should now look like this:

Now, click the Save button to save your new trigger. That's it, you are good to go. The next step is to take your computer from the outside and back in to your WLAN network and verify that things work as expected. Good luck!