Are out of band Windows Updates increasing in frequency?

The latest slew of 34 optional updates earlier this week is ridiculously over the top, but even taking that out of the picture, hasn't Microsoft been releasing out of band updates at a far higher frequency these past 6-9 months than usual?

Whereas there might have been out of band updates 2 or 3 times a year starting from mid-2004 when Microsoft first developed a coherent security strategy and released XP SP2 all the way up until mid-2014, it now seems to be an every other month occurrence...

 

Peon, there have been ongoing weekly updates from Microsoft for a long time.

There was a time recently when the weekly updates subsided a bit, but then the huge updates came through.

I actually like the active support. I do wish they wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot quite so often, but they usually fix it in a replacement update fairly quickly

 

Well, as far as Windows 8 is concerned, flash updates will be out of band since Flash is integrated into IE and thaT's something you want patched asap. Then there is also the fact that some of the recent patch Tuesday have been wonkier than usual for some. Finally, critical vulnerabilities will get an out of band usually and there is no telling when those will be discovered.

 

Are you referring to the KBs that they post on the website for optional download but don't push to Windows Update until the next Patch Tuesday?

Actually, this is mainly what I've noticed (a lot of) lately - patches that uninstall previous patches.

 

KB's, out of band Flash updates, other off Tuesday updates.

It actually calmed down for a while, but it picked back up recently.

Lots of other Microsoft updates too, not just Windows OS updates.

No unintended side effects on my G750JH - so far

 

I did a clean Win 8.1 install recently and had 1.4GB of updates that needed to be installed. Ridiculous, really. I even used the Windows media creation tool. You would think they'd offer the option to wrap all security updates in that install.

 

If you have access to the December 2014 installation media, that would be the best way to go - I just set up an 8.1 VM last night and only had to install about 300MB of updates.

 

There are tools to integrate the upgrades, but it will take more time to learn it then just let the machine sit itself once every clean install.

For win8.1, just use refresh/reset~

 

Where would one get that? I have DreamSpark but it only has the 8.1 Update ISO from April 2014 which is the same as the media creation tool.

 

This is where I got it: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/#FileId=62204

I'd expect that other Microsoft subscription systems have their own distribution methods.

 

I haven't seen anything but the April 2014. Maybe they will roll it out in the media creation tool soon.