I was apparently part of the 5.82% of Windows 7 users who preferred to be notified about updates rather than have them installed automatically. Annoyingly, Windows 8 no longer displays the familiar balloon tip and notify icon when new updates are available, instead placing a notice on the lock screen (which I almost never have occasion to see on my desktop). I found this frustrating enough that I decided to write a small unmanaged program to mimic the basic functionality of the old notify icon. It also supports automatic installation of specified updates (identified by their Knowledge Base ID – I use this to install Windows Defender definition updates). You can find out more and download the tool here:
Windows Update Notification Tool for Windows 8
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5 responses to “Windows Update Notification Tool for Windows 8”
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This is very nice work!
However, I personally refuse to use Win8 on my primary machines. Would it be much work to modify the application to work on Win7 so one could benefit from the auto-installation of Windows Defender updates?-
I’ll consider releasing a modified version with just the auto-installation code left in (with no GUI at all, I guess).
In the past I’ve used a scheduled task to update Windows Defender (“%ProgramFiles%Windows DefenderMpCmdRun.exe” -signatureUpdate). This temporarily opens a command prompt, however, which is mildly annoying.-
Ah, thanks for that, that would work reasonably too. I really should’ve looked into that before commenting.
For random interest, the scenario here is actually regarding my mother — she really dislikes automatic updates (understandbly, who doesn’t?) and I’ve just been installing them once a month for her when I get a chance. But obviously having the Defender updates install on their own would be beneficial. Adding a task should be fine.
Although to be fair, she’s never had malware on her machine 😉
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