How would one go about offline updating Win8?
Is there a site that tracks Windows updates, showing which were added or removed over a timeline?
In the XP days AutoPatcher was nice, but now I'm not convinced its Win8 update list is full, and it lists as "needed" many old updates that Windows Update doesn't show.
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Bonus question:
It seems at least some Microsoft updates are happy to install, or appear to do so, even when unneeded.
Is there an absolute way to check w/o installing if an update is needed on a certain OS install?
For example, did some testing on a mostly up-to-date Win81 install (Windows Update shows just a few updates from recent months).
AutoPatcher listed a ton of updates as "needed". A notable one was KB2883200, a big 230MB update from 2013, that's been superseded by the 700MB "Windows 8.1 with Update" (KB2919355).
I thought I'd see what happens if I manually run KB2883200, expecting it to say it's not needed. But it actually spent a few minutes installing, then wanted a restart. On shutdown there was update progress indication (maybe a minute), on startup another brief update progress indication (just a few seconds; seemed like it didn't do much). Once Windows loaded I checked the update history and indeed KB2883200 was listed.
What do I make of that? Did a 2013 update really change something on mostly up-to-date OS install?