Patch Management Group

Hello All,

     Normally when I'm rolling out updates in Altiris 7.1 I will go to the Compliance by Bulletin screen.  Under Vendor choose for example Microsoft and then choose the OS as Windows 7.  I will see all the Winodws Updaters and distribute and away it would go.  In the last few weeks i have noticed the Applicable Count in this view dropping.  We have 345 clients and it has gone down from 345 to 320 to 290 to 260 to 97.  I'm trying to figure out what would cause that number to go down so drastically for Windows Updates.  Not sure if we are having an issue with our agents.  Any thoughts on what could be going on?  Thanks for the help.

Hello oscarc619,

Chances are; the update(s) in question were Superseded. The Compliance Reports are reflecting the PMImport.cab data changes.

As the Clients recieve the updated catalog.xml file from the current PMImport.cab data; they will run a Windows System Assessment Scan, return Patch Inventories, and be dropped from that Software Update's IsApplicable=TRUE rule.

You may view the Console > Reports > Software > Patch Management > Software Bulletins > Windows Superseded Bulletins report, for that will display what has been Superseded and by which Bulletin.

If you would like to review Patch Inventories; please work through KM: HOWTO60750 - Troubleshooting Patch Inventories, and that will help to confirm if updates are targeting properly.

Hope this helps,

Joshua

Thanks Joshua for all the info.  Yeah i'm just looking for the best way to see which of my 350 clients are patched and not patched so we know which ones to focus on.  I'll check out that HOWTO as that sounds like it will break down what i'm looking for.