Shorcut to list pending updates in Microsoft Windows

Question

Is it possible to create a shortcut to "View update history"?

Or, do you have a script (powershell, vbs, cmd, ...) to list pending updates?

Solution

Give this Powershell script a try:

$update = new-object -com Microsoft.update.Session
$searcher = $update.CreateUpdateSearcher()
$pending = $searcher.Search("IsInstalled=0")
foreach($entry in $pending.Updates)
{
    Write-host "Title: " $entry.Title
    Write-host "Downloaded? " $entry.IsDownloaded
    Write-host "Description: " $entry.Description
    foreach($category in $entry.Categories)
    {
        Write-host "Category: " $category.Name
    }
    Write-host " "
}

Other object members you might be interested in can be view using:

$pending.Updates | member | more

Comments

[MacMartin]

as of yet (2018) this is working nicely in Window10. It's better then the GUI Update Tool (shows more Information). There is also a script in the MS gallery gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/… but I do not see, where it is better then this example here