A Gift from Microsoft: Goodbye to "AutoPatcher"
Some of you may never have heard of AutoPatcher. Well, how many of you
have received a new computer with Windows XP SP2, and immediately
hooked it up to the Internet to download all the post-SP2 hotfixes?
What a pain, right? AutoPatcher was the fix for that. It was a freeware project that put all the fixes into one downloadable image, that you could then apply - without connection to the Internet. It even handled the "you must install X before Y issues." Now it's gone.
Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate
take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher
is probably history. As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and
although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took
the download page down.
We would like to thank you for your support. For the past 4 years, it has been a blast. Unfortunately, it seems like it's the end of AutoPatcher as we know it.
Until this point, some representatives from Microsoft had even endorsed AutoPatcher! Why the change? All it takes is a little thought. These patches and updates don't require WGA in order to be installed. Thus, a hacked copy could get patches.
I can see that, but this just hurts the legitimate users. And with the WGA server outage last weekend, during which you couldn't get patches, this is a great time to do this, isn't it?
I can see that, but this just hurts the legitimate users. And with the WGA server outage last weekend, during which you couldn't get patches, this is a great time to do this, isn't it?
