Patching Microsoft Windows Hotfixes

BigFix does not support Microsoft Windows Hotfixes. Customers are advised to contact BigFix Development Team for critical hot ix requests. The BigFix Patch team will thoroughly assess each request and provide content on a case by case basis. Hotfix content from HCL are without Default Actions. Hotfixes are meant for specific issues. You must only apply Hotfix patches to endpoints that have symptoms that are described in the Hotfix Knowledge Base article.

When BigFix provides content for Microsoft Windows Hotfixes, there might be differences in the file names and sizes between those files that the user downloads and those that the Fixlet actually uses.

Microsoft Windows Hotfixes do not require manual caching when their download links are publicly available in the Microsoft Update Catalog or in the Microsoft Download Center at the time that BigFix released the content. Otherwise, BigFix content for Hotfixes requires manual caching. The files that you download for manual caching differ from the ones that the Fixlet uses.

For example: Fixlet 289614611 (KB2896146)

The following example shows the difference between the downloaded file and the patch file used by the Fixlet:
Table 1. File downloaded from Microsoft
Attribute Value
Downloaded file name 469429_intl_x64_zip.exe
Downloaded file size 2.36 MB
Table 2. Patch file used by the Fixlet
Attribute Value
Patch file name Windows6.1-KB2896146-x64.msu
Patch file size 2.25 MB
At first glance, the .exe extension of the downloaded file might be confusing. In this case, the .exe file is actually a compressed archive (ZIP) that contains the .msu patch file required by the Fixlet. To manually cache the correct file:

  1. Download the file 469429_intl_x64_zip.exe (2.36 MB).

  2. Extract the archive.

  3. Locate the file Windows6.1-KB2896146-x64.msu (2.25 MB).

  4. Manually cache the extracted Windows6.1-KB2896146-x64.msu file.

Only the extracted .msu file should be placed in the BigFix manual cache, as this is the file referenced by the Fixlet action script.