I have a handful of applications that require specific hotfixes or updates to be installed. An excellent example of this is Internet Explorer 11 which has 9 prerequisites. (well only 6 are required, the remaining 3 prerequisites provide a better experience.)
Is there a reliable & fast way of checking for whether or not a specific hotfix and/or patch/update has been installed?
I am aware of `wmic qfe` but
- According to this, it will only "retrieve updates for Windows OS itself and its components (such as Windows Internet Explorer (IE) or Windows Server roles and features)"
- Even if I'm checking for just 1 hotifx, it takes roughly 6 seconds to retrieve that information. When we're checking for dozen or two hotfixid's that quickly adds up. `Measure-Command {wmic qfe where "hotfixid='kb982018'"}` So for IE11, we're looking at nearly 1 minute of waiting. Nonsense.
Note: I'm not asking "is my system patched?" nor am I asking for a report of installed patches. I could use WSUS, SCCM, MBSA and a multitude of other solutions for that. I need something scriptable that will install a specific prerequisite at runtime, so I'm looking for a batch/vbscript/powershell solution that'll be quick, like 1 second quick, not 5+ per KB.