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Recently I ran into an issue that was fixed by applying a Microsoft hotfix for the Volume Shadow Service on Windows 2003SP2. The fix was KB929774, and when I searched to the KB one of the Google results mentioned that this fix was obsolete and that KB940252 should be used. So my question is, where on the Microsoft knowledge base does it show what replaces an older, obsoleted patch? For example on the Sunsolve site every patch in the "PatchFinder" will be marked as obsolete with a link to a newer version. Does antyhing like this exist for Microsoft hotfixes?

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4 Answers 4

Those two KB's are not for the same issue. While someone somewhere may indicate that one obsolete's the other because it worked in their scenario, it is not necessarily the case.

Microsoft include information on associated KBs in the Introduction portion of the KB or the Resolution section, such as with KB948609 (can't add a link as I'm new). As with KB924895, there is usually a section that states something like:

Hotfix replacement information
This hotfix does not replace any other hotfixes.

I don't know that this is used consistently though, and of course, Microsoft has no control over what people write in forums on the Internet.

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That's good to know, but that's the opposite of the information I want. The "replacement information" shows what patches are obsoleted by a specific patch - it'd be much more convenient to have the exact opposite information. –  Luke May 29 '09 at 22:29
@Luke: Yep, I did understand that but I haven't found any examples as yet, that indicate Microsoft do this. I suspect that they don't. It's unfortunate, but somewhat understandable as that could be hard to manage. I believe that truly obsoleted KBs are deleted, but I have no evidence to support that so I didn't state it in my answer. –  Jeff Yates May 30 '09 at 19:46

If you use WSUS (Windows Server Update services) and install it on a machine somewhere on your network it will distribute patches out to all your desktops/servers on a schedule you decide, you can also manually approve patches or have everything automatically approved.

When you go to approve a patch it will tell you whether it has been superseeded by another.

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I added this in a separate comment, but I'll say it here as well - these are hot fixes and don't show up in WSUS from what we can tell. They're distributed via e-mail inside password-protected zip files. We do have WSUS though, and it certainly makes our lives easier :-) –  Luke May 29 '09 at 22:31

WSUS will give you this information, all nicely collected in a single central location. Even if you don't use it for patch management, it's worth installing it in "dead mode" for this alone. Put it on your PC or somewhere, set it up to sync but not download, and don't configure any policies for it. Result.

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Actually neither of these show up in SUS (according to our Windows administrator). In fact, I had to provide an e-mail address to get both and was sent a password-protected ZIP file. –  Luke May 29 '09 at 22:28
True enough, as a hotfix that you need to explicitly request, it wouldn't show (that only applies to regular patches). I reckon you did the right thing by searching on the KB number though, it's what I would do for any hotfix as a matter of principle. –  Darth Satan May 29 '09 at 23:22

If you compare file information for KB929774 and KB940252 (for the same base OS and SP level), you will see that these hotfixes include exactly the same set of files, but all file versions in KB940252 are newer than KB929774. This means that installing KB940252 after KB929774 will give the same result as installing KB940252 alone, so in effect KB940252 replaces KB929774 (and actually includes all changes from KB929774 and any previous hotfixes for these files).

Additional information:

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