 <p>Let me start with this: I don't think a Python script is the best tool for the job. If you want to do enterprise-level management of updates (e.g., for all machines on a network), then you should seriously consider using <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/management.aspx" rel="nofollow">the existing MS tools</a>. </p> <p>With that said, here is how you might go about this:</p> <ol> <li><p>Have a look at the <code>windows-update</code> tag on ServerFault, one of StackOverflow's sister sites: <a href="http://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/windows-update">http://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/windows-update</a> . A lot of the questions seem to cover command-line control of the update process. Keep in mind that the command line tools vary significantly between e.g. Windows XP on the one hand and Vista/7 on the other. With some luck, you should be able to use windows built-in commands rather than going to the windows update website programmatically.</p></li> <li><p>Assuming you find the command-line incantations that you need: Use the <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/subprocess.html" rel="nofollow">subprocess</a> module to call to the shell and execute those commands programmatically. Because you're using python, you may need to spend quite a bit of time parsing the command outputs to figure out how your shell calls are doing.</p></li> </ol> <p>Hope that helps. I realize this is a rather high-level answer, but as it stands, the question is not very specific about what exactly you want to accomplish and why you're using python to do it. </p>