Selecting Updates – WuInstall Documentation

WuInstall offers several filtering switches to narrow down which updates are searched, downloaded, or installed. The examples below use /search to keep things non-destructive, but all filtering switches work equally with /download and /install.

2.1 Custom Criteria

wuinstall /search /criteria "IsInstalled=0 and Type='Software'"

The /criteria switch accepts a query string that controls which updates are returned. The default (when no /criteria is specified) is "IsInstalled=0 and Type='Software'".

Common examples:

wuinstall /search /criteria "IsInstalled=1" # list already installed updates wuinstall /search /criteria "IsInstalled=0 and Type='Driver'" # drivers only wuinstall /search /alltypes # all pending updates (software + drivers)

For the full query string syntax, refer to the MSDN documentation.

2.2 Match by Title

wuinstall /search /match "KB956844"

Returns only updates whose titles contain the specified string. In WuInstall Pro, /match supports regular expressions:

wuinstall /search /match "(Language|KB93|Live)"

Tip: Test /match against already-installed updates using /criteria "IsInstalled=1" — this typically gives a longer list to work with.

2.3 Exclude by Title (Pro)

wuinstall /search /nomatch "(SQL|Windows|KB)"

The /nomatch switch is the inverse of /match — it excludes updates whose titles match the given string or pattern. Both switches can be combined:

wuinstall /search /match "(SQL|Office)" /nomatch "(KB|Microsoft)"

2.4 Match/Exclude from File

For larger filter sets, search strings can be stored in a plain text file (one term per line):

# C:\Data\match.txt KB93 KB94 KB95 Office Internet Explorer 11

wuinstall /search /matchfile "C:\Data\match.txt" wuinstall /search /nomatchfile "C:\Data\match.txt"

/matchfile includes only updates matching any listed term; /nomatchfile excludes them. Regular expressions are supported in both files.

2.5 Filter by Severity

Each security update carries a severity rating. Use /severity with one or more letter codes to filter by severity level:

Code	Severity	Description
`C`	Critical	Exploitable without user action (e.g. wormable vulnerabilities)
`I`	Important	Risk to data confidentiality, integrity, or availability
`M`	Moderate	Impact significantly reduced by default configuration or difficulty of exploitation
`L`	Low	Extremely difficult to exploit or minimal impact
`U`	Unknown	No severity information available

wuinstall /search /severity CI # critical and important updates only

Note: Severity is only populated for security updates. For broader prioritization, the /criteria classification filter is more reliable.

2.6. Classification

Each update belongs to one of those classifications:

Critical Updates (C)

Security Updates (S)

Updates (U)

Update Rollups (R)

Services Packs (E)

Feature Packs (F)

Definition Updates (D)

Just put the letters in the bracket together to select multiple severities. For example, select all security updates, critical updates and updates:

WuInstall /search /classification SCU

Tip: High priority updates can best be found with the classification CRS (Critical, Security and Update Rollups), however sometimes also U (Updates) can be high priority. Generally speaking, selecting which updates are high priority and which are not, is up to the administrator. There is no general rule how to automatically match the high priority categorization on the Microsoft Update website.

2.7. Product

Each update belongs to a Microsoft product, for example Office 2019, Windows 11, Visual Studio 2019, Silverlight, ...

The /product switch enables to search by one product.

For example, find all Updates for Visual Studio 2019:

Tip: The product name has to match exactly. Therefore just specifying "Visual Studio" here would produce no results.

WuInstall /search /product "Visual Studio 2019"

Tip: All update selection options (/match /nomatch /matchfile /nomatchfile /severity /classification /product) can be used in combination with each other!