This blog post was inspired by the following article on LifeHacker. I enjoyed the article, but it did not go into as much detail as I would have preferred.
Use Ninite and Task Scheduler to Keep Relatives’ Computers Up to Date
I have to deal with this more than I would like to admit. If you are the “Tech guy/gal” in your family, you are likely called upon to assist with some type of disaster at some point or another with a family member’s computer.
A large amount of the time, the disaster could have been avoided if all software on their computer was constantly up-to-date. As most hacking attempts succeed because of known security loop-holes in older versions of programs.
Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to drive my relative’s houses every time Adobe comes out with a new update. TeamViewer is nice because at least I can log into their PC to spot fix some things, but even that can be a pain when you have more fun things you would rather do.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to automate the updating of most commonly installed software? Now there is. Follow this procedure and you will be in business.
• Navigate to: Ninite
• Check the programs that you would like to auto-update and click “Get Installer“.
• Once that is downloaded, place it onto the C:\ drive.
• Open Windows Task Scheduler by navigating to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Task Scheduler
• Right-click the “Task Scheduler Library” folder and select “Create Basic Task”.
• Name it “Update Programs” or whatever you would like.
• Select Weekly.
• Select a day that you would like it to run. For this example, I selected Sunday at 2am.
• Leave “Start a program” selected and click Next.
• Click Browse and then locate the Ninite installer file that we put into C:\ earlier, click it and then click Open. Then click Next.
• Click “Open the Properties dialog…” checkbox and click Finish.
• Click “Run with highest privileges”.
This section is optional. This part is for programs that will not update unless the program has been closed (For instance: Evernote and TeamViewer). If you do not have any programs with that problem, skip to the second-to-last bullet at the end of this post.
• Click the Actions tab and click New…
• Input “C:\Windows\SysWOW64\taskkill.exe” into the “Program/script” field.
• Input the following into the “Add arguments…” field and click OK (This will kill all processes that start with “Evernote”. Don’t forget the asterisk character at the end):
/f /im “Evernote*”
• At this point, the result will look like so:
• Make sure to highlight the “taskkill.exe” entry and click the up arrow so that it is above the Ninite Installer program and then click OK:
• At this point, you can either wait until Sunday at 2am, or you can right-click the new task and click Run.
• Ninite will appear in the background and after it is done downloading and installing all upgrades, the screen should look similar to this, depending on what programs you set up to auto-upgrade:
There you have it, a fully automatic method to keep your loved one’s PCs in as good a state as possible without living in their house.
