dgstorm
Editor in Chief
Consumers regularly get all the firmware and software updates for Surface through Windows Update. But some enterprise customers can’t and or don’t want to connect devices to Windows Update to receive the updates. Microsoft has now developed a new solution for these enterprise customers. They are releasing a Windows Installer package (MSI) which installs all firmware and drivers that have been updated since the device launched with the exception of the touch firmware.
- This MSI does the same thing to a brand new out of the box Surface that Windows Update would do to bring the device current. It will first check to see if the device is a Surface Pro 3 and if it is it will allow the MSI package to install. It then copies files the \Windows\temp and installs all of the drivers and firmware that this package contains using DPinst.exe.
- It also adds an entry to “programs” as follows “Surface Platform Installer” with a version number. Updates post January 2015 will re-use the same entry and simply update the version number. The version number is essentially a date starting with the year. This feature is there for software inventory purposes.
- This MSI package is very “generic”. This is by design so we don’t have to worry about the breadth of deployment software idiosyncrasies. Therefore all standard MSI switches and commands apply.
