In October of 2003 I was working in a small Law Firm as their IT support. One of the things I had to do was update many, many computers and using Windows Update was taking forever! I came up with a batch “auto-patcher” to help speed things up, and since I was a member of Neowin, I thought I’d share. Add in the VB coding talents of Antonis Kaladis, and the AutoPatcher was born. I worked day and night with releases for 2 years before I needed a break. Antonis got a bunch more helpers to help with releases and AutoPatcher thrived. Cut to yesterday…
Microsoft Ceases AutoPatcher Project
I had a call from Microsoft Legal this morning and they have told me that we are no longer allowed to endorse AutoPatcher on Neowin.
Microsoft will only allow updates to be downloaded from its own servers.
Read more here: Goodbye AP!
I can’t figure out why Microsoft would wait 4 years to shut down the project… if they didn’t like it, they could have said so 3.5 years ago (and yes, they were aware of it). Oh well… who am I to question the all-knowing powers that be over in Redmond? 
Anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject. Feel free to comment, either here, on Neowin, or on AutoPatcher.com.
R.I.P. AutoPatcher
Ryan : 30 August 2007 at 10:26 am
That’s right, I knew you had involvement in AutoPatcher; you created it. Wow, it’s been so long since you and I were active on Neowin back during the better days of it. Well, as you all ready know, some many of us appreciate AutoPatcher and all the time and effort that was put into it. Thank you.
Tim : 30 August 2007 at 5:35 pm
Who cares you jeb end
flishfun : 30 August 2007 at 7:56 pm
Um… I… I care? Also, I believe Ryan cares.
Cy Bones : 07 September 2007 at 1:31 pm
I care as well… This is a real shame…
Not only is AutoPatcher easy to use, it also works incredibly well and has saved me a lot of time over the years!
At least I still have the most recent releases for any new builds / re-formats (or accidents!).
I hope that some sort of agreement can be reached, but I doubt it.