When we talk about Windows 10 , we refer to the industry’s leading operating system by the huge acceptance it has around the world. It is full of functions and features that facilitate daily work with the PC, although it is not without its negative points.
Despite the multiple criticisms that it receives almost continuously, the truth is that Windows 10 is a safe, robust and reliable system. That is a generic description that could be considered as accurate, although not 100%. And is that as we have been able to verify over the years since its launch in summer 2015 , this software contains many bugs.
Microsoft has a serious problem with Windows updates
Generally, those detected by users, over time Microsoft itself solves them one way or another, but others are recurring. This is the case of the multiple problems caused by updates that reach the operating system . That is why in recent times the Redmond have implemented some functions that allow us to manage and customize the arrival of these elements in the system.
But at the same time, for this we can use third-party solutions, as is the case at hand at the moment. Specifically, we are going to talk about a utility that allows us to see and manage the updates that come to our Windows computer. Specifically we refer to the program called Windows Updates History Viewer .
For starters it is worth mentioning that this is a very useful application that has just been released by the well-known developer Nirsoft. As you can imagine, its operation focuses on showing us the history of Windows updates on the device on which we run it.
What is the use of running Windows Updates History Viewer on the PC
To this we can add the fact that it is a portable application, so it will not be necessary to install it. It is enough that we execute the file from the compressed file that we download. At the same time it is important to know that the program is offered as a 32 and 64 bit version , depending on the needs of each one. At the same time it is compatible with all versions of the Microsoft operating system starting with Windows XP and including Windows 10.
Well, at this point, that once we start it in the operating system itself, Windows Updates History Viewer automatically loads the update history of the system. This is something you do using Windows’ own APIs in addition to the update history. As some of you may already know, these are usually stored in the DataStore.edb database. Therefore, the program we are talking about takes advantage of these methods, depending on the one we choose in the advanced options menu, to offer us the required information.
Information presented by the program on updates
Thus, the program shows us all the updates that were successfully installed on the system . In the same way from here we will be able to see those that could not be installed satisfactorily, as well as their uninstallations. Keep in mind that the history is limited to that specific version of Windows. For example in Windows 10 this means that all updates since the last feature update arrived .
Here we will see that these items are listed with their type, status, update history, date, description, uninstall notes, etc. All this we can see at a glance in a table that is displayed on the screen . We should also note that the default sort order is based on the title of the update, not the date it was installed. We can always click with the mouse on the heading of a column in order to reorder the list as we wish.
A customizable interface to better manage updates
To say that when it comes to seeing and managing Windows updates shown here in the best way, most of the time it will be better to sort them by date . At the same time we will have the possibility to see first those that caused problems, or by code number of the update .
The program itself uses a series of color codes to facilitate the recognition of the elements it displays. Thus green means that the installation was successful, while yellow or red tell us that there were some problems. But that is not all, we can also click on them with the right mouse button. Here is a menu with several interesting options.
From this section we can open the support URL and information from the Microsoft website for the selected update. At the same time we will also have the possibility to use this menu to create HTML reports based on the selection, or copy the marked entries. As you can imagine, this allows us to manage these updates more efficiently than from Windows.
So you can download and use Windows Updates History Viewer at no cost
As we mentioned earlier, this is a portable program that you can carry, for example, on a USB memory stick and use on any computer instantly. For this we only have to download it from the official website of Nirsoft .
We must also bear in mind that it is a completely free application, so we can get the most out of it, without spending a single euro.