How to upgrade your Windows installation without an internet connection

Sometimes the need arises to upgrade an old Windows installation. If you do have a slow internet connection or no internet connection, this may be a significant time problem. A full Microsoft download of SP3 and all hot fixes can take many hours on a slow Internet connection. Perhaps you now think: why is this relevant? I always have a fast internet connection, don’t I? But is this in fact true? What about at  a customer site with a slow DSL connection. What if the internet connection is down? What if it is an embedded system? What if you are installing from an old XP pre SP1 DVD where the new Microsoft Update methods are not supported? Well, in those cases you need WSUSOffline that can be downloaded from http://www.wsusoffline.net/ This is a set of scripts that automatically downloads the service packs, hot fixes, .NET frameworks and language support you need from Microsoft’s servers. You can select what components to install (se below image). The install files together with an installer script can be copied onto a USB memory stick. When you run the installer script on the machine you want to upgrade, everything happens automatically and you will, when the process is finished, have a fully updated Windows installation. I used this to upgrade an old machine with an old outdated XP installation on, for use with my CNC machine numeric control software.