Office update showing "Up to date" but file versions never change

[JPenske]

We have immense patching issues, mainly due to users not having access to the
original installation media. We have been manually running Office Update on
literally 1000s of machines, and our security scanner is still showing them
vulnerable for updates, even though Office Update shows they are up to date.
I believe they are up to date, but the file versions of outlook.exe,
excel.exe, etc are not changing, and that is what our scanner is going by.
Any suggestions on how to remedy this problem? Is there other files we can
check versions of other than those in the tech bulletin? We need to prove
that these office installations are in fact up to date. The issue seems to
be with Office 2000 products. What is Office Update checking for??? Thanks
in advance!!!

Jason

 

[Eric A.]

Most often the cause of this issue is when an AIP is used, and the AIP has
updates on it as well as the client having updates on it. This is called a
mixed state.

When using an AIP you will want to handle patch managment with one of the
following two ways.

1. Make sure to never install any updates on the AIP other than service
packs, and then push all updates to the clients or install them locally with
what ever method you use.

OR

2. Install all updates on the AIP and NEVER push office patches to the
clients, or install them locally with whatever method you use. If you choose
this method you will want to lock down office/microsoft updates so that
clients can not install office patches locally.

If for some reason you have installed patches on the AIP, and clients have
installed patches locally, this is exactly the behavior you would see.
Patches appear to install but when you check file versions, you find that
they are not updated.

If you could provide a verbose log file from a patch install/office repair
(and paste it here), I should be able to tell you if office is in a "mixed
state". If it is and you want to continue to use an AIP, you will need to
recreate the AIP, follow (and stick to) one of the above methods, and
uninstall, and reinstall office on the machines. If you have 1000s of
machines in a mixed state you may want to engage support to help you get that
cleaned up.