Windows Update Viewer: little helper app for Windows admins

Windows Update Viewer is an open source application for Windows that serves a number of purposes all around updates in Windows.

The application is free to use and available as a portable version and as an installer. It displays all installed updates on the Windows system when you run it.

Note that it is a .NET application, which means that you need .NET 8 installed on the system to run it.

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Each update is listed with its ID, date and time of installation, result and title. You may sort the listing by clicking on a header.

When you select an update, you get a wealth of information:

• ID, date and time of installation, title, and result as before.
• The update description.
• Operation.
• Status.
• Result code.
• Support URL.
• Update ID.
• Windows Event Log details.

The one that stands out is the information that it pulls from the event log. The updates history that Windows itself provides does not provide the information in a single place. You have to open the Event Viewer to look them up.

Here, you get all the information in one place. Find out why an update refused to install on the Windows device by looking at the provided logs.

The link to the support URL is also handy, as you can follow it to check out what the update is all about or if it has any known issues.

Other than that, Windows Update Viewer includes a filter list to hide certain entries. Defender updates are not shown by default. You can change that, or add any other term to the filter list to block it from appearing in the table.

Closing Words

Windows Update Viewer is one of those handy free apps that make the life of administrators easier. It is great for quickly looking up information about updates, especially those that failed to install.

Do you use software to manage updates on Windows machines? Feel free to leave a comment or a suggestion below.