Version

Argent Advanced Technology 5.1A-1810-A and above

Date

Friday, 9 August 2019

Summary

This is about Windows Update Service Rule in Argent Guardian Ultra

Relevant reading:

https://help.argent.com/#KBI_311719.php

Some customer may notice, symptom examples:

• Installed Hotfix may be missing if report filters by date
• Hotfix installation date may be incorrectly reported, Day & Month swapped

Customers using MM-DD-YYYY date format are not affected

Customers using DD-MM-YYYY date format are affected

Technical Background

Microsoft PowerShell cmdlet ‘Get-HotFix’ is used by the Rule

The Microsoft PowerShell cmdlet wrongly always return InstalledOn in en-US

A case study confirmed this unique behavior is found at least in Microsoft PowerShell version 2.0

Such behavior can cause Day and Month positive swap

If Day is 13 or above, it causes invalid parsing inside that PowerShell cmdlet, lead to blank ‘InstalledOn’ output

Example is available below

Click For Full Size

Example of ‘Get-HotFix’ incorrectly output InstalledOn showed below:

KB4486563 actual install date:               2 Mar 2019

KB4486563 ‘Get-Hotfix’ InstalledOn:     3 Feb 2019

Multiple patches do not have InstalledOn data, due to the internal parsing issue

Argent code compensates when ‘InstalledOn’ output is blank, it will fills with correct installation date

Customers with the operating system date format set to en-US will run properly

Customers with the operating system date format set to other than en-US will fail or generate unpredictable results

When Hotfix installation date was incorrectly captured, it leads to the symptoms

Resolution

Upgrade to Argent Advanced Technology 5.1-1907-A or above