I have just taken over looking after a site that uses a MicroTik router appliance set up in a hot spot configuration, as the primary access to the Internet.
This works really well, however I have a problem with MS updates on the Vista machines. I am sorry to be rehashing this as a topic as I have seen a couple of references to this problem in your forum but can’t find the initial posts detailing any solutions.
I have been through the affected computers extensively and I am sure that the problems relate to the environment in which they reside rather than the computers themselves.
Here is a segment of the update log that appears to show the problems
I believe Microsoft updates mainly does two things:
Break stuff that was working before
Make your computer run slower
Both of those are great if you bill clients by the hour to fix, but it cause headaches if it’s your own systems.
MS likes to make you believe they do “security” “updates”, well, why didn’t they fix their product before selling it in the first place?
I personally turn my MS Updates and Win Firewall off before doing anything else on the PC except installing Antivirus.
To come back to your problem. If one PC can update with no problem, there shouldn’t be any logical reason why the MT router will affect those updates, UNLESS, you are using some form of loadbalancing or Mangle rules/actions which could affect it.
Perhaps you should post your config so we can have a look at it.
On the machines having trouble with updates, are you able to access the update site itself?
Does the problem only occur in random, or can’t those PC’s update at all?
Are they all legal Windows and not some cracked version which disabled updating as part of the crack process? I ran into some guys using Vista Ultimate with the DELL brandname which comes pre-cracked. That specific version won’t do any updates, no matter how hard you try.
Yes definitely everything is legal, and this affects all Vista machines within the network.
However if I take a machine home and place it on my network it will update correctly.
Also if I take one of the machines and place it in the DMZ (between the MicroTik and the VDSL connection) it will update correctly. The problem only seems to occur when the machines are behind the MiroTik device.
It could be some DNS issue, or like I said, if you’re doing loadbalancing, or routing local and international traffic differently, it could have an affect on certain PC’s
What’s the best way for me to post the MT Config? I must admit to being a novice around the MicroTik I have a copy of the backup binary, however I am a bit reluctant to post it to open availablility.
Hi Mike,
Are the affected computers connected to the interface with the hotspot?
If so, are the computers logged in when this happens?
The hotspot is really effective at cutting off almost all contact with the outside world unless logged in, including MS updates, HP updates, Logitech updates, Symantec updates, and on and on…
I spend a lot of time explaining to my customers why they must login before they can check their email.