Windows Updates for WEPOS 1.x

If you have a WEPOS 1.x system and have turned on Automatic Updates or reviewed the Express Updates option on update.microsoft.com, you may have noticed that the only update you see offered is XP Pro SP3. In this article, we’ll give you some background on why this is happening, and what you can do to work around this.

One of the reasons the WEPOS operating system can be offered at a low price point is because servicing is under the umbrella of XP Pro servicing and there is little overhead, WEPOS simply consumes applicable updates because it is seen as an XP platform. Based on this, Windows Update sees WEPOS as XP Pro, it does not differentiate it as a separate operating system. So, if you do not have SP3 for WEPOS installed, Windows Update is going to tell you that you need to install the XP Pro SP3 update.

However, because the WEPOS platform is a reduced footprint OS, we could not simply consume the XP Pro SP3 update. It bloated the image significantly and added features, functionality and configurations not spec’d for WEPOS. So with the XP Pro SP3 update, we special-cased it to not install on WEPOS and instead provide a dialog message informing customers who do run the Pro SP3 Update that it is not compatible with WEPOS and a WEPOS specific update will be made available on the download center at a later date, and followed up with the Service Pack 3 for Window Embedded for point of Service and Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs update.

One of the outcomes of this approach, since WEPOS is seen as XP, is that all updates rolled into SP3 are no longer offered to your WEPOS system through Automatic or Express Updates because it assumes you will install the XP Pro SP3 update to get them all. Until you install the SP3 for WEPOS update, the workaround is to turn off Automatic Updates. Go to update.microsoft.com and select Custom. You will still see the XP SP3 update with a Download and Install Now link, but there is another link, Review Other Updates. Select the Review Other Updates link and you will see a list of applicable High-priority XP updates for your WEPOS system.  You can select the updates you wish to install and proceed to Review and Install Updates to update your system.

Note: Prior to receiving the set of XP Updates, you may be prompted to install updates for Windows Update. Proceed with installing those updates and any required reboots, then return to update.microsoft.com, Custom, Review Other updates to update your WEPOS image.

Once you have installed the SP3 update for WEPOS, you can return to using Automatic updates successfully.

OEMs are ultimately responsible for supporting the WEPOS images they deploy. You should work with your OEM to determine your servicing model, and in particular to determine update compatibility with your WEPOS systems prior to installing updates, particularly Out of Band applications (e.g. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc.) and major OS updates such as SP3.

- Gina