CE QFE automatic Check utility questions

With each of the quarterly releases of QFEs, there is a ceqfechk.exe
utility installed in the windows/system32/ceqfecheck directory (this
location on a WinXP box). I had hoped that this would be an easy way
to verify that I had all the current QFEs, but have found that even
after installing all the QFEs which I can find through the Microsoft
search engine, it still shows a number of "invalid" files.

Since there is no documentation sent with this tool, can someone
explain what we should expect to see in this tool (should we be able
to get to a point where there are no "invalid" files)?

I continue to wish that there was a simpler way of knowing what
updates are available, a simpler way of being informed when new
updates are available, and a simpler way of getting them from
Microsoft to my machine. It would seem that using the "Welcome to
Platform Builder" web-page (which always appears when starting
Platform Builder) would be the ideal location to place this kind of
information. I think this would be of great use to the developer
community, with not a lot of cost to Vocollect. A link to this
platform builder newsgroup would probably be useful too.

Arthur McNair
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Steve
Wed Nov 12 09:42:48 CST 2003

ceqfecheck.exe is an undocumented internal utility used by Microsoft that
you should expect absolutely nothing from as it is subject to change and not
intended for end user use. (Or at least not at this point - maybe someday it
will be turned into something for us to use but it is clearly not at that
stage now.)

As to the rest... Yes, there needs to be a better way... This issue has been
discussed many times at great length here in the newsgroups and in private
conversations with Microsoft by a number of us. A number of different
scenarios make the process difficult. Hopefully the next OS and tools rev
(Macallan) will get this process straightened out. It would be great if,
once it goes into Beta testing that the Betas were updated regularly using a
new system for updating that would be used for QFEs. That would really test
the whole process rather nicely. - Yeah I know I'm a dreamer... ;-)

--
Steve Maillet (eMVP)
Entelechy Consulting
smaillet_AT_EntelechyConsulting_DOT_com