Remote Control Reboots And Updates On Multiple Windows Computers

Remote Reboot X has been initially developed by Doug Zuckerman to remotely control the reboot process of multiple computer systems in an effort to automate the monthly maintenance schedule of more than a 100 servers as much as possible. Doug later added the option to manage Microsoft Windows software updates from the program interface of Remote Reboot X and plans to integrate several important new features to future versions of the software program.

The program works the following way: Users start by adding a list of IP addresses or computer names to the program. It is then possible to highlight some or all of them to perform actions on the selected hosts. Actions can be selected by either selecting them from the Actions menu or by right-clicking.

Available actions are:

• Ping. The ping reply initially displays in black, then red if it times out, and then after 4 consecutive time-outs, any subsequent replies will turn blue to signify that the machine has been rebooted
• Install Windows Updates on the remote machine(s) (requires Microsoft’s SysInternals PsExec in your system path)
• View the WSUS installation log for the remote machine(s) – this log is stored in C:\RRx on all remote computers. (Tip: You can doubleclick a row to view the log file)
• Reboot the remote machine(s) (will also automatically start ping monitoring if you haven’t already started it)
• Retrieve the last boot-up time of the remote machine(s) – comes in very handy when you’re rebooting machines
• Load a | delimited text file to automatically populate the “Notes” column – this makes it simple to keep an ongoing list of any instructions you might have that are specific to certain machines, such as programs to start after a machine is rebooted and logged on.

Along with RemoteRebootX.exe there are 3 additional .NET executables included in the zip file below. To use them you must have the WSUS Admin Console 3.0 installed on your computer. They will allow you to connect to your WSUS server and …

• Retrieve a list of computers that have already downloaded updates but haven’t installed them
• Retrieve a list of computers that have already installed updates and are waiting to be rebooted
• Retrieve a list of computers that have not checked in with the WSUS server in more than 3 days

Additional information and usage tips are available at the developer's website. Remote Reboot X has been developed in Microsoft’s Visual C# 2008 and requires therefor the Microsoft .net Framework. Doug does not mention the .net Framework version on his website though.