Service packs are well-tested collections of updates that focuses on a variety of customer-reported concerns with a Microsoft product. They generally fix issues to the product since the product's general availability. Service packs are cumulative - each new service pack contains all the fixes in previous service packs, plus any new fixes. They are designed to ensure platform compatibility with newly released software and drivers, and contain updates that fix issues discovered by customers or via internal testing.
A hotfix, on the other hand, is an interim update that usually addresses a specific bug or security vulnerability. All hotfixes offered during a service pack's lifetime are rolled up into the subsequent service pack. Each security hotfix identified by this tool has an associated Microsoft security bulletin that contains more information about the fix. The results of this check identify which hotfixes are missing, and provides a link to the Microsoft web site to view the details of each security bulletin.
This tool checks to ensure that you have the latest service packs and security hotfixes for the following products and components:
This check is done by using information obtained from Microsoft.com. This tool downloads this information from Microsoft.com each time it is run. If it is not able to contact Microsoft.com, it will use a version of the database cached on the local machine.
NOTE: The hotfix checker in V1 will report all available hotfixes from Microsoft, but may not be able to confirm the presence of all SQL-related hotfixes. This is due to a limitation in scanning each instance of SQL Server and will be addressed in future MBSA versions.
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