Command line switches for Windows hotfix setup packages

Every so often I get questions from customers who ask about how to automate the installation of Windows hotfix packages. I found a knowledge base article that contains a full list of supported command line parameters for Windows hotfix packages that I refer to very often for this type of question, so I thought it would be useful to post it here as well.

This list of command line parameters applies for all Windows hotfix packages currently being released, as well as most older packages.

Please note that this list does not necessarily apply for hotfix packages for other Microsoft products (such as Office, the .NET Framework, SQL Server, etc) however. For those packages, I normally suggest running the hotfix setup package with a /? or /help command line parameter to try to get it to show a usage dialog, and most Microsoft hotfix packages I have seen thusfar will display something helpful when running them with a /? switch.