Cool! i have since found that there is a TZI binary key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones\Pacific Standard Time that holds the time information and whether or not the update has been applied. is there a way i can read that, compare it to a string and if there is a match, skip. if not, launch the update executable? i'm a little confused how i use readvalue to assign to a variable and then compare that to a string. i'm not sure how kixtart is going to read the value.