With the release of Windows 8, Microsoft brought some pre-installed applications that provide basic functions, such as reading news, opening e-mail or managing photos.
The company continues to add more apps with each major version of the operating system, and there are now around 20 different core apps installed on the operating system from its very first launch.
These applications are updated regularly just like other applications with the company's updated versions.
Usually, a visit to the Windows Store on your computer will allow you to download and install the updates. But sometimes it can't be that easy.
For example, there is no direct way to download these updates to computers without an Internet connection. System administrators who need to update multiple systems may also want to download them only once so they don't have to download them continuously on each computer.
Below we describe how you can download Windows applications manually (by hand and not automatically)
To download apps for Windows 8.x:
- Visit the following Microsoft Knowledgebase webpage and scroll down until you find all the core applications listed on the page.
- Note the KB number of the application you want.
- Visit the page https://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Home.aspx using Internet Explorer.
- You will be prompted to install the Microsoft Update Catalog extension. Proceed with the installation.
- Once this is done, type the KB number in the search of the second website and click the search button.
- The website will show you the list of available updates – usually for 32-bit and 64-bit systems – which you can add to the cart.
- Once you have added all the updates you need, open the cart and click the Download button.
- Select a local folder to store the application executable files.
- Downloads are automatically saved in folders with their name after the update.
- They are available as *.Cab files which you can open using some reliable decompression software such as, 7-Zip, WinZip, or WinRAR.
- After opening and extracting the file, you will have an *.msi file. Double-click on it and the installation will begin.
