Patent ID: 8793681

Claim:
A method for determining a procedure for installing a software patch on a target computer, the method comprising the steps of: a computer identifying a first and a second plurality of computers from a group of computers, each computer in the first plurality having hardware and software components which are identical to each other or differ from each other by less than a predetermined number of hardware and/or software components, each computer in the second plurality having hardware and software components which are identical to each other or differ from each other by less than a predetermined number of hardware and/or software components; the computer selecting one of the first and the second pluralities of computers such that the selected plurality of computers includes a higher number of computers with the software patch already installed than the other plurality of computers; the computer identifying from the selected plurality of computers a computer having (a) the software patch currently installed and (b) hardware and software components which differ from the hardware and software components of the target computer less than the hardware and software components of any of the other computers of the selected plurality of computers that have the software patch currently installed differ from the hardware and software components of the target computer; the computer retrieving, from the identified computer, a set of instructions used to install the software patch on the identified computer; and based on the set of instructions, the computer generating a report for installing the software patch on the target computer.