WSUS 2016 – Short Notes

Recently we upgraded our infrastructure from windows 2003/2008 to 2016 servers. We have 2 DC’s on 2003/2008 and migrated them to 2016, afterwards when we added WSUS, it had many issues and it took almost 8-10 days to sort every thing. the reason why it took so many time that I tried my best NOT to re install the windows server again because this server was activated with valid license and we had limited license count on MS portal. Fixing messed up windows is far more time take taken process but yes you learn lot of new things in fixing old one, even if its not able to sort out.

I am adding few of the most annoying issues and there methods to sort them in this post. I will keep posting more.

1# Remove WSUS completely from 2016 Server

Sometimes when all sort of troubleshooting fails to restore WSUS, its better to install Fresh Windows, and add WSUS again. But in my case, this server was hosting WDS also & I really didn’t wanted to re install server OS (also to avoid licensing increment count on Microsoft Portal as we have limited license counts).

Following are steps to remove WSUS completely,

1. Remove WSUS / IIS / Windows Internal Database (WID) Roles, (If you don’t remove the WID role and its files on a reinstall, it will re-attach to the same database)
2. Reboot the server
3. Now Remove following Folders
   C:\WSUS (or where ever the WSUSContent folder resides)
   C:\inetpub folder
   C:\Program Files\Update Services
   C:\Windows\WID
   C:\windows\system32\inetsrv  [Or rename this folder]
4. Restart the server
5. Re-add the WSUS And WID Roles (It will auto add the IIS role auto)
6. Let it install, and then restart the Server again.
7. Launch the WSUS console,

2# Post install Fatal Error: WsusPool does not exist

Please check the IIS, check Application Pools, check for WsusPool entry. If it’s not there, Add it manually as showed in the image below …

then run post-installation step again.

3# MMC console crashing

In one particular situation, when I added the WSUS role again, I was getting following error whenever I tried to open WSUS console …

Since it was not a real production server, therefore I removed the WSUS (following all steps showed in Point # 1 of this guide, then executed

sfc /scannow

afterwards a reboot , & WSUS MMC worked well 🙂