Windows 8, Windows Update, SBS2011 and WSUS

Wow!, what a load of hassle just to get some updates onto my Windows 8 RTM machine.

I was getting this error, amongst others, on the Windows 8 Client.   Error 80246003.    The Update Fix tool did nothing, and many forum posts pointed me to removing the SoftwareDistribution folder (don’t do that!) or running through this article (don’t do this either).

There are other blogposts, like this that explain fixes, none of which worked for me.

On looking through the logs, I found a line that mentioned that the update services was having problems downloading the EULA txt file from the WSUS server on SBS2011.   I am not sure why this would effect the online directly with Microsoft update, but it does.

So, after a little more research, I found this article from Microsoft.   It appears to be an update for WSUS that fixes this issue.   I downloaded and installed the x64 version on my SBS2011 Standard machine and sure enough…  it didn’t work…

Then I read the smallprint of the article:

If you have Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 clients that synchronized with WSUS 3SP2 before you applied this update, wait for the update to be applied to the WSUS servers, and then follow these steps:

Net stop wuauserv
rd /s %windir%softwaredistribution
Net start wuauserv

OK, I tried this as well…   and that didnt work…    WTF?

The bottom line

The only way (currently) I can get the Windows 8 machines on my SBS2011 network to update, is to modify the group policy on the server and tell them to update directly from Windows Update.

I then had to run the command above again on the Windows 8 clients.

If I find another way, I will post it here!