Installed Update History Report. Doesn't work on Server 2003.

[robbzz]

After many tests I am finding the installed windows updates reports works fine on server 2008 and above but reports 0 updates installed on server 2003. When I manually check these servers they have multiple updates installed. This could be the difference in the event ID numbers between server 2003 and server 2008 perhaps ?

[booster]

Hi robbzz,

I just tested the report on multiple 2003 servers (Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003, Standard Edition 5.2.3790 (SP2) [X86-based PC]) and it works fine for me.

Regards

Booster

[robbzz]

Thats interesting, I have the latest version. I cant think of anything that i could be doing wrong as there are really no options in the report except the time scale.

[doug]

Rob –

I also am not able to reproduce the issue on my server 2003 box in the lab. Out of curiosity, what version of the Windows Update Agent do you have on the 2003 servers that are not reporting any update history in BP? To check the WUA version, right click on C:WindowsSystem32wuapi.dll and then check the version tab.

I don’t think this is a BatchPatch problem, per se. The update history is retrieved simply by querying the Windows Update Agent on the target computer. It’s possible that the WUA is simply not properly logging update history entries, though I am not sure why (unless it’s just some weird thing where the WUA needs to be updated, which is why I asked about the version above).

The update information is stored in C:WindowsSoftwareDistribution. If it’s the case that the information being reported is not correct, then I wonder if the datastore is corrupt or otherwise malfunctioning. I would suggest trying to stop the Automatic Updates/Windows Update Agent service, then rename the SoftwareDistribution folder to something like SoftwareDistribution.old, and then restart the service. This should cause Windows to create a new SoftwareDistribution folder, and perhaps this will fix the issue moving forward, though I would expect you wouldn’t be able to know until you install the next round of updates. And of course, if you perform the steps outlined above, you would be doing so at your own risk, and I can’t take responsibility for anything bad that happens as a result. However, I can tell you that I’ve done this many times without ever encountering a problem, and this is suggested all over Windows Update forums on the web when one encounters issues with Windows Update on a computer. That said, I wouldn’t expect it to cause any problems.

-Doug

[robbzz]

Im starting to think its to do with the fact that we update our servers with blade logic. I will prove this theory by hitting a server with a patch from batchpatch then running the report as soon as possible.

[robbzz]

I can confirm that manually installed windows updates on 2003 or windows updates from Bladelogic are not included in the installed updates history report.

[doug]

And so what happened when you renamed the SoftwareDistribution folder. Did that solve the problem? I think that’s probably your best bet since that is the location where all the update history information is stored. If the update history information is somehow not being stored properly, it seems to indicate a problem or corruption in the datastore in that folder.

-Doug

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