On the business side of things, it seems that when Windows 10 checks in with a WSUS server (internal Windows update server), Windows 10 does not notify users when updates are available. I spent a solid day working on this, thinking that perhaps I did something in a group policy somewhere that caused it, but lo and behold, even taking a freshly imaged Windows 10 1903 computer, with only a (new) WSUS group policy still didn’t work properly.
To add to the story, it seemed that with Windows 10 1803, there was an issue where it seemed to “try” to work; when an update was pushed, an executable called musnotification.exe would launch, but effectively pin the CPU at 100% utilization, cause batteries and patience to drain, and never notify the user either. I usually fixed it by stopping the windows update service, killing the “softwaredistribution” folder in c:\windows, then restarting Windows Update. Now the CPU issue has gone away, but so have the notifications.
Also to note – in Windows 10 (seemingly starting around 1803), Windows update works a little differently, in that there’s a new service called Update Orchestration service that sets up appropriate tasks in task scheduler to follow the settings you apply via GPO. So when you set it to check for updates every X hours; the USO service configures an update task to relaunch every X hours (based on your setting).
More Notes
Last but not least, I figured I’d mention a few things I found along the way…
- You used to be able to use the WUAUCLT command to trigger/launch updates or a check against WSUS. This is no longer the case, WUAUCLT /detectnow doesn’t error, but also doesn’t work. That said, WUAUCLT /reportnow STILL WORKS in Windows 10 and will update a WSUS server with the computer’s status.
- USOCLIENT is the new command (based on the tasks the USO service creates in task scheduler), and as always there’s no official documentation on it, but you CAN find the verbiage by looking at those schedule tasks, or check out this blog post for a summary of what another person found: https://www.urtech.ca/2018/11/usoclient-documentation-switches/
- Here’s another link to a forum post describing the same issue, but in somewhat technical detail: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/e741a2d1-b89f-4c6d-8c28-d358c22f7ea7/windows-10-clients-and-2016-servers-stopped-reporting-to-wsus?forum=winserverwsus#5d5c350a-7f05-4836-bf32-7a07d61467ec