Hello all,
So I have been having an extremely frustrating time with Windows Updates, as through my research, many others have as well. Below is a summary of the issue and what my plan is:
Our update policy is set to update workstations (mostly laptops) on the 4th Monday of the month. I've noticed that quite a few laptops have downloaded the update, but are not installing them. I have a few that have been in this state for over a week and it does not appear they are going to install on their own. I have concluded that this may be due to the laptops not being on at the time of the install, which I guess I can understand, but there needs to be some logic to help in these scenarios.
Through lots of research I discovered that Windows 10 now uses Update Orchestrator (usoclient.exe). I also found out that the "Configure Automatic Updates" Policy created scheduled tasks that uses usoclient.exe to perform the tasks. The tasks that are created are not very consistent, as some get a task called "Policy Install" and others do not, amongst others that I have seen. This task seems to be the key to all my problems, so I have even thought about creating a separate policy with these settings.
The main issue that I noticed with this approach is this:
(looks like I can't load an image, but the next paragraph should explain this)
It looks like this task is able to use the older method of allowing to "Run whether user is logged on or not", which is only available in the newer OS if you use a User based policy.
The other approach that I wanted to take was to actually edit this task through the Windows Update GPO somehow, but I can't seem to find a way to do this or how these tasks even get created in the first place. There is no reference to this in the admx or adml files and looking at the policy itself there is nothing related to scheduled tasks. The reason I want to edit this is to allow "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed". I'm a bit baffled as to why this option is not readily available. You would think this would be a pretty common thing to help keep updates on schedule.
Is there any hope to making this a reality?
Thanks!
Steve
So I have been having an extremely frustrating time with Windows Updates, as through my research, many others have as well. Below is a summary of the issue and what my plan is:
Our update policy is set to update workstations (mostly laptops) on the 4th Monday of the month. I've noticed that quite a few laptops have downloaded the update, but are not installing them. I have a few that have been in this state for over a week and it does not appear they are going to install on their own. I have concluded that this may be due to the laptops not being on at the time of the install, which I guess I can understand, but there needs to be some logic to help in these scenarios.
Through lots of research I discovered that Windows 10 now uses Update Orchestrator (usoclient.exe). I also found out that the "Configure Automatic Updates" Policy created scheduled tasks that uses usoclient.exe to perform the tasks. The tasks that are created are not very consistent, as some get a task called "Policy Install" and others do not, amongst others that I have seen. This task seems to be the key to all my problems, so I have even thought about creating a separate policy with these settings.
The main issue that I noticed with this approach is this:
(looks like I can't load an image, but the next paragraph should explain this)
It looks like this task is able to use the older method of allowing to "Run whether user is logged on or not", which is only available in the newer OS if you use a User based policy.
The other approach that I wanted to take was to actually edit this task through the Windows Update GPO somehow, but I can't seem to find a way to do this or how these tasks even get created in the first place. There is no reference to this in the admx or adml files and looking at the policy itself there is nothing related to scheduled tasks. The reason I want to edit this is to allow "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed". I'm a bit baffled as to why this option is not readily available. You would think this would be a pretty common thing to help keep updates on schedule.
Is there any hope to making this a reality?
Thanks!
Steve