forums.wsusoffline.net

boco wrote:WOU will statically install some prerequisites, for solving the "long search problem", latest Service stack, SHA2 update etc. If that process is interrupted or aborted, not all dynamic updates will be installed*.

Boco, your "install some prerequisites" is equal to aker's "wsusou's preparations", right?

Please correct me if I am wrong:
"Listing ids of missing updates (please be patient ..." appears after static updates are finished
"Listing ids of missing updates (please be patient ..." means a list of dynamic updates is being collected
Therefore I didn't abort nor interrupt static installations, I interrupted the collection of a list of dynamic updates and so not all dynamic updates were installed in the first run.

Boco, your "install some prerequisites" is equal to aker's "wsusou's preparations", right?

Correct.

The prereq's are installed before the dynamic updates are determined. Usually, a reboot after prereq installation is required, to correctly register them. Usually, the latest WUA is also installed, shorten the search times significantly.

The problem WU has with search times have to do with so-called "supersede chains", especially partial supersedes. While installing updates might appear to be an atomic operation, it isn't. Updates consist of many small packages, that might be superseded by later updates or not. WUA must analyze the complete chain, for every update package. It can take a lot of time.
MS have shot themselves into the foot, by discontinuing Service Packs. Service Packs acted as new "milestones" and reset supersedes. Example: Windows 7 SP1 is a new base, none of the old Windows 7 RTM updates have to be analyzed, anymore. But, SP1 was a long time ago... In other words, with regular SPs for resetting supersedes to zero, the long search problem would not exist.

Is my quote correct or not?

Please correct me if I am wrong:
"Listing ids of missing updates (please be patient ..." appears after static updates are finished
"Listing ids of missing updates (please be patient ..." means a list of dynamic updates is being collected
Therefore I didn't abort nor interrupt static installations, I interrupted the collection of a list of dynamic updates and so not all dynamic updates were installed in the first run.

"Listing ids of missing updates" is the collection of dynamic updates. If you did not skip anything before that line (including reboots and recalls), the prereq's should have been installed.

thank you, things are getting clearer to me

The last item unclear to me:

aker wrote:If you cancel the process and restart shortly it afterwards, the dynamic update search will fail as WUA isn't able to do more than one task at the same time.

WUA is running even after the update batch is terminated?

WOU just calls the WUA and provides it with a task (search for updates). The WUA will then process that task by itself. However, WUA cannot process more than one task at once, and it is not stopped when you cancel WOU (the task runs in vain until being complete).

If you restart WOU while WUA still processes the old task, the new search task is appended to the task queue. As a result, the search time will become even higher.

So i need to restart Windows between two runs of UpdateInstallers, and this problem will be solved?

Restarting is the easiest option. Just note that if you are online and automatic updates are enabled, WU might kick off a search task as soon as you boot up, again.

Stopping and restarting just the Windows Update service (wuauserv) will work, too.

Thanks to all who clarified this topic to me.

Sorry for my late reply, I'm a little bit busy at the moment...

In my initial post, I thought, you also canceled the static updates. Now I know, that I misread your post...

Canceling a WUA process could have multiple results:
- the case happening in the most cases is, that the new request is added to the queue and parsed after the previous ones
- in some cases, it can also cause WUA to behave strange (such as returning empty results or crashing)
That's why I do not trust results, WUA serves after a job has been tried to "cancel" without Windows being restarted.