forums.wsusoffline.net

Hello!
Today, I formatted my old PC and reinstalled Windows 7 x64 Home Premium. One week ago, I downloaded with WSUS 11.9.5 the updates, made an ISO and today I tried to install them. After the first updates (IE, Net Framework etc) it only finds four updates and it finishes the installation. After the next reboot, two updates are failing and they are reverted back. Also, after the first reboot, it does not enter into temporary user account, so I have to enter to the normal username to continue the installation. I formatted again the PC, I run everything again, and the same happened again. Is there any problem with the latest wsusscn2.cab? Today I downloaded v11.9.6 to try.
Thank you a lot!

Updating Windows 7 these days can be tricky, especially if you are not in ESU mode.

The current WOU CE ESR supports only Windows 7 users with ESU (Extended Security Updates) licenses (that's only Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise Editions). The last valid updates and media created for Windows 7 without an ESU license were the January 2020 ones.

So, if you do not have an ESU license applied, the Windows updates you downloaded will not install and roll back on reboot (at around 61% IIRC). WOU cannot and is not allowed to work around these licensing restrictions. Windows 7 without ESU license is End Of Life (EOL) as of January 2020, this includes ALL Starter, Home Basic and Home Premium Editions (because there is no ESU for them).


Consider using Windows 10 Home (which you should be able to activate with your Windows 7 key). No way to safely run Windows 7 without ESU license anymore, at least officially.

I can send a wsusou CE image created using a catalog from January 2020, if you want to.

If you need more recent Windows 7 updates, there is no way to get them without purchasing an ESU license (which is only applicabable to Professional, Enterprise and Ultimat; as boco already said).

Maybe making it commonly available would be the best option. I already can imagine a truckload of such questions in the near future.

Ah, yes, how about a warning in WOU CE, if not present already, that you need an ESU license to use it?
As an alternative, putting the January 2020 catalog onto permanent webspace and allowing WOU CE ESR to "pin" the catalog to Jan2020, for easily creating non-ESU ISOs. That's maybe even better, more flexible and the catalog is smaller.

boco wrote:Ah, yes, how about a warning in WOU CE, if not present already, that you need an ESU license to use it?

I just added a note to UpdateGenerator.
- Add ESU note to UpdateGenerator (Thanks to "boco")
https://gitlab.com/wsusoffline/wsusoffline/-/commit/1ff6076ebd2fdd7c3e21978797b5af9d99cd082a

boco wrote:Maybe making it commonly available would be the best option. I already can imagine a truckload of such questions in the near future.

For making it available commonly, it would take about 90GB of space (without o2k10).
o2k3 -> 6,12GB
o2k7 -> 14,8GB
o2k10 -> 34,6GB
wxp -> 16,8GB
w2k3 -> 21,4GB
w60 -> 8,05GB
w2k8 -> 10,4GB
w61 / w2k8r2 -> 9,94GB
w62 -> 1,80GB

boco wrote:As an alternative, putting the January 2020 catalog onto permanent webspace and allowing WOU CE ESR to "pin" the catalog to Jan2020, for easily creating non-ESU ISOs. That's maybe even better, more flexible and the catalog is smaller.

I'd be extremely happy with this solution, if it's workable. It'd definitely be my preference over 90GBs of premade images that someone has to upload and is less flexible.

The problem I see with catalog „pinning“ is, that some URLs could have changed or taken down. One of the catalog files also hat about 1GB at the moment.

We‘re trying to improve wsusouCE to be able to detect possible ESU problems:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10217