forums.wsusoffline.net

Following Office updates do not want to be installed and causing wsusoffline not to terminate successfully always suggesting a reboot is necceary:

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Installing update 1 of 2...
Installing ..\ofc\enu\msointl-en-us_cbb2e8d950e9de471c4b7770b6699032dde0ef98.cab...
Installing update 2 of 2...
Installing ..\ofc\enu\powerpointintl-en-us_262f44edceec03e27c471c782e02d6089bbc2efd.cab...

Any idea what is happening with those updates?

Thanks,
Oliver

How can you exlude these updates?

Kind regards
Jochen

The file wsusoffline/client/exclude/ExcludeList.txt lists files, which should not be installed automatically. Some files, like the Malicious Software Removal Tool are always excluded, and Service Packs are only installed on request.

The script ListUpdatesToInstall.cmd does a simple text comparison: It compares the first column of the ExcludeList.txt with a list of missing updates. If there is a match, then the update will not be installed.

The kb numbers are most useful for this comparison, but any other unique identifier should also work. You could use the SHA-1 hashes, which are embedded into the file names and create a custom exclude list:

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wsusoffline/client/exclude/custom/ExcludeList.txt

with the content:

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cbb2e8d950e9de471c4b7770b6699032dde0ef98,Offending Office update
262f44edceec03e27c471c782e02d6089bbc2efd,Offending Office update

or simply the complete file names:

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msointl-en-us_cbb2e8d950e9de471c4b7770b6699032dde0ef98.cab
powerpointintl-en-us_262f44edceec03e27c471c782e02d6089bbc2efd.cab

Note, that the file should end with an empty line.

Regards,
hbuhrmester

Thank you for pointing me to "ListUpdatesToInstall.cmd".

This script creates a file "MissingUpdateIds.txt":
2956076,f3201fb1-80ac-4e3e-917c-e945c37d340e
2920812,c593391c-2d8c-4c53-940e-d0cc782c2712
...

And the first column is compared to the content of the "ExcludeList.txt" files:
kb2956076,msointl-en-us_cbb2e8d950e9de471c4b7770b6699032dde0ef98.cab
kb2956076,msointl-en-us_e177c899869881375db04f69e93c9ce621a22d20.cab
kb2920812,powerpointintl-en-us_262f44edceec03e27c471c782e02d6089bbc2efd.cab
kb2920812,powerpointintl-en-us_71124f27c703a6963e45759ac75de135d2293ac7.cab
...

So it was not sufficient for me to add only the filename, the KB number had to be added. But with checking "MissingUpdateIds.txt" it was easy to find ou the KB numbers.

I see. I wasn't sure, where to find the information, since the kb numbers are not in the file package.xml at all. But this information is returned from the Windows Update service, which uses more information from the original archive wsusscn2.cab (the WSUS catalog file).

The kb numbers may also be found in the installation log C:\Windows\wsusofflineupdate.log, for example:

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11.02.2018  6:00:45,46 - Warning: Update kb2977218 (id: 68568dfa-c35c-4bc3-8996-74a818d0e5d7) not found

The installation log is written to the Windows directory, because ISO images or real optical media are not writable.

Another useful utility to search for missing updates would be the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyser:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7651

Regards,
hbuhrmester


Edit: Maybe this was not quite on topic, because the downloads are not actually missing.

But maybe you can find some useful information in the logfiles:

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C:\Windows\wsusofflineupdate.log
C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log