July 2017 Updates KB4025336/KB4025331 breaks WSUS

[German]It seems that Updates KB4025336 for Windows Server 2012 R2 and KB4025331 for Windows Server 2012 are breaking WSUS and SCCM. Here are a few details.

I've been contacted by German blog reader Marco R. by e-mail – but I noticed some issues already within Microsoft forums.

Updates KB4025336 for Windows Server 2012 R2

Updates KB4025336 is a monthly rollup füor Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, released on July 11, 2017. Beside the iSCSI connection issue, I 've mentioned within my blog post Windows Server: an Update causes iSCSI connection issues (fixed with Windows 8.1 Preview Rollup Update KB4025335), the update also breaks client's connection with WSUS.

I've addressed this issue within my blog post Botched Updates KB4025252 and KB4025336 (July 2017). German blog reader JohnRipper mentioned within a comment, that update KB4025336 (Monthly Rollup for Windows 8.1/Windows Server 2012 R2) blocks the client's connection to WSUS. I found also a 2nd post within German heise.de forum, dealing with the same issue. All clients reports suddenly error 0x80244008 during update search. This error code stands for (see):

WU_E_PT_SOAPCLIENT_PARSEFAULT – 0x80244008 – (16392) – Same as SOAPCLIENT_PARSEFAULT_ERROR – SOAP client failed to parse a SOAP fault.

It seems, that this update breaks something within SOAP client. The only solution known yet is uninstalling the botched update. The topic is also discussed within technet forum.

Update KB4025331 for Windows Server 2012

Update KB4025331 is a monthly rollup update for Windows Server 2012, issued at July 11, 2017. This patch shall fix Internet Explorer 10 crashes and other issues. Blog reader Marco R. informed me via e-mail about a serious issue with this update for Windows Server 2012 and WSUS. Marco wrote (I freely translated his German text):

Here is an information, that caused a lot of time to investigate. Beside KB4025336 for Windows 2012 R2 also Update KB4025331 for Windows Server 2012 … breaks WSUS.

He did send me a screen shot with entries from WindowsUpdate.log, that he found on all Windows 7 x64 clients of a customer.

(Click to enlarge)

The log file reports several error 0x8024400D which stands for WU_E_PT_SOAP_CLIENT (Same as SOAP_E_CLIENT – SOAP client found the message was malformed; fix before resending). It indicates, that something went terrible wrong with SOAP client connection within Windows Update. I guess, the hints given here and here won't help. Marco R wrote:

After installing no more Office and Windows updates could be installed from clients via SCCM. After uninstalling update KB4025331 from Windows 2012 WSUS Server, the error has been gone.

Within this Spiceworks community thread somebody addressed a similar issue, but mentioned other updates. But within this Technet thread update KB4022720 (see) has been identifies as a root cause for WSUS error 0x80244008 (WU_E_PT_SOAPCLIENT_PARSEFAULT, same code as for SOAPCLIENT_PARSEFAULT_ERROR – SOAP client failed to parse a SOAP fault). Within this this MS forum thread user LiquidVipe reported update KB4025331 breaks WSUS aon Windows Server 2012.

My Wsus runs in Windows Server 2012 R1. Same problem here but different KB: 4025331.

Uninstalling solved the problem.

The thread deals with the issue, that clients could not connect to WSUS to receive updates. I published these cases here, perhaps other admins can confirm this issue. If a solution is known, please feel free to drop a comment.

Similar articles:
Windows Server: an Update causes iSCSI connection issues
Windows 8.1 Preview Rollup Update KB4025335
Botched Updates KB4025252 and KB4025336 (July 2017)