WSUS: Microsoft Update Catalog Import failure

[German]Microsoft has already admitted an issue with WSUS 5.0 (Windows Server 2016) in March 2018. Some or all Updates can't be imported from the Microsoft Update Catalog in WSUS.

Administrators in WSUS environments may be aware of the issue. Importing updates in WSUS 5.0 from Microsoft Update Catalog fails. I've addressed this issue on June 8th 2018 within my German blog post Lösung: Updates in WSUS importieren. But Crysta T. Lacey (@PhantomofMobile) informed me last week via this Tweet about the topic.

WSUS Catalog import failures

Steve Henry [MSFT]

March 2, 2018

ICYMI: @SBSDiva @AdminKirsty @woodyleonhard @thurrott @maryjofoley @bdsams @mehedih_ @ruthm @MPECSInc @etguenni @SwiftOnSecurity @pcper @SGgrc @MalwareJake @GossiTheDog @ryanshrout @JobCackahttps://t.co/C3DtuEIEZ6

— Crysta T. Lacey (@PhantomofMobile) 22. Juni 2018

Steve Henry from Microsoft points out at the March 2, 2018 that an update import problem is known at WSUS. The Technet blog post is entitled WSUS Catalog import failures. Microsoft writes:

We are currently working on a known issue with importing updates on WSUS 5.0 (Windows Server 2016) from the Microsoft Update Catalog, which fails with the following error: "This update cannot be imported into Windows Server Update Service because it is not compatible with your version of WSUS," as shown in the image below.

(Source: Microsoft, Click to zoom)

Microsoft states in its blog article that the developers are aware of the issue and are currently working on a solution. In the meantime, the following workarounds are proposed to unlock the deployment:

• After clicking on the "Import Updates…" option in the WSUS console, an Internet Explorer window will open on the following URL: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/… &Protocol=1.20
• Before proceeding with importing the updates, change the "1.20" protocol value in the URL to the previous protocol value "1.8". The URL should look like this when you're done: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/… &Protocol=1.8

Microsoft's team wrote: Going forward, please visit the Tech Community Windows 10 Servicing Page for future WSUS-related posts

Another workaround

When I went through the information given above, I thought: Wait a minute, there was something, you once addressed it in one of your blogs. On June 8, 2018 I published the article Lösung: Updates in WSUS importieren, but only within my German blog – I just became aware, I missed it to post also an English article. There I did not only mention the issue in Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) when importing, but also published workarounds. Beside the workaround outlined above, there is another case, where this approach didn't work.

No IE present, another workaround

German user RedBullmachtfit has mentioned within this thread another hint, to overcome the situation, when no Internet Explorer is available on a machine. Here is his post, which I've translated:

Just discovered another way to import updates into WSUS on a core server.

….

Download the update and save it on the server, copy the UpdateID of the URL of the update catalog; Import with Powershell.

The user refers to the article Import the convenience update into WSUS. There, a WSUS administrator was faced with the problem of importing the Convenience rollup update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP from the Microsoft Update Catalog. But there was no Internet Explorer installed on the machine, and the download before importing wasn't possible. So he downloaded the update package to one of his clients, and then copied it to the WSUS server.

There he had the problem that he could not import this update into WSUS. However, MSDN described an IUpdateServer.ImportUpdateFromCatalogSite method that can also be used from the PowerShell with the following import instructions.

$MSUfile = 'C:\Temp\windows10.0-kb4090007-v2-x64_c…896.msu' 
(Get-WsusServer).ImportUpdateFromCatalogSite('efce6cbe-7b1a-479e-a5b3-15135938cebb',$MSUfile)

You can read the details in the linked articles. Maybe it'll help. From the tweet mentioned above I can see, however, that the problem has still not been solved by Microsoft. So we have the crazy situation, that Microsoft are servicing us every six months, or twice a year, a WaaS (Windows as a service) feature update – but they are not able to fix an issue, occurring since 5 months at least. Or is that bug fixes? Any comments?

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Addendum: I wrote a follow-up article How-To: Import OOB Updates in WSUS without IE, but with Microsoft Edge