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Last week I discovered that many of my servers were no longer updating successfully from my intranet Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server. Looking in WindowsUpdate.log file, I noticed errors similar to the following:
Upon troubleshooting the problem, I discovered that the SelfUpdate virtual directory was not configured on my WSUS server (i.e. the server named COLOSSUS). To resolve the issue, I used IIS Manager to create the SelfUpdate virtual directory (using the local path C:\Program Files\Update Services\Selfupdate). I then used wuauclt /detectnow to force an update on one of my servers to confirm that this resolved the issue.
A little post mortem analysis further revealed the following event on COLOSSUS:
Event Type: InformationEvent Source: MsiInstallerEvent Category: NoneEvent ID: 11724Date: 3/22/2008Time: 7:17:29 AMComputer: COLOSSUSDescription:Product: Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 -- Removal completed successfully.
Ah, yes...now it was all coming back to me. On the morning of March 22nd, I decided to install WSUS Service Pack 1 (SP1). Since I did not encounter any errors during the install, it appears that WSUS SP1 is the likely culprit for the missing SelfUpdate virtual directory.
Perhaps this only happens when you have WSUS installed on a non-standard port or when you have SharePoint installed on the WSUS server. As you can see in the excerpt from WindowsUpdate.log above, I am using port 8530 for the WSUS Web site. This is because COLOSSUS is currently running both WSUS and MOSS 2007.