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Matthias Güntert
Asked: 2014-11-20 11:45:37 +0800 CST

Howto initiate Windows Update on server core from a PS remote session?

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When I am logged in via remote desktop on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Core machine I can trigger the windows update by running sconfig.cmd. This however fails when its getting called within a PS remote session:

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName server2

This is what sconfig complains about. It basically says that it can't find a specific registry value. A funny thing to note is that Microsoft choose VBScript over PowerShell to program this CLI interface...

[server2]: PS C:\> sconfig

C:\>echo off
sconfig : FEHLER: Der angegebene Registrierungsschl?ssel bzw. Wert wurde nicht gefunden.
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (FEHLER: Der ang...nicht gefunden.:String) [], RemoteException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError

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C:\Windows\System32\de-DE\sconfig.vbs(326, 1) Laufzeitfehler in Microsoft VBScript: Eingabe hinter Dateiende.

How should/can I initiate a Windows Update when being logged in via PS remote session?

windows-server-2012-r2

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can't actually trigger that directly over winrm/winrs.

    A somewhat popular powershell module (PSWindowsUpdate) for performing Windows Updates from Powershell exists, and to perform updates on a remote system it actually copies the module to the remote system and schedules a new one-time task on the remote system.

    In the invoke-WUInstall.ps1 file it has this comment about remotely triggering an update.

    Use Invoke-WUInstall to invoke Windows Update install remotly. It Based on TaskScheduler because CreateUpdateDownloader() and CreateUpdateInstaller() methods can't be called from a remote computer - E_ACCESSDENIED.

    • 7

  2. FWIW, on Windows Server 2019, you can use

    $u = Start-WUScan
$b = Install-WUUpdates $u

    The array $u tells you what updates are available, if it is empty, you are done.

    The boolean $b tells you whether a reboot is required. After rebooting, you should scan for updates again.

    • 3

  3. All hail to the poster of the last comment. It works.

    Get the pswidowsupdate files from the web & unzip them. Then import the module & run this code (the invoke-wsuinstall.ps1 file has the sample code but I removed a bit from it and it still works):

    $Script = {Get-WUInstall -AcceptAll -AutoReboot | Out-File C:\PSWindowsUpdate.log}
Invoke-WUInstall -ComputerName computername -Script $Script
Get-Content \ \ computername\c$\PSWindowsUpdate.log
    • 1