Microsoft fixes WSUS malfunction in time for Patch Tuesday

Allen Moore, a systems administrator at DeKalb Memorial Hospital in DeKalb, Ill., said he didn't wait for Microsoft Monday, but instead used SQL queries posted in a support forum to bring back WSUS. "I applied the two SQL queries to manually fix the tables yesterday, and was able to get back into WSUS without any errors," he said in an e-mail today. "I [also] just checked our WSUS 2.0 server and it appears to be working correctly after updating this morning."

Harder said her team would add new checks to curb errors like this. "We are also improving our publishing tools to make sure that issues like this are caught during the publishing process, before they impact customers," she said.

She said much the same thing, however, less than three weeks ago after admitting that recycling an update package had force-fed Windows Desktop Search (WDS) to client PCs which had been told to ignore the application. "We are also working on improving our internal publishing processes to ensure this does not happen again in the future," Harder said then.

Some users seemed to be unhappy with the trend in WSUS problems. "Thanks, Microsoft, it's great having things like this happen when I'm already too busy!!!" said someone identified as stormforce5 on a WSUS support forum Monday.

As she did in the wake of October's WSUS snafu, Microsoft's Harder said she was sorry: "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused to our customers."