Updating the Windows Update Agent in C++

Question

I've been implementing a Windows Update tool, and have gotten to the part where I need to handle updating the Windows Update Agent. I've been following the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa387285(v=vs.85).aspx 

Yesterday (8/7/2012), http://update.microsoft.com/redist/wuredist.cab began giving a 404 error. It worked fine on 8/6.

Is the documentation I linked still considered the right way to handle updating the WUA? I'm hoping the 404 is only a temporary issue. This software runs on a WES7 system with a custom shell, and at some point the explorer shell became a dependency of the built-in Windows Update client, so our customers have no way to update their systems until I get a client built.

Answer 1

I'm afraid the link http://update.microsoft.com/redist/wuredist.cab has problem, not the API.

You can check if it has the problem by browse it form IE, when I browse it from IE, it is also show me a 404 error.

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Mike Zhang[MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Right - I had realized that... Mainly I wanted to bring to 404 to someone at Microsoft's attention if it is something that went down accidentally, and get help finding a new way to update WUA if the linked documentation is just out-of-date.

I beginning to think it is the latter, since I just realized that the wuredist.xml file in the cab (downloaded Monday, before it went 404) claims that the latest version is 7.4.7600.226, and kb949104 says it is 7.6.7600.256. SP1 ships with 7.5.something.

Answer 3

I found no place to submit this kind issue.

I think maybe you can submit your feedback to this KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949104

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Mike Zhang[MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 4

I submitted feedback to the documentation linked in my original post, and got great support. It turns out that the page is 404'ed because there isn't a standalone installer for the current WUA. After responding and clarifying our situation, I got some useful advice that I'll paste below. The solution isn't ideal, but it also only needs to be done in the situation that doing a normal update fails and I get a 404 trying to update the WUA.

Because we didn’t anticipate your situation, we didn’t engineer any sort of “there’s no current version” message in the wuredist protocol. For now, interpret the 404 as “there’s no current version”.

Here are some workaround steps that you might consider. Note that this is temporary. We are likely to refine our advice in the near future.

1. Wait for a maintenance window, where a reboot is acceptable (or do this during predeployment preparation of the controller).
2. Using group policy or direct writes to the documented registry values, configure AU to automatically download updates (or to automatically download and install updates, if you want to do that).
3. Use a script or some other mechanism to run the command “wuauclt /detectnow”. This will trigger an automatic detection cycle, which will trigger the selfupdate.
4. Sleep for 60 seconds. (wuauclt /detectnow is asynchronous; it will return almost immediately – the selfupdate cycle will take longer.)
5. If Automatic Updates are not desired during normal operation, undo the changes you made to the AU settings.
6. If the ISystemInformation::RebootRequired property is now VARIANT_TRUE, restart the computer.

Answer 5

Thanks for sharing this useful things here, it will be helpful to others who maybe facing a same issue as you did.

Nice day!

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Mike Zhang[MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 6

Hi this is also down for me was working ok last week

http://update.microsoft.com/redist/wuredist.cab

Any ideas when this file maybe added back?

Answer 7

MBSA also needs this file to work correctly.

Answer 8

Hi this is also down for me was working ok last week

http://update.microsoft.com/redist/wuredist.cab

Any ideas when this file maybe added back?

It's back up today (8/14/12), and will likely stick around till they push a new WUA.