Patch Manager/WSUS on 2012 server. Everything was fine, until we installed WDS yesterday. Now WSUS has basically disappeared from the server. Where do i start?

Until we installed WDS yesterday. Now WSUS has basically disappeared from the server.

Not really sure what to say. WSUS and WDS will certainly co-exist on a Windows Server 2012 server, and there's no known reason, nor have I ever seen/heard of installation of a server role causing another to uninstall.

Perhaps it would help if you could describe exactly what you mean by "WSUS has basically disappeared from the server"?

HI Lawrence. I was hoping you would chime in. Pretty much every WSUS post i can find on the net has you solving the issue.

This is a brand new Windows 2012 standard server that i created about a month ago. It's running on esxu 5.1 with the data living on a hp p2000 san. I was pushing out IE 10 yesterday from wsus and pushing out adobe reader installs with transform files from patch manager as well. We decided to install WDS on this server to take advantage of some slower storage that we put in the SAN(for the desktop images) As far as WSUS disappearing. I noticed my WSUS admin snap in that is installed on my workstation could no longer connect to the wsus server. I pull up patch manager console from my workstation, go to all updates and receive another error about not being able to connect to the wsus server.

On the server itself:

I no longer see the wsus snap in under administrative tools, i dont see a shortcut to pull up WSUS, like there used to be.(when hitting the windows button on the keyboard)

There are no wsus related services shown in the services snap in.

I see a few wsus specific errors under event viewer.

When viewing add/remove server roles, i see WSUS is installed but nothing else. (see screenshot)

I tried to reinstall patch manager thinking that would also reinstall wsus. But the installer crashes and i get an app crash(configurationhelper.exe) when it is "configuring the correct WSUS version to the config files".

Matt

A couple of notes.

On WS2012, the WSUS console is a "feature", and you'll find it listed under Features -> Role Administration Tools. (See below).

Knowing unequivocally that installing WDS would not remove WSUS, nor can you remove a role using the "Add Roles and Features Wizard", it does beg the questions of WSUS apparently became uninstalled from this server. I would suggest combing through Event Logs for anything relevant to that purpose.

Uninstalling/reinstalling Patch Manager is not going to be able to fix a broken WSUS installation; more to the point, the only thing that would be required is to just fix the broken WSUS installation.

However, now, you also have a broken Patch Manager installation.

If there's nothing else running on this server except WSUS (broken) and Patch Manager (broken), and you've not actually implemented anything with WDS yet, you might just consider blowing it all away and starting from scratch.

Or, if WDS is already configured, or if you don't want to reinstall the OS, clean up the role installations for WSUS, verify all components are removed (e.g. IIS v-dirs, registry keys, %ProgramFiles%\Update Services folder), verify the WID really has been removed. Reboot the server and re-run the PM installation. (If the WSUS server is fully cleaned up, the PM install should be able to build a new WSUS.)

Or (safer, but more work)... install the WSUS role on the server without using Patch Manager. Verify that the WSUS role is installed and functioning, and then install Patch Manager using the "Advanced Installation" option, where it will give you an opportunity to tell it to use an existing WSUS Server.

thanks for your insight Lawrence. This server is hosed. Oh well, more practice. I think were going to finish making a new image for a new model computer we have here now, then export those images and boot images out, kill the server. Then recreate the server with only patch man and wsus, and put wds on a different server. Somehow when adding that wds role, it uninstalled wsus.

thanks again man.

I would encourage you to re-evaluate exactly what happened during your WDS installation.

I can tell you for a fact that it will work, because I have DHCP, WSUS, WDS, and a Patch Manager Automation Role server all installed together on a single Windows Server 2012 instance.

The specific order of installation was:

1. WSUS (w/WebServer Role)
2. Patch Manager Automation Role
3. DHCP
4. WDS

Yeah, when researching solutions to this issue, i cam across several posting by you that said you had been running wds with patch man/wsus without issues. So something obviously went wrong when adding WDS to that server. As far as actually adding it, the whole process is pretty fast, not much to it really. Then we copied our boot images and install images into WDS. We then editing and added some new boot drivers to some of our boot images. Did some testing on some machines. And that was pretty much it. Came in today and it wasn't working.

Well, i built two new servers. One with WDS and one with WSUS/Patch Manager. I think i am good to go, and just published our transform version of Adobe Reader 11. Except i am having trouble seeing the 3rd party updates folder.. Shouldn't it be right here(where the arrow is). I am pretty sure it should be right there so that i can approve it and then approve it for the correct groups that i want to test it on first.

thanks.

Hi Johnny. Here's a kb article that goes over creating the third party view.

SolarWinds Knowledge Base :: How to create a third party updates view in the Patch Manager console

You'll need to re-create that view. It's a custom view (user-defined).

SolarWinds Knowledge Base :: How to create a third party updates view in the Patch Manager console

Thank you Lawrence and David. I don't remember doing that the 1st time i setup patch manager. I guess that is why i thought it was supposed to appear automatically. Thanks again guys.