In many companies the network has been configured for Windows PC’s to connect to a local server for Microsoft Updates. Usually running Windows Server Updates Server or WSUS for short.
If it [WSUS] has an issue and updates aren’t being pulled down, but you need to update a PC urgently, then you can do the following to turn off WSUS for that PC, which will then permit you to get updates directly from Microsoft Servers.
1. Click Windows key + R to open Run and type regedit and press Enter.
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
3. Change the key UseWUServer from 1 to 0
4. Restart the Windows Update service
5. Run Windows Update and it should connect and downloads start.
If this article helped you or if you have further suggestions, please feel free to comment below. 🙂
Thank you for this little piece of information. In this time of COVID-19 most of us are not remote workers (I am from the US) . Normally there when users are in the office, GP usually points workstations to our own WSUS server. Often times you get a user who can’t update because of the policy. Ans since MS seems to be messing up more than ever, an update to an update or Cumulative update is needed but for some reason a remote worker cant connect to the VPN and run the MS update fix to fix issues with connecting to VPN. Thankfully 9 times out of ten the user does have internet access so thanks to this fix fix, I can quick assist and make this small change change, and re run windows update and back in business. Thanks for this useful piece of info. I now just make a registry file out of it and run it when I need it (When the laptop refreshes the GP it will be changed back to the way it was anyway) Thank for this info.
Thanks Chris for sharing your valuable inputs 🙂
Thank you for the tip – it got me very close to what I had to do, which is, at the ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate’ key (without the AU at the end) I had to set ‘DisableWindowsUpdagteAccess’ from 1 to 0, AS WELL AS remove two additional keys:
‘WUServer’ and ‘WUStatusServer’.
Once I’ve done those, my Windows 7 machine suddenly opened-up to look for updates from Microsoft.
Thanks again 🙂
Thanks for quick help