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Windows Server 2016 Has an Update Problem, Users Say
madsci1016 writes: Frustrated with how long my Windows Server 2016 Essentials was taking to apply weekly updates, I turned to the web. A quick search revealed that I'm not alone. Many people are reporting similar experiences across the web. All sharing stories of weekly patching taking hours and sometimes ending in hung welcome screens. Some of these threads started a year ago and are still active, with no response from Microsoft addressing the issue. If you use Server 2016, have you experienced this problem?
5ms google search and... https://www.ubuntu.com/server
If only that worked
The only thing I have found that will fix it (at least until it decides to say fuck updates again) is manually install the old update it says it needs, manually reset windows update, and then it will usually update normally for a month or two until it breaks again
This issue has caused our company to no longer deploy server 2016 and fall back to 2012 R2
And it's been that way for YEARS. They have yet to get updates right. It's one of the reasons I would NEVER consider running Windows as a server OS. No thanks...
665: The mark on the forehead of Satan's slightly less evil brother, Stan.
Honestly, I can't understand how anyone can feel at ease storing anything of value on Windows.
It wasn't *always* this bad, but now it's a genuine nightmare. What if you need to travel on short notice during an unscheduled half-day-long update? One you didn't want in the first place? Can you imagine typing up or contructing a whole bunch of stuff, for days or weeks only to have it unaccessible when you need it? Waking up to discover the multi-thousand-dollar machine you bought has suddenly broken itself, by some feat of magic? or maybe suddenly decided it doesn't trust your hardware. Somewhere, during the night, your Personal Computer has become suspicious of you, or your setup. Because it thinks you *might* be trying to prevent Microsoft from collecting maximum revenue.
This is what it's like to run Windows in 2018.
2016 definitely has patch speed issues, with the same set of patches taking roughly 20 mins on 2012R2, vs 3+ hours on 2016. So far, this does not appear limited to any particular circumstances, so Essentials suffers the same as Core and Desktop, etc.
One thing that helps speed it up a little is to manually grab the latest cumulative from the WU Catalog, but this still takes a while.
This issue does not appear to be limited to the Windows Server 2016. I have observed 4 hour updates on my wife's Windows 10 desktop and on mine also.
I'm senior sysadmin for a mid sized university system, the update times have increased dramatically since the switch to all rollup updates last fall, that a definitely observable fact. I personally have mixed feelings on it, it definitely speeds the initial patch cycle after a new build, but kinda sucks on machines that in production are patched monthly and likely don't require the full rollup, but the individual patches are no longer easily available. One adjustment we've had to make is to increase the allowable time window that we used to allow for patch installation via our SCCM delivered packages, as well as some minor adjustment of placement of patching windows within our scheduled maintenance windows to ensure that the patches complete in the allowed time.
PSA/Community service:
Here's the missing quick reference card for Windows updates.
If the problem is detecting or downloading the updates, run the powershell command get-windowsupdatelog to make a human readable log file on your desktop. (That half-grumbled thought that just went through your mind.. I agree.)
If the problem is installing an update, the Content Based Servicing (CBS) logs in c:\windows\logs\cbs contain literally insane amounts of data including occasionally a useful error. These are big enough that they choke some text editors. Notepad++ handles them well. (Protip:I grep -v ", Info " to get some idea of what I'm looking for, then dig in with the editor.)
If the problem is installing a driver, those errors end up in c:\windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log.
If the problem is with a feature update:
C:\$Windows.~BT\Sources\panther\setupact.log
C:\$Windows.~BT\Sources\panther\miglog.xml
C:\Windows\setupapi.log
If you get an error code like 0x80070005 that you want to decode to a human readable message you can try Err.exe, the "Microsoft Exchange Server Error Code Look-up" tool. e.g. running err.exe 0x80070005 tells me that winerror.h defines this as E_ACCESSDENIED.
HTH.
Ubuntu wants to update 1-2 times a week
True enough.
, and always wants to reboot after.
Not so true. It needs to reboot after kernel updates and a few other obscure cases. That's more like once every 2 or 3 weeks.
But more importantly, with Linux, it's just a normal reboot. With WIndows, they put you in a special update purgatory for some unpredictable amount of time both before and after the reboot, possibly well over an hour: "Windows is doing updates XX% done. Do not turn off your PC".
It's frigging 2018, and they've never figured out how to fix this despite pocketing countless $Billions peddling this OS. WTF?
I haven't done Windows administration in a few years, but I'm on the receiving end of Windows update on two PCs as a user. Apt is a brain dead simple package manager compared to the sophistication of windows update.
In practice, apt is much faster and more predictable. I just received notice of updates for about 60 MB of updates in ubuntu. These took less than a minute to download and install. During the process, I was treated like an adult and the package manager let me know which package it was working on and whether it was downloading or installing. One of the most frustrating things with windows update is not knowing how long it will take. The second most frustrating thing is not knowing if it's stuck or just working on something that takes a long time.
Got a decent (that is, less awful to set up, configure, and administer) replacement for Exchange/Outlook?
I mean, MS is trying to make this easier for us by having Windows Server and Outlook constantly get worse (our two most common platforms are Mac OS X and Android; Outlook is half-assed garbage on Mac and a complete joke on Android).
My yearly search for a decent email client always leads me back to Thunderbird, which is fine, but the mess of ultra-complex garbage suggested to replace Exchange is insane. We've got a hosting company to look after AD and Exchange for us, so a replacement has to be easy.
G-Suite might do it, but we need self-hosted, we don't want Google reading all of our email and whatnot.
- chrish