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Another Windows Server Update Services glitch hits -- on the eve of Patch Tuesday

It's never a good thing when Microsoft's Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) enterprise-patch mechanism malfunctions. It's even worse when WSUS breaks down right before the company plans to start pushing out its regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday fixes.
Written by Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor

It's never a good thing when Microsoft's Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) enterprise-patch mechanism malfunctions. It's even worse when WSUS breaks down right before the company plans to start pushing out its regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday fixes.

That's what has happened this week. In a November 13 post to the WSUS Team blog, Microsoft officials acknowledged:

"We have been hearing reports from some customers who use WSUS that they have been having trouble accessing their administration consoles. We have confirmed the cause of this issue and fixed it on our servers, which will automatically fix the issue for most customers on their next synchronization cycle."

Senior Program Manager for WSUS Bobbie Harder, in that same post provides "steps customers can take to get WSUS working again even sooner."

As WindowsConnected.com notes, users were complaining about the latest WSUS problem, via newsgroups, over the weekend.

Fortunately for Microsoft and its customers, November 13 is slated to be a relatively light Patch Tuesday, with two new bulletins slated for release, Microsoft also is pushing out three new Windows Vista updates via Windows Update this week, as well.

WSUS has had a less-than-stellar track record over the past couple of months. In late October, WSUS erroneously pushed to users a Windows Desktop Search update as the result of a rules change Microsoft made in the WSUS back-end.

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