You can use PowerShell to install Windows Updates automatically, unattended and simple. Neat, right? For this, you don’t have to have an enterprise environment with WSUS, or Windows Server, but since this is Sysadmins of the North, I assume you do. In this post I’m going to show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.
Install SQL Server cumulative updates silently
Install SQL Server update silent: installing SQL Server cumulative updates is always a cumbersome, and quite daunting task. Unpacking and running the CU installer is a slow process, you have to click through a lot of screens, and it’s hard to get it to install silently. But here is how!
Remove computer object from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in PowerShell
Here is a short PowerShell snippet for you to remove a computer object from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). In an elevated PowerShell session, adjust the following to your environment and execute:
Force BITS to download WSUS updates in the foreground in Windows Server
When WSUS downloads are slow. WSUS uses BITS for downloading updates, and it does so in background mode. Unfortunately, this utilizes remaining bandwidth of the server instead of its full capacity. To speed up WSUS downloads, you can configure BITS in WSUS to use foreground priority.
Install Windows Server Servicing Stack Updates (SSU) using PowerShell
You can install Servicing Stack Updates (SSU) for Windows Server 2012R2, 2016 and Windows Server 2019 using PowerShell, without downtime. Because they must be installed prior to your normal Windows Server security updates, you can install them anytime you want to during the day. Here’s a small PowerShell example to do so.
Manually failover all databases in an SQL Server Database Mirroring configuration
How to manually failover an SQL Server database mirroring session? A manual SQL Server failover can only be initiated from the principal server, and the mirrored database must be synchronized (that is, when the database is in the SYNCHRONIZED state). In this article I’ll show you how to manual failover mirrored SQL Server databases using Transact-SQL (T-SQL) in SQL Server 2017+.
WsusPool keeps crashing: stops again and again
Sometimes you find your WSUS server keeps crashing over and over again. The WSUS application pool periodically stops, WSUS is unavailable and/or the WSUS management console hangs. When you start to investigate as to why Windows Server Update Services crashes, you’ll notice the following error message being logged in the HTTPErr log files:
Windows Update error 0xc1420127 and 0xc190010b when upgrading Windows 8.1 to Windows 10
Last weekend I had to update my girlfriends laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Some might say, an easy task. Well, it wasn’t. After downloading the Windows 10 update through Windows Update, Windows Update returned errors 0xc1420127 and 0xc190010b, even using the Windows 10 media creation tool. And as always there are many reasons for these errors. In this short post, I’ll provide some possible solutions and tips.