Fellow colleague and MVP Jason Sandy’s has written a great post on Software Updates in ConfigMgr.
Here’s a quick intro:
As many folks know, there is a known issue with Software Updates in Windows 7 Task Sequences: http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2011/01/28/known-issue-install-software-updates-action-hangs-on-windows-7.aspx. There is no official word of a fix for this issue which by most accounts happens for a number of seemingly different reasons once the number of updates to be applied gets “large” – although bafflingly enough, it doesn’t always happen. I have seen different numbers for just how many “large” is but I don’t think that there is an official definition. From what I know, the actual issue is quite complicated which implies that the fix will be also.
So, what do we do in the meantime? At a recent client engagement, I faced this exact question and initially had no good answer. I had done the handful of “normal” things which are outlined here: http://coreworx.blogspot.com/2010/08/configmgr-install-software-updates-task.html. (Note that the XML response size was increased by default in WSUS SP2 so that can be eliminated.) No dice though. I even tried a couple of other undocumented tricks without any luck. Then it hit me: Install Updates Offline from MDT. After some fiddling and help – because there is almost zero documentation on it – from Chris Nackers (who hadn’t actually ever used this task either) I got it working. So here’s my FAQ for MDT’s Install Updates Offline.