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Patch My PC Publisher – Unable to connect to WSUS

When starting the Patch My PC Publisher, you get an error message stating that it is “Unable to Connect to WSUS”.
This issue usually appears due to a WSUS misconfiguration, and the cause might vary. The most common causes are documented in this article.

Topics covered in this article:

Ensure that the PMPC Publisher is installed on the top-most SUP

The PatchMyPC Publisher need to be installed on the top-most Software Update Point, as documented in the requirements page.

Ensure it is installed on the top-most SUP.
In case you don’t know how to find out what the name of your top-most SUP is, you can use this script.

Basic troubleshooting

Before doing anything else, we need to ensure that the WsusPool and WSUS Service are running.

For the WsusPool, go to the IIS Manager –> Application Pool –> check the status.
If it is Stopped, right-click it and choose Start.

Once ensured that the WsusPool is running, go to services.msc and ensure that the WSUS Service is also running.
If it’s not running, right-click the service and start it.

The WsusPool stops immediately after being started

Make sure that the WSUS AppPool in IIS is optimized for better performance, as described in this article.

The issue exists with https configured while the WsusPool is running

Ensure the SSL Certificate is bound to the WSUS Administration site and was not dropped for some reason:

  1. On the WSUS server, open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
  2. Go to Sites > WSUS Administration.
  3. Select Bindings from either the action menu or by right-clicking on the site.
  4. In the Site Bindings window, select the line for https, then select Edit….

More InformationNote: Don’t remove the HTTP site binding even if HTTPS is configured. WSUS uses HTTP to update content files.

6. Under the SSL certificate option, choose the certificate to bind to the WSUS Administration site if the option is set to Not Selected. The certificate’s friendly name is shown in the drop-down menu. If a friendly name wasn’t specified, then the certificate’s IssuedTo field is shown. If you’re not sure which certificate to use, select View and verify the thumbprint matches the one you obtained.

To verify if all other HTTPS settings are configured correctly, please follow this guide.

Published On July 29, 2022