Patch My PC unable to Publish after In Place Server OS Upgrade

[MichaelBishop]

We performed an OS Upgrade from 2012 R2 to 2019 on our WSUS Server a couple weeks ago.  There were issues with WSUS after the upgrade that we started to troubleshoot on our own, but we had to open a case with Microsoft for a resolution.  During our troubleshooting, we ran the "WsusUtil.exe movecontent E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\ -skipcopy" to update the WSUSContent location but now the SUSDB & Registry do not appear to line up the IIS Content location.

SUSDB: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\WSUSContent\
Registry: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\
IIS Content: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\
WSUSContent Share: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\
UpdateServicesPackages Share: E:\WSUS\UpdateServicesPackages\

After the OS Upgrade and after review the logs, we thought WSUS was publishing correctly and let it Patch My PC publish updates for a couple weeks but after further research, we determined we're getting the following error:

The publishing failed with error: CreateDirectory failed (timestamping was enabled). We will attempt to publish the update again with timestamping disabled.

CreateDirectory failed. ErrorCode:-2147467259 NativeErrorCode:1130 HResult:-2147467259 MethodName:CreateDirectory. This error appears to be a known error. Please see our KB article https://patchmypc.com/an-error-occurred-while-publishing-an-update-to-wsus-createdirectory-failed for the resolution.

After doing some research and reviewing this article, we believe the settings should be the following:

SUSDB: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\
Registry: E:\WSUS\
IIS Content: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\
WSUSContent Share: E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\
UpdateServicesPackages Share: E:\WSUS\UpdateServicesPackages\

We have third party update content in both the E:\WSUS\WSUSContent and E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\WSUSContent directories.  We are little worried about running the WsusUtil.exe again and overwriting the original E:\WSUS\WSUSContent directory (and potentially another WSUS Scan Storm).

After doing some research, we believe we need to run WsusUtil.exe again with the following command: "WsusUtil.exe movecontent E:\WSUS\ -skipcopy" and then manually copy the content from E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\WSUSContent\ to the E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\ to ensure that we don't overwrite the original E:\WSUS\WSUSContent\ directory.  We would like to verify these steps before proceeding.  We appreciate any assistance.  Thank you.

[Andrew Jimenez (Patch My PC)]

Hi Michael,

Your proposed solution looks correct, it also should not cause another scan storm as all you are doing is modifying the content location.

This is a super common issue faced after an in-place server upgrade. The other thing you will want to look out form after things start working again is: https://patchmypc.com/duplicate-patch-my-pc-category-listed-in-software-update-point-products-tab