WSUS Updates Timeout Issues: Fixing MDT Capture Failures

If you’re using MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit) or SCCM to capture a reference image, and the capture machine doesn’t have internet access, you can hit a frustrating failure mode during the Windows Update step: the task sequence freezes for around 2 hours while searching for updates, briefly appears to install everything, and then fails and times out with errors like:

Failed to download: 4816e53b-6f86-43c5-a740-0cafbe6317f5  result(4) : Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems (KB4015583) ZTIWindowsUpdate 4/18/2017 4:15:59 PM 0 (0x0000)

Failed to download: f6df2191-75f3-445d-87b8-557ef2b3536c  result(4) : Security Update for Adobe Flash Player for Windows 10 Version 1703 (for x64-based Systems) (KB4018483) ZTIWindowsUpdate 4/18/2017 4:15:59 PM 0 (0x0000)

Cause

This happens when the capture machine is configured to use WSUS, but it’s also trying to reach Microsoft’s sls.update.microsoft.com endpoint as part of Delivery Optimization — and with no internet access on the capture machine, those Delivery Optimization lookups stall and eventually time out the whole update step.

Resolution

Set Windows Update Delivery Optimization to bypass peer-to-peer delivery entirely and fall back to plain BITS downloads, by adding this registry value:

REG ADD HKLMSOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsDeliveryOptimization /v DODownloadMode /t REG_DWORD /d 100

A DODownloadMode value of 100 disables Delivery Optimization’s peer/cloud modes and forces standard BITS-based downloads, which don’t depend on the Delivery Optimization cloud service being reachable. You can add this as a registry step earlier in your task sequence (before the Windows Update step runs) so it applies automatically on every capture, rather than having to remember to set it by hand each time.

Resources

• guide
• Adobe
• WSUS
• download mode
• Windows Update Delivery Optimization