Windows Server – Server Manager Refresh Fix

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

If you have an issue with your server where you cannot see the roles in Server Manager, cannot install service packs or you see this error on your refresh status in Server Manager:

Then this usually means that you have a corrupt Windows Update that has loaded on to your server at some point and it stops you carrying out fairly basic tasks and is extremely annoying.

But, there is a simple way to fix this. The problem is with some of the files located in this directory:

c:\windows\servicing\packages

This is of course assuming that your Windows is installed on the C: drive.

So how do you fix the problem?

Well, the first thing we should state is that the method below is not supported by Microsoft and probably not recommended – but it has fixed about 25 servers that we have worked on so try it at your own risk.

You will still need to take ownership of the folder and assign full control before you can copy over the files. To do this, run the following commands at an elevated command prompt:

takeown /F c:\windows\servicing\packages /D y /R

cacls c:\windows\servicing\packages /E /T /C /G "DOMAIN\USERNAME":F

You should find a different working server in your environment with the same operating system and copy the files from the location as above and then paste them into the above location on your broken server.

Once you have done this, there should not be any need to reboot the server, it should then start working perfectly well and fix this issue.

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