NextDetectionTime and ScheduledInstallDate

[jasonreed11]

I am new to this forum so thanks for being a resource.

I am running WSUS ver.3.1.6001.65 on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2. The workstations that I am patching are mostly Windows XP SP2. How do the NextDetectionTime and ScheduledInstallDate registry values on the clients machines get set? I have seen where some use Group Policy to set them. Is that the best practice or is there a better way? If there is a better way, how? Thanks.

[Expertz]

When reading a lot about the WUA, I learned that it operates on two schedules: one for search and another for installation. After successfully searching for updates (on the first schedule), it sets up the installation of the detected updates on the installation schedule. To determine whether a search or an installation is required, the WUA records time stamps of the last runs in the registry. These values are named NextDetectionTime and ScheduledInstallDate and are located under the key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update.

Therefore, the Windows Update Agent can be forced to search and install updates at a time of the administrators’ choosing. By setting the mentioned values to well before the current time, the WUA is forced to come into operation. It will then step through the following tasks: self update, search, download, installation and report.

The following code snippet demonstrates setting the detection and installation time stamp and restarting the Windows Update service.

Net Stop wuauserv
Reg Add “HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update” /v “NextDetectionTime” /d “2007-01-02 10:44:04″ /f
Reg Add “HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update” /v “ScheduledInstallDate” /d “2007-01-01 23:00:00″ /f
Net Start wuauserv

After completing any one of these steps, the WUA terminates and records the current time stamp in the registry. At this point, the log file contains a transcript of the last session which should be searched for the result code of the operation to ensure that is has completed successfully. Due to the length of the table of result codes, it is not feasible to provide for all possible situations. In addition, there are several situations when a reboot needs to be introduced before the WUA is able to continue, e.g. after some self updates.