WSUS 3 New Installation

I have got some issues when I am trying to install WSUS 3 on Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2. When ever I am running the exe file then I am getting the following error log:

2007-05-07 08:34:19 Error MWUSSetup ParseCommandLine: Failed to open SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup registry key (Error 0x80070002: The system cannot find the file specified.)
2007-05-07 08:34:23 Error MWUSSetup DoInstall: ParseCommandLine failed (Error 0x80041453)

Does anyone has any idea about it? Thanks for any solution.

It seems to me that you have got old WSUS 3 installed but the regkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup is gone. It is required for the installation process to find out to either you are doing an uninstallation or an upgradation which ever is necessary. You can try to use ARP in control panel to remove original WSUS installation and then leave DB and everything else that you want to leave behind, then you can reinstall with original WSUS version. You will then be able to recover the original WSUS with regkey that is all created.

I have already removed the old WSUS and I think that the uninstallation deleted that reg key as well. Can anyone tell me how to restore the key or else create a new key manually? Thanks.

Even I was facing same issue after removing the WSUS 3.0 and I was not able to reinstall it again and got that similar error with the registery key. So, what I did to solve this issue was I did an installation with the below command line from a command prompt and then WSUS installed without any trouble:

WSUS3Setupx86.exe CONTENT_LOCAL=1 CONTENT_DIR=f:\WSUS SQLINSTANCE_NAME=%COMPUTERNAME% DEFAULT_WEBSITE=1 CREATE_DATABASE=1