Working with some of my team mates this week, I was hearing about multiple machines failing the Fall Creators Update (FCU) 1709 with a Windows Update error of ” Feature update to Windows 10, version 1709 – Error 0x80242006 ” .  Looking around the internet I see a lot of people hitting the common solutions but no real success.

Common Solution (doesn’t always work)

1. Run the Windows Update Troubleshooter
   1. Open the Windows Settings – Formerly known as the Control Panel
   2. Select Update & Security – Last option
   3. Select Troubleshoot – 4th one down left side
   4. Click on Windows Update under Windows.
   5. Click on Advanced on the Windows update dialog box and click on Run as administrator (Enter the credentials if required).
   6. Click on Next and follow onscreen instruction complete the Windows Update troubleshooter
2. Deleting the %windir%\SoftwareDistribution folder (requires you to stop several services)

The two steps above only partially fixes the issue.  Solution is below!

Windows Update Log File

1. Create the Windows Update Log file: Get-WindowsUpdateLog
   1. PowerShell Source: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mniehaus/2017/10/10/improved-windows-update-log-formatting-with-windows-10-1709/
2. Open the log file
   1. I still use cmtrace.exe as my primary log file viewer
      1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=50012
   2. I have found Glogg is much faster but less formatting
      1. http://glogg.bonnefon.org/download.html

Root Cause

You have at least two issues

1. Partial download in the Software Distribution folder may be corrupted (someone rebooted for a reason)
2. Real: You windows update agent registered a download but can’t clear it out

Solution

You need to stop services remove/rename two folders then restart services.  Please be aware cryptSvc will try to restart so do the following quick.

1. Press Windows Key + X on the keyboard and then select “Command Prompt (Admin)” or “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” from the menu.
2. Stop the following services in order Windows Update Services, Cryptographic, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), and MSI Installer.  The following command lines will work just fine.

net stop wuauserv
net stop cryptSvc
net Stop DoSvc
net stop bits
net stop msiserver

3. Rename the SoftwareDistribution and Catroot2 folders.

ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old
ren C:\Windows\System32\catroot2 Catroot2.old

4. Now, let’s restart the BITS, Cryptographic, MSI Installer and the Windows Update Services.

net start msiserver
net start bits
net start DoSvc
net start cryptSvc
net start wuauserv

5. Rerun Windows Update to install FCU 1709

Notes

Media Creation Tool Fails

Media creation tool did not work in this environment because all clients are configured to be controlled via Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM or ConfigMgr)

PowerShell

How to stop and start services

Get-Service BITS | Where {$_.status –eq 'Stopped'} |  Start-Service

Get-Service BITS | Where {$_.status –eq 'Running'} |  Stop-Service

How to rename a folder

Rename-Item -path 'C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution' -NewName 'C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution.old'

Rename-Item -path 'C:\Windows\catroot2' -NewName 'C:\Windows\catroot2.old'