Declining update cf56ff39-8ba5-4177-9265-e30d4dd58cf5

Users of Microsoft WSUS, be it directly or indirectly through MECM, are having bad days. The update cf56ff39-8ba5-4177-9265-e30d4dd58cf5 is associated with some bad XML leading to failed synchronisations.

You might see this in your C:\Program Files\Update Services\LogFiles\SoftwareDistribution.log log file.

invalid update identity (AtLeastOne Prerequisite) in XML for update CF56FF39-8BA5-4177-9265-E30D4DD58CF5

I tried to decline this update using PowerShell. The PS snippet succeeded but it didn’t help me. Here’s the snippet in case we need it for another update.

# Connect to the local WSUS server
$wsus = Get-WsusServer

# Attempt to locate the bad update by its unique ID
$badUpdateGuid = "cf56ff39-8ba5-4177-9265-e30d4dd58cf5"
$badUpdate = $wsus.SearchUpdates($badUpdateGuid)

if ($badUpdate) {
  Write-Host "Found the problematic update. Declining it now …" -ForegroundColor Yellow
  $badUpdate | ForEach-Object { $_.Decline() }
  Write-Host "Update successfully declined." -ForegroundColor Green
} else {
  Write-Host "Update metadata not fully indexed locally yet." -ForegroundColor Red
}