DISM repairs for (old) updates still requiring reboot

The reason for this post is to share my ‘solution’ for getting around an old cumulative windows update still needing a reboot that was obstructing a newer cumulative update. Clearly something gone wrong during install and corrupted the windows installer registration.

Below is the results of my various attempts to fix this issue and have Windows Security Updates to resume its automated operation.

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Normally one is instructed to start with:

SFC /ScanNow

that fixes most issues. However in my case SFC could not repair my Windows 10 installation.

Next up un such case is running:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Reading its logs revealed some files from the stuck install where still missing or incorrect.

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So I downloaded the full *.msu files from Microsoft for the stuck update, in my case and this example:

Windows10.0-kb4569751-x64-ndp48_99e0fedbc8108ac53c27032c7d2fa08e21bcd22f.msu.

I extracted this msu into a temporary folder (‘C:\Temp\msu’ in this example) using

EXPAND  -f:*.* “C:\Temp\msu\Windows10.0-kb4569751-x64-ndp48_99e0fedbc8108ac53c27032c7d2fa08e21bcd22f.msu” c:\temp\msu

This results in a small number of files, one of them being the Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48.cab file.

Note:

The other 3 files: Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48.xml, Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48-pkgProperties.txt, WSUSSCAN.cab can be ignored.

I extracted/expanded this Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48.cab file into a temporary folder: 

EXPAND -f:*.* “C:\Temp\msu\Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48.cab c:\temp\msu\Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48

Note:

I had to create this folder: ‘C:\Temp\msu\Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48’ in this example,  before issuing the EXPAND command.

In the ‘c:\temp\msu\Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48’ folder one should now see a number of folders, xml files and manifest files.

Note:

The popular archive tool WinRAR is able to extract the cab file yet does not apply filenames correctly, rendering the result useless.

Using this folder as source I ran DISM again:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:C:\Temp\msu\Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48

to restore corrupted/mismatched manifest files.

The result I checked with:

SFC /ScanNow

The SFC logs still show a few dynamic link libraries (dll’s) as being corrupted and not repairable by SFC.

Running DISM again fixed the missing dll’s (after the manifests are corrected it finally knows the exact .Net dll’s versions):

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:C:\Temp\msu\Windows10.0-KB4569751-x64-NDP48

Again checking the results:

SFC/ScanNow

shows that SFC is finally able to restore/repair the remaining issues, as it shows:

‘Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them. For online repairs, …’

as message. Performing another SFC run to check:

    SFC /ScanNow

finally shows:

‘Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations’.

And:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

finally shows:

‘The restore operation completed successfully. The operation completed successfully’.

And at last:

Settings | Update & Security | Windows Update

now shows:

‘You’re up to date’

instead of an error/retry message.

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Thanks to the authors of these two post:

• https://dennisspan.com/slow-installation-of-msu-files-using-the-wusa-exe 

for showing how to extract an *.msu file and use it as DISM input, albeit in a different manner and for other purposes).

• http://www.windowswiki.info/2009/02/19/how-to-extract-msumspmsiexe-files-from-the-command-line

for showing how to correctly extract the *.cab file.

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