Well I figured out why some of my machines kept disappearing. They were VMs, cloned. I used sysprep, they had different SIDs, but apparently, for some reason, Windows Update keeps a SusClientId and isn't smart enough to realise it's duplicated. I figured this out after poking around in the SUSDB. There's apparently a KB article on this (555351, but links don't seem to work). There's another one as well: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903262 Anyways, stick this in a batch file and run it on all clients and it should get fixed. net stop wuauservREG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate" /v AccountDomainSid /fREG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate" /v PingID /fREG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate" /v SusClientId /fnet start wuauservwuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow Is there a specific reason SCE doesn't detect and fix this kind of stuff? Seems like using sysprep should be a supported scenario for generating a bunch of VMs... -Michael

I had the same problem with WAIK cloned 2003 machines. Your advice was very helpful, thank you very much. Marco

Hi Michael, Thanks for sharing your experience. This is a good instance of how to manipulate the cloned Operating Systems in SCE/WSUS. However, Im afraid that SCE cannot detect and fix this issue itself. It seems like SusClientId is the only identifier to a single machine for WSUS. And it is not recommended to deploy computers with clone software. Thanks. Sincerely, Yog Li Microsoft Online Community Support

Well, sysprep is designed to do exactly that, so I'm not sure where the idea that it's "not recommended"comes from. Microsoft says to use sysprep, and how else wouldcan we deploy an environment? Maybe SCE isn't responsible, but it makes the SCE product look bad when one of its components fails in such a spectacular way. Also, someone can overwrite that valueon their own workstationand make other servers just disappear from SUS, right?. Doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. I'd expect there to be some kind of detection and notificationmechanism for when this screws up.

Hi Michael, I understand that it's not a good experience for you. However, I think it's important to locate the root cause. As you mentioned, sysprep is designed to create an image file that can be cloned to computers having similar characteristics (type/models). It removes the hardware-specific configuration, as well as the product key and SID, from the machine. However, I'm not sure whether it should remove the SusClientId or not. For your scenario, I think sysprep didn't update the SusClientId. So WSUS cannot manage the machines with this issue. I think this version of WSUS could not resolve the issue itself. To avoid this issue, I think you can clear SusClientId before making image to avoid this issue. Besides, I will report this issue to our related teams as well as your proposals. Thanks. Sincerely, Yog LiMicrosoft Online Community Support

Hi all The sysprep is desinged to prepare machine for cloneing puprose but as Yog li said it will not remove susclient id Most of the time the sus policy is pushed from the GPO so try capturing the image before adding the machine to domain adn geting all the poilicy pushed.We are using this technique adn it is quite successful.As a matter of fact we have more than 50000 workstation in our environment Can somebody actually tell me what does sus client id and other registry key in this path mean Thnakx Devanshu

Hi Devanshu, For the questions about WSUS, please use the following Microsoft public newsgroups, which would be the best resource. Update Services Newsgroupshttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/topics/sus.mspx Thanks. Sincerely, Yog Li Microsoft Online Community Support

Thanks That was very helpful !!moon-