SoftwareDownload folder

[penfold]

I have started a new position and it seems that as standard practice I have come into a place which when Windows updates fails, one of the things they do to get it working is rename the SoftwareDistribution folder. Now I am trying to tidy up WSUS and I can see there are lots of clients which are not connecting and as I'm going through it I can that many times the clients have a renamed SoftwareDistribution folder. Now I am trying to re-connect clients to WSUS by forcing a connection from the client side. But can anyone advise how this really should be done? I'm reading on some places don't rename the folder, but other places say it's a way to get windows updates to run again. Is this a case that when renaming the folder they need to carry out additional actions or this is bad practice?

[3s-gtech]

Wiping the SoftwareDistribution folder is a fairly reliable solution without downsides that I've seen. It just clears the update history and cache, and can make uninstalling updates tricky (but not always). I had it scripted when I upgraded Windows 10 across site from 1703 to 1903 with WSUS - any clients that struggled, that kicked them into life.

[penfold]

I've only checked a few, but about 4 from 5 have last contact timestamp in WSUS which matches the date on renamed folder. To be honest there is a fair bit of cleanup required. I was just wondering if this is something which was causing issues on live systems I'm seeing in WSUS

 

Thanks