WSUS Installation Error – Cannot find the file specified

We have some issues with our WSUS, so I uninstalled it under “Add roles and features” in Server Manager, but it always failed with post installation with “System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The system cannot find the file specified”.  – the WSUS post installation log is located at C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp***.log

When I looked further, it was stopped at “Configuring website on port 8530” this step.

Then I figured it was something wrong with IIS, so I checked there, seems ok…

Not much information on the internet, in the end I have to ask Microsoft support for help. First they asked me to uninstall IIS, as they have quite some users with same issues with that.

But no luck with uninstalling IIS, then we tried using Process Monitor to monitor the wsus post installation process…still no luck…

After the next day, they told me to try uninstall WSUS with command line:

Uninstall-WindowsFeature -Name UpdateServices,Windows-Internal-Database -Restart
Post restart, delete EVERYTHING in the C:\Windows\WID\ (for Win 2012 r2) folder.
Then run the following command to re-install WSUS:
Install-WindowsFeature UpdateServices -Restart

 

and the post installation success!

 

Just curious, why Microsoft got a broken uninstallation from GUI mode?

 

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