How to deploy a new version of Windows Update Agent (WUA).

When using software Updates with Configuration Manager you may   want to deploy a new WU Agent to your machines for several reasons. WUA might cause all kinds of problems with client scanning and deployment. So my recommendation is to keep the WU Agent up to date. It’s not all times the clients update the agent by itself so therefore you will see a manual way of deploying it in this article.

1. Download the wuredist.cab from this url http://update.microsoft.com/redist/wuredist.cab 
2. When you have downloaded the file you need to extract and open the wuredist.xml file.
3. In the file you should look for the download source for the different platform agents. Below I have listed the current once but it will change as time go by.
   • http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/7.2.6001.788/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe
   • http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/7.2.6001.788/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x64.exe
   • http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/7.2.6001.788/WindowsUpdateAgent30-ia64.exe
4. After that you need to create a package with the source files and distribute it to your DPs.
5. You also need to specify a program for the package I use this syntax for my x86 platform as I don’t want to force a restart and hide it from the end user. 
   

   WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe /WUForce /quiet /norestart

6. You also need to create a collection for your machines to target an example query could be the following. With this query all active non obsolete clients that doesn’t have WUA 7.2.6001.788 will be listed. Make sure you have not like or like otherwise the version handling won’t work.
   

   select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_WINDOWSUPDATEAGENTVERSION on SMS_G_System_WINDOWSUPDATEAGENTVERSION.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_WINDOWSUPDATEAGENTVERSION.Version not like "7.2.6001.788" and SMS_R_System.Client = 1 and SMS_R_System.Obsolete != 1 and SMS_R_System.Active = 1

7. After this you need to create a advertisement to deploy to the collection and follow your deployment in the reports.

References

Http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949104

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa387285(VS.85).aspx