How to view windows update error codes in cmd or powershell

Question

Trying to update windows PCs silently on powershell remotely and running into failed installs. Is there a way to view the error codes from cmd or powershell? Need the ones that show in the windows update gui

Answer 1

Hello,

You may want to try this tool.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/debug/system-error-code-lookup-tool

Depending on what you are doing in the OS, the description may change per component, byt this is the underlying code. The component/Feature may have more specific wording that what is displayed here.

Darrell

Answer 2

basically I am just running windows updates in powershell through an RMM tool and getting failed installs. I want to know why it is failing with an error code

Answer 3

Hello,

Yes, you can view the error codes for failed Windows updates in PowerShell by following these steps:

Open PowerShell as an administrator.

Type the following command and press Enter: Get-WindowsUpdateLog

This will generate a log file in the %windir%\WindowsUpdate.log location.

Open the log file and search for the error codes associated with the failed updates. The error codes will be listed in the format of 0x########.

You can also use the following PowerShell command to view the error codes for failed updates:

Get-WindowsUpdate -History | Where-Object { $_.Update.State -eq 'Failed' } | Select-Object -Property Title,KB,SupportUrl,UpdateId,RevisionNumber,LastDeploymentChangeTime,State,FailureReason,ResultCode

This command will display a list of failed updates along with their error codes.

Best Regards,

Hania Lian

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